Pluribus has sparked probably as much conversation as the original season of Severance at this point, hence a hasty season 2 renewal. Everyone is trying to figure out where things are going, but now fans seem to have caught a detail that is going to make the rest of the season a lot more harrowing for Carol, at least until she figures out what we all seem to have discovered. Spoilers follow.
Two major things were revealed in this past week’s episode of Pluribus. First, Carol discovered that the Hivemind is grinding up bodies and drinking them in milk. Gross, but then John Cena appears to explain that actually, it’s okay, given that the bodies are already dead and they’re not killing anyone. Given that they can’t even harvest plants due to their “no kill” programming, they need to do this, or they’ll starve to death. But even doing it, they’ll starve in a decade anyway.
Second, Carol learns that the Hivemind has, in fact, figured out a way to get the remaining survivors integrated into the network, and that’s using their stem cells. The problem, however, is that stem cells are invasive to harvest, so they need express permission from the survivor in question. They don’t give it, they won’t do it.
Once Carol learns this, she immediately calls the Hivemind to leave a voicemail to say she does not give them permission to take her stem cells. They respond with a message on a billboard that says, “We hear you Carol, you do not consent. No stem cells will be collected from your body.” That satisfies Carol, it seems, but…uh oh.
“From your body.”
Fans have now remembered a line from episode 3 of Pluribus when she’s staying at the ice hotel, and says she could have saved a hundred grand freezing her eggs by just staying there instead.
Well, guess what’s in frozen eggs? Stem cells. And the Hivemind is known to find loopholes to get what they want. Those stem cells are not in Carol’s body and therefore, they wouldn’t be harming “her” or breaking their word. This all calls back to something Zosia said about how you’d automatically rescue someone you saw drowning, which is how they view the disconnected survivors.
We have three episodes left in this first season of Pluribus, and I have to imagine a lightbulb will go on in Carol’s head pretty soon, realizing this, and causing her to race to try to get her eggs wherever they were stored in Albuquerque (though the power was off for a while, no?). Whether they’re there or not remains to be seen. I don’t think this is just a theory, I 100% believe this is where things are going, but we’ll find out shortly. Maybe as soon as this Friday.
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