This article contains spoilers for episode 2 of “Pluribus.”
I’m as guilty of this as anybody else: I sometimes realize that I’m watching a big screen while holding a smaller screen and feel like I’m going insane. I’ve been making an effort recently to put my phone away while I watch stuff (and frankly, that’s why I’ll never give up on going to movie theaters even as streamers keep undercutting their own success by releasing movies for a few weeks before punting them to Netflix). With that said, there’s some kerfuffle on the Internet about the second episode of “Pluribus” and its unsettling cold open, and the confusion might be due to multitasking.
In the near-silent opening of “Pirate Lady,” the second episode of Vince Gilligan’s new sci-fi drama on Apple TV starring his “Better Call Saul” star Rhea Seehorn, we see a woman covered in dirt and grime navigate her way through an empty city that appears to be in the Middle East somewhere. As she boards a moped and drives by survivors of the virus loading dead bodies into trucks and makeshift morgues, she commandeers an abandoned cargo plane (who does she think she is, Nathan Fielder?!) and flies it to Albuquerque, where Seehorn’s Carol Sturka is one of the few people unaffected by the sudden virus.
Apparently, over on social media, some users had no idea that the woman in the cold open is Zosia, a representative of the world’s newly formed hive mind played by Karolina Wydra, who appears throughout the rest of “Pirate Lady” (and, incidentally, gives the episode its name). “Just saw some people in a ‘Pluribus’ group say they just realized this was Zosia … like people really don’t pay attention when they watch TV, huh,” @shortnsevered wrote on the social media platform X.
Some people on social media said that even though they gave Pluribus their full attention, they still missed this big detail
In the replies to this post, some “Pluribus” fans who gave the show their full attention still said they didn’t realize that the disheveled woman at the beginning of “Pirate Lady” is the same clean-cut and impeccably presented Zosia we see for the rest of the episode. “Well, I don’t blame them,” @luffyfootball wrote before saying they thought she was, like Carol, a person unaffected by the mysterious and likely alien-borne virus. “Many people initially thought she might be one of the 13 who weren’t affected. That being said, I just found out from this tweet. User @OurTwoone42058 made a good point, pointing to the sort of “makeover” sequence that Zosia undergoes before she meets Carol and the other unaffected denizens of Earth: “That was kind of the point of it. The whole transformation. Dead bodies. Body language. Actual language. She wasn’t American. They made her into someone Carol wanted. They weren’t supposed to be seen as the same person.”
User @Gtwy was pretty blunt: “So they basically were looking at their phone for the entire scene that she travels. I hate that this is how people watch TV now.” To be fair, a few people admitted that they felt dense for not catching this, and Zosia’s transformation is dramatic, but I think there’s a larger issue at play here. Like I said, we’re all guilty of realizing that we’ve just spent half an episode of TV doomscrolling on our phones. There’s literally so much going on constantly that it feels impossible to fully unplug, even for a show that only runs for one hour. Plus, some streamers have started to capitalize on this exact phenomenon.
Some streamers are creating content that encourages multitasking, but creators like Vince Gilligan still demand our attention
When Apple TV released its feature film “Fountain of Youth” this past May, I wrote here at /Film about how the streamer made its first “Netflix movie,” which is not a compliment. In brief, that term doesn’t literally refer to a proprietary Netflix movie, but a larger movement amongst film executives to make it easier for people to scroll on their phones while watching stuff; reports have surfaced that those execs want screenwriters to spell out every single thing characters do and repeat information frequently so that you can basically half-watch their product. I don’t need to explain why this approach is, put simply, bad for the medium. There is no artistic merit to a project that’s meant to be watched while you’re also scrolling through TikTok.
Elsewhere on Apple TV, though, its projects do demand your attention. “Pluribus” is a new example of this, because Vince Gilligan’s show, which has only aired two episodes as of this writing, is clearly setting up a thrilling and exciting mystery-box story. The same is definitely true, though, of “Severance,” Dan Erickson’s supremely messed-up workplace drama that absolutely requires you to watch every second. While the second season of “Severance” was airing in early 2025, I went to great lengths to put away my smart watch, put my whole face-side down, and fully experience each episode of “Severance,” and I’m doing my absolute damndest to do the same with “Pluribus,” the long-awaited next project from Gilligan. Still, even if you lock your phone in a safe and miss a detail like the Zosia thing, don’t beat yourself up.
“Pluribus” airs new episodes on Apple TV every Friday.
