| "Pirate Lady" | |
|---|---|
| Pluribus episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 2 |
| Directed by | Vince Gilligan |
| Written by | Vince Gilligan |
| Featured music | Dave Porter |
| Cinematography by | Marshall Adams |
| Editing by | Skip Macdonald |
| Original release date | November 7, 2025 |
| Running time | 63 minutes |
| Guest appearances | |
| |
"Pirate Lady" is the second episode of the American post-apocalyptic science fiction television series Pluribus . The episode was written and directed by series creator Vince Gilligan. It was released on Apple TV on November 7, 2025, as part of a two-episode series premiere.
The series follows Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), a cynical novelist who soon finds that she is one of the few survivors of an alien virus outbreak that turns most of humanity into a permanently optimistic hive mind. "Pirate Lady" picks up the morning after the outbreak, and depicts Carol coming to terms with the new status quo. The episode introduces Karolina Wydra as Zosia, a member of the hive mind sent to be Carol's guide.
The episode received highly positive reviews, with critics praising its performances, philosophical themes, and humorous tonal shift, as well as the way it establishes the series' new status quo.
In Tangier, [1] also ravaged by the virus outbreak, a disheveled young woman, Zosia, helps dispose of bodies before using a plane to fly to Albuquerque.
Carol wakes the morning after the outbreak and begins digging a grave for Helen in her backyard, but it proves difficult. Zosia arrives and introduces herself as a representative of the hive mind. She explains that the collective knows Carol’s location through drone surveillance and offers her water, which Carol throws away. Carol realizes that Zosia closely resembles Raban—the love interest from her Wycaro novels—originally conceived as female before Carol changed the character to male, a decision only Helen knew. Zosia says the collective knows this because Helen joined them before dying. Outraged, Carol berates them for speaking for Helen after killing her; Zosia suddenly begins convulsing.
Carol drives off to find help but stops at a construction site where everyone is similarly unresponsive, only to reawaken soon after. Carol returns home, finding Zosia gone, and calls the number she saw on television [a] to permit the collective to send her back before resuming her digging. Zosia returns, explaining that Carol’s anger disrupted the hive mind and killed many, horrifying Carol. Seeing Carol's exhaustion, Zosia has an excavator flown in to complete the grave. As night falls, Carol recalls being told that twelve people remain uninfected and demands to speak with the five English-speaking survivors.
Zosia organizes a meeting between the English-speaking survivors at Bilbao Airport. Carol meets four of them, each of different nationality and accompanied by infected relatives, while the fifth, a Mauritanian man named Koumba Diabaté, arrives on Air Force One, having taken advantage of the collapse to lead a hedonistic lifestyle complete with a harem of models. The group meets aboard the plane, where Carol finds the others content with the new world order. Koumba argues that conflict has vanished and survivors can have anything they want, but Carol insists the hive mind is innately unethical due to the lack of consent and the erasure of human individuality.
At an outdoor lunch ordered by Koumba, Zosia insists to Carol that the hive is nonviolent and that assimilating others is a mere biological imperative; she claims that the hive spent months assimilating thousands of individuals per day before being forced to accelerate the process after a clash with the military. When Carol demands to know how many died during the "joining", Zosia admits the number to be over 886 million. Carol is horrified to learn the disruption she inadvertently caused earlier killed another 11 million. Carol storms off, only to trip and fall; when Zosia and the others offer help, she screams at them and triggers another global seizure, leading the other survivors to abandon her.
By next morning, the other survivors, with the exception of Koumba, leave. He plans to fly to Las Vegas with Zosia as his sexual companion but asks for Carol’s permission, since the hive cannot decide for her. Repulsed, Carol gives up and leaves. Watching Koumba’s group board Air Force One, she exchanges a glance with Zosia, then suddenly changes her mind and runs to stop them from taking off.
Vince Gilligan conceived the series's premise after becoming "weary of writing bad guys" [2] after a decade of working on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul . [3] After Better Call Saul ended in August 2022, he pitched a new series that he would develop with Sony Pictures Television. [4] A bidding took place, and Apple TV won the rights to the show in September 2022, giving it a two-season order. Gilligan was formally named to serve as showrunner and executive producer. Rhea Seehorn, who had starred as Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul, was cast as Carol Sturka, a discontented but successful romance novel author. Gilligan wrote the character specifically for Seehorn and crafted the character to be a "flawed good guy" who tries to save the world. [5]
"Pirate Lady" received highly positive reviews, with critics praising the episode's performances, philosophical themes, and humor. Scott Tobias of Vulture gave the episode 5 out of 5 stars, calling the episode "thrillingly expansive" and praising its tonal shift from horror to "comedy and philosophy", taking interest in the episode's depiction of the unexpected nuances of the alien takeover. He compared Gilligan's direction—particularly in the episode's "classic WTF cold open"—to his work on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul . [6] Noel Murray of The A.V. Club , jointly reviewing the first two episodes, gave the premiere an A-, also comparing the "wonderfully odd" cold open to the Breaking Bad franchise, and describing the episode's middle section—depicting the meeting between Carol and the other survivors of the outbreak—as "easily the most complex and ambitious stretch of these two episodes." He felt the episode suggested the series' overall thesis to be that "humanity, as messy as it can be, is still preferable to the loss of individual will". [7] Scott Collura of IGN , also reviewing the first two episodes together, gave the premiere an 8 out of 10, felt the second episode saw Gilligan "fully embracing both the (literally) out-of-this-world concept while also having fun with it all." He praised Wydra for accomplishing the "very difficult task" of portraying Zosia as a "cypher" that nevertheless elicits sympathy from the audience. [8]