This article contains spoilers for “Pluribus” season 1, episode 8 – “Charm Offensive”.
“Pluribus” from “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan likes to portray its hive-minded Others in a positive light. They are always polite and kind, seem to genuinely enjoy being connected to each other, and go out of their way to create a positive environment for the handful of people who were immune to joining. However, there are signs that the hive may not be as benevolent towards humanity as the Others claim. Their inability to harm other living things – plants and animals – forces them to turn their own dead into a source of protein, and global famine is a legitimate problem. And now, “Charm Offensive” reveals that the hive mind virus has some truly disturbing implications that make it seem much closer to the Cordyceps infection from “The Last of Us” than to a benevolent global rapture.
As Zosia (Karolina Wydra) informs Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), the hive mind also has a mission: They feel the need to spread the “gift” of the RNA virus by releasing it to other planets, as Kepler-22b did to Earth. To do this, the Others plan to build a giant antenna and divert world power there. This, combined with the food supply problem revealed earlier, seems like a bad idea in terms of resources. Indeed, humanity will lose its energy sources as well as its food reserves – all to the benefit of the spread of the hive mind virus further into space.
In other words, the hive mind affects people’s brains and forces them to spread disease at all costs. Although his method takes a far more gruesome form, this is precisely how the Cordyceps infection works in The Last of Us.
The Last of Us infected and Pluribus Others are not as different as you might think
Unlike the “Pluribus” hive mind, the Cordyceps fungal infection in HBO’s “The Last of Us” is horrifyingly real, although the real-life version thankfully doesn’t turn humans into hostile fungal monsters. The series’ Cordyceps brain infection, on the other hand, does a lot. It hijacks the user’s brain and turns it into a vessel for the fungus, aiming to spread the infection through its creepy mouth tendrils. Of course, all of this happens without the infected person’s consent and to their express disadvantage, as the infection transforms them into a radically different being.
Conversion of the affected person’s physical properties to join the hive and a burning desire to spread the disease to unaffected people are also two confirmed traits of the “Pluribus” hive mind virus. As the series makes increasingly clear, the situation also causes some physical discomfort among the Others, as it cripples their food production and forces them to work endlessly to spread the virus. It’s a strange and disturbing parallel to “The Last of Us” and its depiction of one of the most horrific zombie apocalypses in all of fiction, especially considering how little the others themselves seem to know of their condition.
“Plus” is streaming on Apple TV.
