In the imaginative mind of Vince Gilligan, the end of the world does not arrive with flaming alien spacecraft or pulverized monuments, but with the unsettling cheer of a Walmart greeter. His new series, Pluribus, eschews the bombast of traditional science fiction tropes in favor of something far more disquieting: a world saved from war, famine, and conflict at the cost of individuality itself.

When an RNA sequence beamed from light-years away manifests as a mysterious alien virus — an event known as “the Joining” — nearly all of humanity is absorbed into a single, smiling collective consciousness. Borders dissolve. Nations vanish. Poverty, violence, and discord evaporate overnight. What remains is a pacified, contented hive mind, incapable of deception, cruelty, or dissent. There are no Americans or Russians or Chinese anymore — no hierarchies, no hegemonies. Individual minds are subsumed into a shared intelligence so total that a former homeless drug addict can pilot a commercial airliner or perform lifesaving heart surgery. Humanity survives (technically), but only as a lobotomized mass.

Among the 12 people worldwide immune to the virus is Carol (Rhea Seehorn), an accomplished fantasy novelist whose romantic partner, Helen, dies during the chaotic onset of the Joining. Carol is spared assimilation, but not grief. She becomes, by default, one of the last custodians of individual consciousness on Earth. The question Pluribus (at least in its first season) poses is not whether humanity can be saved, but whether it should be — and whether the burden of saving it is bearable.

There is an unmistakable Ayn Randian undercurrent to Gilligan’s premise. The........

© Washington Examiner