‘Pluribus’: Rhea Seehorn, Vince Gilligan & More Explain Season 1 Finale (VIDEO)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Pluribus Season 1 finale “La Chica o El Mundo.”]

“Totally normal to do in a breakup. It’s how we all feel sometimes after a breakup, but that’s OK,” Rhea Seehorn deadpanned to TV Insider about her character Carol getting her very own atomic bomb in the first season finale of Vince Gilligan‘s sci-fi drama Pluribus. Watch the video for the full interview with the cast and creators breaking down the finale above.

The bomb was deposited in her front yard at the end of an episode that included Carol finally meeting Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga), one of the few other humans not affected by a virus from outer space that turned the planet into a happy hive mind.

The first meeting did not go well. It got worse when Manousos tried to bring one of the “joined” back to individuality using a radio frequency technique he’d been studying. “This poor guy, poor Rick, gets to be the Guinea pig for the experiment of the frequency,” Vesga said. (Watch the video to hear the actor discuss shooting the scene.)

The failed test may lead to a better method, hinted director/writer/executive producer Gordon Smith. “I think we can say he did not get through to that guy. That didn’t happen, but he did learn something. So, the question is can he apply what he learned?”

Manousos’ experiment shook the hive mind, and Carol saw it as a threat to her new lover, blissed out Zosia (Karolina Wydra). The couple embarked on a globe-trotting romantic vacay beginning at a spa with Carol poolside reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.

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'Pluribus': Rhea Seehorn & Karolina Wydra Break Down Carol & Zosia's Big Moment (VIDEO)

“Ultimately, Gordon Smith and [writer/executive producer] Alison Tatlock chose the book, but I was asked to weigh in and if I had thoughts about what kind of books I think she’d read,” Seehorn told us. “I liked the idea of sci-fi, not just because it’s a meta thing — the audience is watching a sci-fi thing in a dystopian world that is clearly socio-commentary at the same time — but also because Carol is now in this world and Carol is the everyman that the audience is. I love Ursula K. Le Guin, and we all agreed that having her read a female author was very cool. We talked about Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451.”

The breakup happened when Zosia revealed that the hive mind had taken Carol’s stem cells from the eggs she froze years ago and were using them to create a “cure” for her immunity to the virus. Seehorn wasn’t sure how the process would work. “We see [in this episode] this ritual that has to be done [with Kusimayu, played by Darinka Arones]. I don’t know if it’s always the same. I don’t know if the stem cells are turned into a thing that you breathe in.”

Seehorn continued, “Would they trick her into doing it? I would categorize what they’ve done to get [Carol’s] stem cells as deceptive, but Vince has always written them as they won’t lie. They’re very lawyerly the way they get around. Even going back to the trip to Spain when they are asked, ‘Are you vegetarian?’ And they say, ‘We would prefer to be.’ You’re not admitting that you eat people! They’re in the writers’ room now. We should go and make them tell us. I suppose Kim Wexler, the brilliant lawyer, is also in there helping them somewhere.”

As for what’s going on in that writer’s room for the second season, Gilligan told us, “Dunno if we’ll ever going to meet these folks on Kepler [who beamed the virus to Earth] because the distances are so great — 600 light years. But maybe this is a message in a bottle thrown into the cosmic sea. I think it probably had its intended result. Part of it is we’re still figuring it out as we go, which is just the same way we did it with Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad.”

Watch the video above for more.

Pluribus, Season 1, Streaming Now, Apple TV