Pluribus Season Finale (spoilers)

Pluribus has often seemed to be in conversation with other postapocalyptic stories. Here, it’s injecting nuance and ambivalence into the overarching theme of The Last of Us’s first season, which ends with Pedro Pascal’s Joel massacring health researchers and foreclosing the possibility of a cure for the disease that decimated humanity, just to save the life of his surrogate daughter, Ellie (Bella Ramsey). While we may, yes, empathize with Joel’s choice, its wrongness is obvious. 

What’s thrilling about Pluribus is its moral uncertainty. Some things, like the future of humanity, are more important than one woman’s happiness, it suggests. But in a war between billions of pod people who’ve achieved world peace (never mind that they subsist on human remains) and two fallible, self-righteous curmudgeons with an A-bomb, who are you rooting for? 

 This recap by Time Magazine suggests that Carol decides to join Manousos becasue she wants to prioritize humanity over her personal happiness, but that is not what happened - she realized that Zosia did not love her (because there is no such indvidual person Zosia). 

Also, why the bomb - Manousos is trying to reverse the Joining process (which we know is possible) and SAVE humanity, not just destroy the aliens. 

But I did love Time's observation that Joel saves Ellie and sacrifices humanity because THAT'S WHAT WE DO.

I hope Pluribus Season 2 is great.