Pluribus and Romantasy: Art at the End of the World - Reactor

Pluribus offers us a fascinatingly egocentric view of the apocalypse.

In her previous life, before an alien virus turns most of humankind into a benevolent hivemind, protagonist Carol Sturka is already miserable. She has an unerring instinct for dissatisfaction, whether she’s bemoaning her successful career, or griping about minor discomforts during a luxury vacation. Then, once the virus takes hold, those problems become a moot point. Happiness is now beyond her grasp, not just thanks to her negative attitude, but because she’s lost the things that gave her life meaning. Her partner Helen is dead, and so is human society as we know it. Carol no longer has any way to confront the things she hated about her original life—including her conflicted identity as a bestselling novelist.

We meet Carol at a publicity event for her latest book, a doorstop tome titled Bloodsong of Wycaro. Welcomed with spellbound enthusiasm by a crowd of fans, it’s the fourth volume in her fantasy romance series The Winds of Wycaro, whose most popular character is a sexy pirate named Raban.

Shelved beside Diana Gabaldon at the airport bookstore, Carol’s books reflect a very familiar type of romantasy fiction, a genre that’s already provoked plenty of discourse about the literary merits of romance, tying into age-old criticisms of anything with a predominantly female audience. So when Pluribus began to poke fun at Wycaro’s readers, I felt a smidge of trepidation. Carol’s book-signing scene, where dorky fans show off their homemade costumes and demand spoilers about Raban’s return, seemed to echo a tired trend of using fandom as an easy punchline. But as we get to know Carol a little better, this scene takes on a different slant. Really, these Wycaro fans are just enjoying a fun night out with their favorite author. The real focus is on Carol herself; a misanthrope trapped in a hell of her own making.

We soon learn that Carol sees her fanbase as a gaggle of frivolous rubes. In private, she dismisses her books as “mindless crap.” Sipping cocktails to celebrate the end of her publicity tour, she and her partner Helen make fun of a fan who posts misspelled compliments online, prompting Carol to remark, “You think Houston Mom’s off her meds again?” So yes, Carol is kind of an asshole, and her miserable outlook is inextricably linked with her success as an author.

Unknown to her Winds of Wycaro readers, Carol has spent the past five years drafting a “serious” novel. Helen gently encourages her to publish it, but Carol is reluctant for reasons we can easily infer. She may hate the Wycaro books, but they’re a guaranteed money-spinner. Her secret magnum opus represents a more personal kind of risk. If she publishes it and it flops (or worse, if it gets bad reviews from respectable critics), then she won’t be able to hide behind self-deprecating jokes. Carol is deeply averse to that level of public exposure, a trait that extends to her sexuality.

As an author of romance novels aimed squarely at straight women, Carol has chosen to stay in the closet. Helen acts as her manager in public and her wife in private, and their shared career relies upon the sex appeal of a fictional man. When a fan asks about the real-life inspiration behind Raban, Carol suggests George Clooney, the safest possible option for a middle-aged straight woman. The truth, which she’s never admitted to anyone but Helen, is that Raban was originally meant to be female, and Carol recast him as a man for what we can only assume were commercial reasons.

Would Carol’s career meaningfully suffer if she came out as gay in 2025? Maybe, maybe not. In fact, Helen literally asks her, “What do you have to lose?” Most Wycaro fans surely care more about Raban than they do about the person writing him. Yet coming out still feels too risky for Carol, and the possibility of losing book sales is only part of the equation. She’d rather soldier on through a job she hates than open herself up to public vulnerability.

Episode one hints at two ways in which Carol might, at some point in the future, make choices that lead to a happier life. But in the wake of the hivemind virus, those choices are snatched away—along with Carol’s much-valued privacy, because the hivemind now includes all of Helen’s memories. Their relationship has been dragged out of the closet in a uniquely invasive manner, compounding the trauma of Helen’s death.

One of the many intriguing threads in Pluribus is the way the hivemind repeatedly fails to understand Carol’s emotional state. After all, this entity includes every psychoanalyst on the planet, along with everyone Carol has ever met. It should understand that Carol’s current problems are unsolvable. Instead, it compulsively tries to make her happy by acting like an omnipotent concierge service. 

The hivemind’s most jarring mistake is Zosia, a representative who is selected to communicate with Carol because she resembles a female version of Raban. By using Zosia as its ambassador, the hivemind isn’t actually giving Carol something she wants or needs: It’s unintentionally reminding her that it knows all of her intimate secrets, extracted from the mind of her dead wife. For a person as prickly and private as Carol, this outcome is hell on earth.

Pluribus flips the script for apocalyptic fiction, putting its protagonist in a scenario where all of her physical needs are met. By focusing on identity issues and emotional conflict over survivalist drama, the show invites us to wonder what the future of its world might look like.

Carol’s own experiences may be terrifying and traumatic, but the hivemind isn’t a villain, or even necessarily an antagonist. And it certainly isn’t infallible. The first three episodes are full of moments where the hivemind makes stupid choices, in part because it’s guided by a set of contradictory impulses, and in part because it’s basically a baby. Even if it contains all the wisdom and expertise of humankind, it’s still only three days old. Its collective personality will surely evolve over the coming episodes. As will Carol, cast adrift with none of her previous motivators to anchor her. 

If you asked Carol Sturka whether art gave her life meaning, she’d undoubtedly scoff. However, the Winds of Wycaro books still shaped her day-to-day existence, and (in a mostly negative way) impacted her emotional state. She spent her career making commercial art catering to other people’s desires, and in a world without readers or a financial incentive to write, what does that mean for her sense of self? Is Carol the kind of person who can find satisfaction in creating art for art’s sake? Or would it seem pointless to finish her unpublished magnum opus, now there’s no audience left to read it?

In some ways Pluribus sets out an opposing scenario to Station Eleven, the best post-apocalyptic drama in recent memory. Taking place in the wake of a devastating pandemic, Station Eleven tells a story about how art persists after the collapse of civilization, following a group of survivors who form a traveling theater troupe. These characters take their art incredibly seriously, finding a sense of fulfillment and community in their collaborative work. Carol Sturka, however, does not seem equipped to collaborate with anyone. Her attempts to interact with other survivors end in disaster, and so far, she and the hivemind are just coexisting in a state of mutual incomprehension.

Three episodes in, Pluribus hasn’t yet faced up to the devastating extent of its conceit. From the hivemind’s perspective, this is the prologue to a utopian future, but if Carol and the other outliers are successfully assimilated, then this also marks the end of human culture.

Judging by what we’ve seen so far, the hivemind’s defining purpose is to propagate itself as widely as possible. It’s already figuring out how to infect Carol and the other individual humans, but once that mission is complete, what will it do next? Will it prioritize spreading itself to other planets? Will it focus on nurturing Earth’s ecosystem? Beyond that, you have to wonder: Do collective virus entities have hobbies? Can it theoretically develop its own culture? To us, art exists for the purposes of communication, entertainment and self-expression, but those concepts don’t seem to align with the hivemind’s nature. By replacing the chaos of humankind with a singular, goal-oriented entity, Pluribus becomes an apocalypse story about the meaning of life itself. Which in turn makes Carol a brilliant choice of protagonist: An antisocial pessimist, entirely unqualified to become humanity’s champion.