The last two episodes of Season 1 of Pluribus on Apple TV explore seismic emotional shifts for Carol, buoyed by the arrival of Manousos and her burgeoning…relationship (?) with Zosia.
In season finale interviews with Rhea Seehorn, Karolina Wydra, and Carlos-Manuel Vesga, the cast opened up to Blavity’s Shadow and Act about the nuances behind their characters’ decisions, relationships, and motivations heading into the finale and the already announced Season 2.
“It would’ve been interesting if they’d met earlier, right? There would’ve always been a fundamental difference, I think, of viewing these people as human beings that should not just be massacred,” Rhea Seehorn said of her meeting Manousos many weeks later after her perspective changed a bit. “Because Carol, even in the very beginning when she was like, ‘Those are the others and I want no part of it,’ you see her feel horribly that she has accidentally killed anybody or even hurt anybody with her anger. So she always saw them as humans that need saving, not obliterating.”
Rhea Seehorn on Carol’s isolation and breaking point
According to Seehorn, Carol’s eventual surrender to connection was a slow, deeply emotional shift. “It was a balancing act that I had to find with Melissa Bernstein in episode eight, as well as Vince Gilligan, my showrunner,” she explained. “This idea of she really, really was broken… the days of how long she was left in this isolation were much longer than what I did, Rhea, filming it.”
Beyond loneliness, Carol’s despair was tied to a growing sense of futility. “In her mind this loneliness will continue until she dies alone in this house. That’s that. So, ‘Good for you. You fought the good fight. No one wanted it. No one cared. And your reward is you will die alone watching Golden Girls.”
Carol’s grief over her wife also lingered unresolved. “She still hasn’t even been able to fully process the grief of losing her wife. It’s just there’s just so much going on,” Seehorn said. “And then, yeah, she’s a human being that all the smartest people in the world went and collected what they thought was her ideal physical specimen of a woman and put it in her face. There’s a lot of reasons to go over.”
Still, Carol’s transformation wasn’t total. “I asked Vince, ‘But she hasn’t fully lost her feeling about you can’t totally trust this, has she?’ And he said no,” Seehorn added. “I’m not suddenly stupid. I’m still Carol.”
Seehorn also reflected on Carol’s lifelong struggle with joy. “She was a fault-finder before. She was an, ‘I’ll be happy when. I’ll be content when. I’ll be successful when.’ Her wife that she loved and loved her was trying to tell her, ‘Slow down. Just enjoy this.’ And she couldn’t do it.”
Karolina Wydra on Zosia’s blurred identity and motives
Wydra spoke about her complex role as Zosia, and if her performance changed as Carol tried to continuously assign a specific identity to her, as opposed to the collective.
“There’s a throughline throughout the whole season and it’s to make Carol happy. We love her unconditionally and we want to do anything to make her happy, and to also find a way where she can understand that what we’re experiencing is worth experiencing,” Wydra said.
As Carol begins to assign individual identity to Zosia, Wydra said her performance had to walk a fine line. “Carol asked her to use the pronoun ‘I,’ and say, instead of ‘we,’ it’s ‘I.’ So to kind of get her to dissociate from the collective in her mind… she becomes more of an individual in her world when she’s with her.”
The duality of Zosia’s behavior was intentional. “Is Zosia performing for Carol, or is Zosia kind of becoming more of an individual with more time? Is her individuality and personality coming out more within the collective, or is she performing for Carol to make Carol [happy]?”
Manipulation and sincerity were always in play. “That question—Is she manipulating her to get to where she gets in episode nine? Or, again, is she genuinely supporting what she believes in because of the biological imperative? That was the line we walked. I want the audience to go on that journey and ask, ‘Wait a second, is she… or is she…? What’s going on?'”
Carlos-Manuel Vesga on Carol and Manousos’ potential dynamic in Season 2
Vesga weighed in on Carol’s surprise return—and how her dynamic with Manousos could evolve in Season 2.
“For me, the ideal is that they could share a mission, but the execution of the plan doesn’t flow,” he said. “I don’t know the plan, but the plan wouldn’t flow that well because I think they have different ideas of what they should accomplish.”
“I think by the moment he arrives and everything that happens afterwards, it might shift to Carol having a more radical idea about what she wants to do with the others. And maybe he’s the one who’s saying, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t nuke them. Maybe we shouldn’t kill them.'”
Vesga hinted that this opposition could highlight their humanity. “It’d be very interesting if they switch places. Maybe he meets Diabaté, and what would happen if they meet? They’re so different. But also that sort of not flowing that well thing between Carol and Manousos also speaks about us being human and being all-timers… maybe they can’t work together because they haven’t joined. Or maybe I love that they are still human and they can debate and disagree.”
Season 1 of Pluribus is now streaming on Apple TV.