ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - PLURIBUS Episodes 5 + 6 - BREAKDOWN And Ending Explained

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

ScreenCrush The Podcast tackles all the movie and TV hot topics, offering reviews and analysis of Marvel, Star Wars, and everything you care about right now. Hosted by Ryan Arey, and featuring a panel of industry professionals.

Pluribus Episode 6 might have just revealed why the joint exists and what their master plan is and how Carol can end the hive mind. Welcome back Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie, and let's talk about episodes 5 and 6 of Pluribus. Now, we missed last week because of the holiday, so I'm going to talk about episode 5 before we dive into that shocking reveal of episode 6. So episode 5 dives deep into the series' main theme of individualism versus collectivism. Carol prides herself on being the ultimate individualist, like she said in past episodes. I am a very independent person.

Now when we first meet her, she is surrounded by her adoring fans, and yet this makes her feel profoundly alone. She hides her true self from the world by turning her fantasy lesbian pirate lover into a man named Rabon. My original version of him was a her, but I talked myself out of it. So Rabon represents a wall that Carol has placed between herself and her fans. I mean, no wonder her whiteboard revealed that she desperately wants to kill the guy off. And this is also why the joined chose a Rabon lookalike to be

her chaperone. Zosha is a woman that she could theoretically use as a conduit to the outside world, and also... Why is she got to be so goddamn f***able? Over the first few episodes of the series, Carol has learned that while she likes to think she is an independent person, she is actually part of a vastly complex society. Carol thinks that she can just go to the grocery, but then we see how the joint have to command an immense supply chain, just so one person can decide to not purchase 99% of the items on the shelves. And that idea takes us to this episode. We open on the

this curtain overlaying the blue sky. And this is another one of the show's extreme close-ups that make it hard for us to see exactly what we're looking at. But notice that the curtain is actually a little honeycomb pattern, like a hive. And of course, the first person we see in the shot is drinking the mysterious carton of milk that Carol discovers later on. So the phone rings for Carol, because anytime a phone ever rings, it will always be for her, because the hive mind instantly communicates. Launch me's on the other line, throw in a mother's rage at her. You do not ever make my son cry again. So if I could follow any other character in the series, I think it'd be Lakshmi.

She is in clear denial about what her son has become, and instead of blaming the joined, she is blaming Carol. And I kind of wonder if Carol would have acted the same way if Helen hadn't died. Now, notice that when she goes to check on Zosha, we see her reflection in the mirror right here. So the show continuously uses mirrors to frame two people in a given frame. I think this is a way of showing aspects of identity. The joined are one mind in many bodies, which creates a kind of fractured self. We're never actually looking at the person, we're only looking at a reflection of who they actually were.

So after Carol falls asleep, the joint dip out like a dad going out to buy cigarettes and never comes back. Now, look, it could just be me, but I think this is all a metaphor for what the internet has turned people into. Like, the internet makes a lot of young people averse to real world confrontation. See, the web creates a safety net, a kind of barrier between us and the real world. So for a lot of people, the idea of any kind of social confrontation fills people with anxiety, just like it does for the joined. They would rather completely evacuate a city than risk confronting Carol. And the way they orderly march away is just like the aliens and invasion of the body snatchers. That movie also features a food processing center similar to what Carol discovers later in the episode. And did you recognize

the voice on the recording? Our feelings for you haven't changed, Carol, but after everything that's happened, we just need a little space. That is Patrick Fabian, who co-starred with Ray Seahorn on Better Call Saul. You want some advice? Find better lawyers. So now Carol, the ultimate individualist, is faced with ultimate solitude. Literally no one is near her for maybe hundreds of miles in any direction. So she decides to reach out in the only way she can through videos. Again, this is similar to the internet. During the plague, we were all locked up and communicated with each other through video chats or, in our case, YouTube channels. But I think it's also important that she is using an analog recording and not using the internet. I mean, think about it. She could have easily asked for a

video chat with the other. She could have asked the join to set up the internet for her. But the series is taking care to show that Carol is totally separated from the internet, just like she is totally separated from the hive mind. So they send a drone to pick up her envelope, and the drone is another sign of the ultimate impersonal approach. Remember, Amazon wanted to replace human drivers with drones, and this also reminds me of a beau Burnham lyric, a book on getting better, hand delivered by a drone. There it is, again. Now, now, buddy, but later, we'll totally sing that together. So the point is, we're seeing how basic human interaction has a technological myth. just like talking to each other on the internet. And the drone fails just like how technology

will always fall short of real human interaction. And Carol continuously faces situations where she is reminded that no one can be an individualist and also appreciate the comforts of a modern-day society. Without a city of humans around her, coyotes are able to roam freely. So she has to request basic utilities like trash pickup and electricity. I mean, this is libertarianism taken to an extreme. And this is also highlighted by the Agatha Christie novel that Helen was apparently reading, and then there were none. So this is a murder mystery where people in a house are killed off one at a time, just like how Carol is slowly being whittled down to the last survivor of humanity. And then she has a breakthrough, discovering neatly placed milk cartons and trash cans.

She falls into a dumpster, like Saul Goodman did twice and better call Saul, which then takes her to Duke City Dairy. Our imaginary friend has a city? No, Duke City is a nickname for Albuquerque. At the dairy, she walks through rows of stainless steel vats, like the Meth Lab Vast, in Gilligan's series Breaking Bad. And that night, she learns the true price of her total individualism. Her home is raided by a pack of coyotes. Unlike Carol, the coyotes have safety in numbers,

and for a moment, she actually dips down a notch in the food chain. Away from there! Hey! And then the coyotes go after the one thing that Carol truly cares about, her wife Helen. So did anybody else feel a total sense of terror when they were pawing at the ground? I was genuinely horrified at the idea of these coyotes dragging away Helen's body. Now, one thing I love about this series is how Carol is just a normal person. She's not a chemist.

She doesn't even know how to disengage a shotgun from a cop car. So instead, she uses the cop car to rip a hole in her fence. So you can read this as a metaphor that she's learning to let her guard down. I think it's more direct. She has now removed a layer of protection from her home, and that means the coyotes will be back. Carol methodically builds Helen kind of a makeshift crypt. Gilligan and his team have experienced shooting this kind of slow, manual labor, because this is similar to a sequence in Better Call Saul when Mike Erman Trout disassembles a car, to look for a tracker. I also want to shout out this incredibly beautiful Magic Hour shot, which seems inspired by the digging scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Afterwards, Carol shows the true beauty of individualism when she paints an actual grave for Helen. So this is the kind of tribute

that the joined would just never create, because to them, everybody who has passed, is still with them. But Carol understands that the true Helen, the individual, is gone forever. And afterwards, the side of a grave makes her death finally feel real for Carol and for us, and the show pauses a moment to let us mourn. Now, Carol may not be a chemist or a neurosurgeon, but she is clever. She has the author's knack to think like other people and work out puzzles. And frankly, I would not have thought to look for this dog food bag like she does. And then this brings us to the cliffhanger ending of episode 5, which takes us to episode 6.

Now, the theme of episode 6 is loneliness, but it's also about the value in loneliness and how being lonesome makes us seek connections. So we're going to explain how that theme is reflected as we talk about the episode. Now we start on the aftermath of Carol's shocked cliffhanger from last episode, and I want to shout out a lot of you who predicted this on our Discord server. One of our users, Patrick Girard, even shared a subreddit theory that was dead on, even calling out the meaning of the title, HDP, which stands for, Human Derived Protein.

Now, the episode begins and ends with very similar shots. They're both dark, abandoned streets. The opening shot is this perfectly still building. But notice how the sounds of the night are first interrupted by Carol's footsteps, which are accompanied by the score. The show doesn't use music very often, but when it does, it always accompanies an intense emotional moment, like the discovery of cannibalism.

Director Ganja Montero stays on this same wide shot for more than 30 seconds, and it has this subtle effect on us. It tells us that we are a passive observer here. We are distant, and that distance makes Carol seem even more alone. And then we smash cut to the handheld POV shot of her camera, which is very similar to the handheld shot. in the aftermath of the grenade. In both instances, the shaky cam reflects Carol's frightened emotional state. Remember, Gilligan has used this actor POV shots like this before, most notably in the pilot of Breaking Bad.

Now, earlier I mentioned that this whole sequence is meant to mimic the food processing centers and movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And that's the kind of alien story we're used to. You know, where the nefarious aliens arrive on Earth to eat us. It's just a little dusty. But I love how Gilligan takes this reveal, It's not that big of a deal. Is this about them eating people? What? Because the show is not actually about an alien invasion.

It's about Carol's reaction to the invasion because at its core, this is a show about character. And the revelation isn't that big of a surprise. I mean, if you had to guess what was under the tarp, you probably would have said, people. Silent breed is people! But it is interesting to go back and look at the first couple of episodes. You know, like where Zosha is part of a crew collecting bodies,

and you realize why why? they were placing them so neatly in a truck instead of burning or burying them. Now I mentioned earlier that there was a subreddit post and we couldn't find the original poster who actually put out this entire theory and I want to quote some of the science stated in that post. This process is called alkaline hydrolysis or water cremation. In water cremation the resulting corpse liquid is neutralized which explains why the pH was an almost perfectly neutral 7.1. This same process is used to process animal carcasses into food which explains why they are using pet food and dairy farm

equipment. So the science behind all this is sound and incredibly creepy, but they gave Carol the best possible person to explain this. Hello, Carol, we're John Cena. Who's there? I can't see anything. Now, I want to note that Sena's cameo is apropos because Peacemaker Season 1 was about Sena's character, peacemaker, stopping a covert alien invasion where bugs took over people's bodies, similar to what's happening in this show with the joined. So the John Cena video, which by the way, is far better edited than Carol's raw footage, the video does a great job of explaining why they do this. They need to centralize their food supply, just like Zosha said in episode three. We're consolidating resources to centralize useful items for distribution. And I know a lot of you

have noticed this is similar to the plot of the Charlton Heston sci-fi classic Soylent Green, where, spoiler alert, the world is starving, and the government secretly starts turning people into food. Now, Carol thinks about sending another tape, but then decides she just can't trust the join with this important knowledge, and she leaves. But then she remembers, there's still pieces of human beings on her floor, so she returns, wearing a mask and gloves, and vacuums them up. Notice the Worms-I-P-O-V shot here. Now again, Gelligan used these same shots often in the show Breaking Bad to emphasize chemical processes or to show a focus on an object involved in a process. And here, it makes the human remains the subject of the frame. And then we go to Casanova-McBowner's

Fantasyland and Elvis's suite that he mentioned back in episode two. I will occupy the penthouse of Mr. Elvis Presley. Now, I talked earlier about how Carol valued her independence, but this episode is actually about how she feels lonely without anybody to connect to. To contrast, Casanova doesn't feel lonely. He is surrounded by people, but in a sense, he is far more alone than Carol, as we see in this first sequence. So we start, again, on a single object, and this time, a martini glass that is intended for Casanova as we get a tour of his many empire. This 90-second tracking shot shows us the extent of his fantasy. He ordered everybody in the sweet, pretend to have a party just so it felt more real to him when he's several rooms away. He's constructed this fantasy composed of like James Bond movies. He's wearing the white

tuxedo jacket from Goldfinger, playing cards against a man in an eye patch like in Thunderball, when really this whole thing is ridiculous and it just seems like he's recreating the blackjack scene from Austin Powers. Five, I'll stay. And really think about this scene. Think about what it says about this D-bag. Why gamble? Why go through the charade? Money has no meaning anymore and he already knows the outcome. It's been written for him by him, and he probably ordered the join to deal him this royal flush. And yet, this guy is so wrapped up in his solopsism and self-delusion that he can actually enjoy this whole charade. This reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode, a nice place to visit, where a gangster dies and thinks he's in heaven because

he gets everything he wants. But then he gets tired of winning. But when you win every time, that ain't gambling, that's charity. And it's finally revealed. This is the bad place. But Casanova knows that it's not real, but he's still content to act like the kid in a good life. You're a very bad man. Notice that after he lays down his hand, everybody applauds even the Bond villain, because they are all so pleased that they've been able to make him happy. And again, listen to the music. The score plays very much like a Bond theme.

Until when the fantasy is over, it abruptly stops, because the movie's over and the ushers have to clean up for the next show. And then Carol interrupts this Biff Tannen Hot Tub fantasy. Now, in the lobby, she walks by all of these slot machines that are still running. Even though there's no one to play them, Casanova wants this to feel like the real Vegas, so the show must go on. Casanova is also taking lessons from celebrities like John Sina. He was teaching me the Sunset Flip Powerbomb.

Which is, of Coursna's signature moves. Oh! Remember, he could have actually learned this wrestling move from literally anyone on Earth, but he wanted John Sina to teach him because he wants the illusion of celebrity in his life. I just have to applaud how, at every turn of this show, Gilligan and his team are always making the most interesting choices. So think about how this scene could have played out. Like when Carol makes her reveal, he could have been shocked or angry. He could have been converted to her side. Or he could have said, uh, you know what?

No, I want to keep enjoying my lifestyle. But instead, he already knows. Is this about them eating people? After the John Sina video, he says, in French, he's even more convincing. Which is funny because John Sina did learn Mandarin, which helped him form an apology video when he offended the Chinese government. They're not having us of clues that were peppered throughout past episodes. Like when they asked Zosha if they were vegetarian, she didn't confirm, but instead she said... That would be our preference, yes. But this is not the big reveal of this episode.

The big reveal is that Carol isn't allowed in their clique. You stay in touch. All 12 of you. This actually hurts Carol more than the cannibalism, because this isn't some alien life form that's pushing her away. It's regular people who are rejecting. her and the revelation that they are using Zoom also has to hurt. Mostly we're on Zoom. Oh.

Carol has felt so isolated she is using drones to deliver analog tapes to the others, and she's not even getting confirmation that those tapes are reaching the others. And all this time, she could have just requested a Zoom chat. In fact, the other survivors in the joint have one thing in common. We need our space. Carol thought this was her moment. This would unite the remnants of humanity against the alien invaders. But instead, she finds out that they already knew

and no one cares. And there's a parallel here with the real world. Think of how many times you have read about some awful catastrophic stuff about the world, like the dangers of climate change, and then you find out it seems like everybody knows and no one cares. In every scene in this episode, Carol is also being controlled by someone else. She's being controlled by Casanova, John Cena. She has pinned in on all sides and feels like she has no agency.

But Casanova is the one who really gets to the core of what she's feeling. And then we go to breakfast, and I loved how they're framed in this scene. Like Casanova has put up pictures of himself all around the penthouse. One of the first images we see is of Elvis Presley. And then we see that he is modeling himself after the king. Just like Elvis's penthouse featured giant photos of himself, Casanova has such a large opinion of his own merit that he wants to be surrounded by his own image.

But this means that over breakfast, there's always at least two Casanovas in the frame with Carol. It's almost like he is one of the joined. Carol is always outnumbered even when she's in a room with somebody one-on-one. Now it's interesting that he also copies the way she eats her breakfast. At this moment, Carol is actually giving himself something that he cannot get from the joint. The joined can never show him anything new unless he thinks to ask for it.

And this is what I meant by the value of loneliness. Loneliness is actually the source of community and civilization. Being lonely makes us seek connection. And through that connection, we get love and friendship and we learn new things. We challenge ourselves and we become better. But Casanova will never feel lonely because he is a solopsist. He believes that for all practical purposes, he's the only real person who exists. Like Kevin in Home Alone. Exactly.

And case in point, Carol does learn something important by seeking connection, that the join cannot force her to join the hive mind. So he gets to keep living in his dumb fake paradise, but we know that he'll never help Carol because he doesn't want to threaten his power over the hive. She calls the number, once again having to listen to the whole message, which gets funnier every time we hear it. This is a recording. At the tone, you can leave a message.

to request anything you might need. We'll do our best. Shut up! And then once again, they communicate with her through technology. And there's a real emptiness to this exchange. She is talking to a machine, like a chat bot or those horrifying AI girlfriends.

I'm really feeling number two here. Click. Outside, we see that he has a Porsche with a custom license plate for every day of the week. And then he offers her a way out of her loneliness, but she gives him the perfect response. They're just looking for a change of heart. And then we rewind three days

to Menusosos, the man in Paraguay who, like Carol, does not like the joint. He's still monitoring this long wave radio, listening for any real human signal. Like Carol, he's lonely and using analog communication to try to reach somebody who is still a human being. Notice how Gaunt he looks. Remember, a couple episodes ago, he rummaged through storage units so he could eat dog food. And there is an irony here that he is just like the joint. They are both rejecting food that is readily available to eat because of their principles. And when he starts watching the video, note the music. I'm Carol Sturka.

Some of you know me. And this is because, like in Carol's first scene, he is experiencing a swell of emotion. He was lonely, but suddenly, he has found a real human connection. So he leaves his makeshift prison behind and returns home. Just like when Carol requested the power to turn on, the joint activate the grid for him.

And then he arrives home to eat, collect his Atlas, and get in his car. Now, there's an important contrast here with Casanova's 7 Porsches. This car is old. It's beat up, but it's his. It's a piece of shit. but it's his piece of shit. And then, to book in the episode, we end on a deserted street

as his mom comes to see him. Now, notice, her face is in shadow, and this is important. It's because this is not really his mother. She is part of this anonymous hive mind. She could be anybody and everybody talking to him at once. This is a we that is speaking through his mom. And his name is John C. And after this sweet mother's appeal, he says,

And this reminded me of a Mark Twain quote, go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company. The joined offer total bliss, what we imagine heaven would be like. Just wave after wave of bliss and peace and everything is perfect. But for Carolyn Minusos, this perfect bliss isn't real. So he gets his own car started by popping the clutch and he's driving to Albuquerque. He's gonna drive across the ocean? Actually, Paraguay is in South America and it's one of only two landlocked countries on that continent,

which is appropriate since Minosos is totally isolated from others. But after this episode, he is finally seeking a real human connection. Now, on our free-to-join Discord server, one of our users, PNST, who, by the way, also predicted the Soylent Green Twist, they predicted that this is a precursor to an alien invasion. Now, in the chat, I kind of shot that down, but now I'm willing to say, I was wrong. I can see two possibilities here. One, that the Hive Mind was created on another world, and it just has a biological imperative

to spread with no regard for anything else. So, once that host world saturated their own planet, they broadcast the RNA sequence, to space to continue spreading. Like a virus, this has no regard for anything except its own replication. But the second possibility is that this is an invasion. Some other race on another world decided that instead of destroying a planet and ruining its resources when they invade, they could infect a population with this hive mind and then in just a few years, they would starve and whittle down their numbers. All the while, this hive mind would fix the planet's environment and restore its natural order, which brings me to that frequency, 86-13-kHz. Now, this is a high-band frequency,

usually reserved for maritime communication, like boats at sea. This is because it gives out a strong signal that can be heard over distances and its strongest at night, when Minusos heard the signal. So why would the joint be broadcasting on this powerful, long-range system? I think this is how their messages are actually spread to each other, or it's how they originally infected the people whose DNA they couldn't reach just yet. See, I think the RNA sequence they created turns the human brains into receptors for this signal so the joint can talk to each other.

is how people in the United States are able to communicate instantly with people in the Middle East. And maybe the electrical neural activity of the brain allows people to broadcast the hive mind to each other when they are in close proximity. Remember that at first they tried to create the hive mind simply by spreading their DNA to others. But once the government discovered what they were doing, they had to accelerate their plans. And right before the world changed, there were these planes flying overhead. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? All of them kind of parallel like that? Now, the fact that the planes were synchronized implies that the they were being flown by the joint. And maybe they were broadcasting the signal while they flew

to activate the hive mind. And remember, Helen was on her phone, which might have interfered with the signal and caused her deaths. Zosha tells us that there were around 800 million deaths worldwide, which sounds about like the number of people that would be using a cell phone at a given time, right? So maybe the process to reverse the hive mind would involve halting this signal. I mean, yeah, that's how noise cancelling headphones work. They have a microphone that detects the sign wave and then sends a counter sign wave into your ear to neutralize the How do you know that? Oh, we know everything, person.

So what did you guys think about this episode? How do you think they're going to be able to reverse the process and what's the deal with this long wave frequency? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below where you can at me on Twitter, Blue Sky Threads, or on our free-to-join Discord server, all the cool kids are doing it. And if it's your first time here, please subscribe,

smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie.