It usually gets like this when I skip a few episodes of a series, I left it of latter and todays is latter, its a Sunday and I wake up early, did a few things before sitting down and starting to watch some content, decided fo finish Pluribus before I move on into continue with Wonder Man. The season finale wrapped up pretty good I would say and the whole situation where Carol has to decide between saving Zosia or the world hits different after everything that went down, because we spent all season watching her get manipulated by the Hive and finally she is waking up to the fact that they played her from the start. The big egg reveal was something everyone saw coming from miles away, the second they mentioned freezing eggs earlier I suspect that was going to be the loophole the Hive uses to get her stem cells without technically breaking the consent rule, but even though it was predictable it still landed well because you see the fear and betrayal kick in on Carols face when she realizes what is about to happen to her, she thought she had control over this whole thing and turns out she never did. Zosia being part of that betrayal too is what really hurts because Carol spent so much time convincing herself that the individual version of Zosia was real and not just the Hive pretending to care about her individually, honestly it was stupid, but that scene where Zosia tells her they love everyone equally really shows how fake that connection was all along and that the Hive does not do special bonds or real human love, they just do this weird distributed affection thing that sounds nice but feels hollow when you really think about it. The fact that Carol goes from being all colorful and happy to back in black with an atom bomb shows how fast reality hit and Manousos asking her do you want to save the world or the girl is the perfect question to basically point out what this whole season was about, Carol was broken after Helen death and the Hive knew it they just had to wait and wait until she needed someone, that someone was Zosia. I get why people are excited about Carol and Manousos finally teaming up to take down the Hive and that final shot of them with the bomb is cool I guess, but bringing in an atom bomb this late feels like the series is going over the top to make things more intense instead of just letting the thing breathe on its own, it feels a bit rushed considering how much time they spent on other stuff during the season. Still seeing Carol go full badass mode again after spending most of the season doubting herself is satisfying and that moment where she shoots the shotgun through the wall to stop Manousos from experimenting on Rick was pretty damn tense and shows she still has limits even when she is mad at the Hive, she is not going to let him kill people just to prove a point.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22202452/
- Platform: AppleTV+
The clock is still thicking and episode 9 is seventy one days before the finale with this younger immune Peruvian girl named Kusimayu getting turned into the Hive, she was in episode two and I totally forgot about her until she showed up again, they bring her this formula that will let get turn into the Hive, she just drinks it and boom she is one of them now. She was curious about what it felt like so I guess she wanted to join since she constantly said wants to be with her family, which makes sense but also feels sad because you know once you are in you are never coming back out of that thing, your individuality is just gone forever and replaced with this collective consciousness that pretends to care about you but most likely will starve to death. They show this whole elaborate ceremony with the entire village gathered to chant and support her as she becomes part of the Hive, but the second the conversion is complete they all fall silent and swiftly move to abandon the place which is creepy and shows how the Hive only cares about spreading not about actually staying with people once they convert them, because once she convert then everyone who was pretending to be there for her became just another number, its almost like your hari. Now into much more bigger stuff, Manousos finally arrives in Albuquerque to meet Carol and right away you can tell these two do not trust each other at all which makes sense because Manousos thinks the Hive is evil and Carol is basically in love with one of them. He refuses to get in Carol's place and preffer the ambulance because he thinks the Hive is watching with satellites, then he compromise so he asks for an umbrella to hide from the drones which seems paranoid but also he is probably right, those weirdos do have eyes everywhere watching everything. The whole language barrier thing between them is handled really well, Manousos speaks some English but not a lot so half their conversation is in Spanish and the other half is broken English, it feels realistic instead of just having everyone speak perfect English like most shows do when they have international characters, I appreciate that they did not take the easy way out on this. Carol takes him inside her house and Manousos starts checking for bugs, and sure enough he finds a movement sensor in her liquor cabinet that Helen planted years ago to make sure she was not drinking, the Hive admits this and says they been monitoring it but they frame it like they were just helping Helen keep track of her sobriety which is such bullshit manipulation. Manousos calls the Hive on the phone and starts asking them questions, and because its their nature they have to answer him with complete truth even though they know he is using that information against them, that whole we cannot lie thing really backfires on them here and its satisfying to watch.
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The next day things get crazy when Manousos does his frequency experiment and causes a bunch of Hive members to go into seizures all at once after he kept screaming at one of them, its the same thing he tried earlier in the season but this time its way more people and you can tell Carol is pissed because she knows a lot of them probably just died from that. Zosia sits down right before it happens because the Hive warned her it was coming, which shows they learned from the first time Manousos tried this but even with the warning it still looked bad, I would just imagine people dropping all over the place. Manousos is trying to bring a guy name Rick back by talking to him while he is seizing, saying listen Rick I am here you can come back and for a second it feels like it might actually work because Rick seems like he is responding to his voice but this could be just me hoping it really happen for a big twist in all this, but then Carol grabs the shotgun and shoots it through the wall to make Manousos back away before he can finish his experiment. That moment is so intense because you are not sure if Carol did the right thing, like maybe Manousos was actually about to save Rick and bring him back to being human again or maybe he was just causing more damage and Carol stopped him from killing someone, at the same time I kind of love that they did not spell it out. Laxmi calls Carlo pissed off assuming it was her and then Zosia and all the others leave Albuquerque again because of what Manousos did, you can see Carol is torn because part of her wants to stay with Zosia but another part of her knows Manousos is right about needing to fix this whole mess, its a great internal conflict that they built up over the entire season and it finally comes to a head here.
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Then we get all these scenes of Carol traveling the world with Zosia, they go skiing and to the beach and it looks like Carol is the happiest she has been during the entire series or probably years of her life, all those happy chemicals flowing through her bloodstream making everything feel perfect, but you can tell something is off because Carol keeps asking questions about Zosia past, like did you have someone before you joined the Hive and Zosia says yes but they are dead now which makes Carol realize that even this relationship she thinks is so special is just the Hive pretending to be whoever Carol needs them to be, its not real love its just a simulation of it. The whole conversation where Zosia admits they have Carols frozen eggs and can turn those into stem cells without her consent is the final nail, you see the exact moment Carols face changes when she understands she has been played this entire time, Rhae Seehorn does such a great job during this scene with her expressions. Zosia tries to justify it by saying they love Carol and have to do this, but Carol throws it back at her saying if you loved me you would not do this, and Zosia just responds with we have to do this because we love you which is the most fucked up logic ever, its like an abusive relationship where someone says I hurt you because I care about you. That young Peruvian girl Kusimayu from the opening gets brought up again and Zosia says she just joined us and I promise you she is happier than she has ever been, which is such manipulative garbage because yeah she might feel happy but she also lost her entire identity and in fact who knows if she even exist anymore and this is just a virus that turn a human into a tool and ctrl+shift+del free will in the process, the Hive always frames everything like its a good thing when really its just them taking over more people.
Got to admin Episode 9 was a banger and it ends with Carol meeting up with Manousos again, he is still in Albuquerque working on his plan and he tells her there is a way to put things back in their place, meaning he thinks he figured out how to reverse what the Hive did to everyone. Carol is finally on bad ass mode because she knows now that Zosia and the Hive were never going to let her go, they were always planning to take her stem cells one way or another and turn her eventually, so her only option is to help Manousos destroy them before that happens. That final shot of Carol in all black with Manousos standing next to a giant wooden crate is pretty badass, she says its a bomb, it shows she made her choice and she is ready to burn it all down even if it means losing Zosia in the process. The whole do you want to save the world or the girl question gets answered and Carol chose the world, which is the right call but also you can tell it hurt her to make that decision, she really did fall for Zosia even if it was all fake manipulation from the Hive. Its just obvious that season two is going to be Carol and Manousos working together to take down the Hive using that bomb or whatever frequency thing Manousos figured out and hopefully we get answers about what actually happens when you reverse the Hive because I am curious if people like Zosia just die or if they go back to their original selves, oh and lets not forget about silly ass Diabate because the Hive already have all his steem cells from all that fucking. The show better not make us wait two years for another season because now I need to know how this ends, I might not re watch Season 1 because its a drama, nothing exciting of action itself. Overall this finale did what it needed to do, it set up the next season while wrapping up Carols emotional stuff with Zosia and even though the bomb thing feels a bit much I am still all in where this goes next, I would give it a solid 7.5 out of 10 because it had some great moments but also felt a little rushed at the end with how fast Carol switched sides, still worth watching though if you been following the show this far.
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