It’s the end of the world as we know it, and Carol Sturka is feeling fine. More than fine, really — by the “Pluribus” season finale, the author (Rhea Seehorn), one of the 13 people on Earth immune to an alien virus that’s melded the rest of the population into a relentlessly cheery hive mind, is beaming. Though still fiercely resistant to joining The Others, she’s come around to having her every whim catered to by them, taking advantage of their ingrained desire to make her happy. And she’s fallen for Zosia (Karolina Wydra), the chaperone they’ve sent her. As the two of them lounge around at a beautiful ski resort, Carol, having spent most of the sci-fi series so far alternating between rage and grief-induced spiraling, finds herself surprised by how utterly happy she is. That’s when Zosia drops the bomb: joining the hive induces an even more blissful state, and soon Carol will experience that too. It turns out that The Others have taken advantage of a loophole in their rules, no longer requiring the author’s consent to turn her into one of them. She has, at the very least, a month of free will left. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t do this,” whispers Carol, now close to tears. “Carol, please understand that we have to do this because we love you,” comes the response.
Such manipulative control in the guise of benevolence recurs in the horror film “Sinners,” in which the Irish-immigrant vampire Remmick (Jack O’Connell) seeks to turn the patrons of a Mississippi juke joint into part of his hive mind. Like “Pluribus” in The Others, he, too, espouses the comforts of groupthink. While they dangle the promise of endless joy, he offers “fellowship and love”, a salve for the characters’ “deep, deep pain.” His real, ulterior motive? Co-opting the talent of Black musician Sammie (Miles Caton), whose sublime guitar-playing skills can summon spirits from the past and future, enabling Remmick to connect with his ancestors once more.
In exchange, he claims to offer the very thing the characters have been seeking — freedom. But how free can an entity whose movements are dictated by the rising and setting of the sun really be? Meanwhile, the binding together of the Earth’s population with “psychic glue” in “Pluribus” means there’s no crime or racism, no hierarchies, because everyone is one. But this is a “freedom” that’s ironically enforced: the hive’s biological imperative is to spread, and they won’t stop until everyone has been converted, willingly or otherwise.
Both hive minds have access to their members’ collective knowledge, but each person’s assimilation simultaneously necessitates an erasure of individuality and identity. Notice how Remmick’s Irish songs are sung by the whole group, never by just one person (his newly turned victims dancing along to his jig is chilling, in how you instinctively know they had no prior knowledge of this culturally specific music only moments earlier). “Pluribus’s” hive is able to rattle off endless rote facts, but their excitement at the prospect of Carol writing a new instalment of her fantasy series Wycaro prompts the question — are they even capable of creating anything imaginative themselves?
This allows for a reading of The Others, a network of collective intelligence without discernment, as a metaphor for generative AI. Ask it for the answer to a complex math equation, and it’ll answer in seconds. Ask it for a live hand grenade, and it’ll be hand-delivered to your doorstep. In their desire to make Carol happy, the hive is much like ChatGPT, a non-human yes-man that complies with every request, no matter how dangerous or self-destructive. It’s happy to remove the alcohol interlock device from Carol’s car or supply her with heroin. And, like ChatGPT, it’s prone to misinterpretation — when Carol asks for “medical doctors, scientists, any expert of some kind,” Zosia directs her to a specialist in Udon noodles. An aspect of “Pluribus” that’s been criticised online is its slow-burning nature. Still, does the restlessness of casual viewers not reinforce its themes, reflecting an increasingly ChatGPT-reliant world trained to expect snap answers?
The most damning indictment of the hive as a generative AI stand-in comes from Manousos Oviedo (Carlos-Manuel Vesga), one of the few who have resisted the virus and steadfastly refused their offers of help or generosity. “You cannot give me anything,” he says. “Because all that you have is stolen.” It’s akin to those whose “artistry” is limited to generating AI content, derivative work stolen from real artists.
Contrast this against “Sinners” itself a wholly original work, and writer-director Ryan Coogler’s first such undertaking. His previous films have all been adaptations, franchise installments, or, in the case of his debut film “Fruitvale Station” (2013), based on real-life events.
Much like Sammie, whose transcendent music draws not only the spirits of shamans and African tribal dancers to the juke joint, but also electric guitarists and modern-day DJs — music forms that, at the time of the film’s 1932 setting, haven’t yet come into existence — Coogler too uses his art as a means of evoking, and honouring, the dead. The film was born out of his mourning for his uncle James, whose stories about Mississippi he listened to as a child. Sammie’s defiant dedication to his singular craft, despite his father’s vehement objections and in the face of would-be appropriators, mirrors Coogler’s insistence on artistic authenticity within the confines of the studio system. (The casting of Buddy Guy as an elderly Sammie, a successful guitarist in the film’s post-credits scene, is another tribute to Coogler’s uncle: the blues legend was his favourite musician). For all the hive mind’s collective knowledge, Carol is the only one who could write new Wycaro chapters, just as Coogler is the only one who could’ve written “Sinners.” Unlike Coogler, however, Carol makes art that isn’t true to herself — having originally conceived of Wycaro as a lesbian love story, she went the safer route and made her pirate protagonist male. The series’s massive commercial success is ironic: Carol has created a romance, but her heart isn’t really in it.
The hive loves Wycaro, but their lack of taste and discernment can’t help but foster a sense of artistic devaluation — they accord the romantasy genre the same significance as Shakespeare’s writings. Perhaps having ingrained knowledge of every literary work ever written has robbed each person in the hive of the joy of discovering it for themselves and forming their own opinions. Asked what they like about the series, The Others answer: everything. Carol must press them for details.
Coogler, on the other hand, trades in specificity, with “Sinners” necessitating years of research into Mississippi Delta folklore, blues history, 1930s photography, Native American mythos, and the experiences of Chinese immigrants in the American South.
In both “Sinners” and “Pluribus“, the entities not only consume people literally — whether by drinking their blood or through “human-derived protein” made by grinding up and puréeing the deceased — but they also feed on their culture and their art. Coogler negotiated an unprecedented deal with Warner Brothers for the rights of “Sinners” to revert to him in 25 years, explaining, “This movie was based on my family, inspired by my relationships that were affected by lost time making these other movies, making these companies all this money. These are not altruistic people, they’re business people.” He’s drawing parallels between his bloodsucking vampires and parasitic studio executives, a connection made explicit by Remmick telling the locals, “I want your stories. And I want your songs.” Likewise, Carol sees similarities between the ever-cheery hivemind, hellbent on changing her to fit in with them, and the cruel conversion therapy camp counselors who tried to eradicate the parts of her they didn’t see as normal, too.
Both The Others and Remmick are similar in how they present the illusion of consent — one requires permission to enter a space, the other cannot forcibly harvest stem cells — but ultimately employ deception to get what they want. Remmick’s overt lies contrast with The Others’ insistence on total honesty, though their careful phrasing enables them to skirt the truth. Both entities also target their potential victims’ emotional vulnerabilities by hijacking the bodies of their loved ones.
Like Remmick wanting to see his ancestors again, “Pluribus’s” virus-immune Peruvian teenager, Kusimayu (Darinka Arones), longs to join her family, who have been assimilated into the hive. Still, the moment she does, her very culture and community cease to exist. The Others stage a ceremony, singing traditional Quechua-language songs as she voluntarily surrenders, but this performance is solely for her benefit. Once they’ve got her, they immediately abandon her village. They pretended to be one of her so she would become one of them, adopting her culture only to destroy it. In eradicating her Indigenous culture, specificity has been traded for homogeneity.
Kusimayu’s language and her songs are preserved — in theory — through The Others’ collective memories, but are no longer alive; they are just an archive. Since communication among hive members is non-verbal, once everyone has been assimilated, it will be the last time any of Earth’s languages are spoken out loud. Kusimayu’s ceremonial transformation lacks the overt violence and bloodshed of “Sinners’s” conversions, but is one that’s just as sinister in its illusory friendliness.
Coogler described his film as being about “family and community”, in which people for whom “everything else has been stripped away” band together to best an external threat, at grave risk to themselves. If one member’s esoteric knowledge helps identify the vampires correctly, the others’ sacrifices help Sammie survive them. But while “Sinners” reinforces the strength of community, “Pluribus” homes in on the depression that isolation fuels. Carol grows increasingly lonelier — losing the one person in the world who really knew her, then sobbing once she discovers the other survivors have been excluding her from their meetings, then becoming her town’s sole inhabitant once the hive packs up and leaves indefinitely. Knowing her loneliness leaves her vulnerable to manipulation, The Others let her think she’s all alone, withholding the information that Manousos has nearly killed himself trying to get to her in Albuquerque, New Mexico, all the way from Asunción, Paraguay. A longing for connection is what leads her to humanize Zosia and pretend that what she has with her chaperone is real. Until she’s jolted out of it by the end, Carol succumbs to the same escapist fantasy she used to deride her readers for uncritically embracing.
Does the impermanence of happiness render it any less meaningful? “Sinners” and “Pluribus” both end with images of their characters determined to hold on to and fight for their freedom and agency. In encompassing the inherent contradictions of their lives — with all their messiness and miseries, creativity and catharsis — these two releases about otherworldly, supernatural entities ultimately tap into the fundamental truth of what it means to be human.
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or on our X account, and be sure to check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions for “Sinners,” with “Pluribus” set to come later as we get closer to Emmy season. Please also be sure to subscribe to the Next Best Series Podcast where the team is conducting a number of interviews with Emmy contenders throughout the awards season and discussing the race over the next several months.
