Vince Gilligan and his team have been keeping details extremely tight about the second season of their Apple TV series Pluribus, even as they ended the first on a set of pretty massive reveals. (Including Rhea Seehorn’s Carol making just about the most dramatic DoorDash request imaginable of Earth’s ever-pliant alien hosts.) Now, though, at least one detail has slipped through Gilligan’s web of containment, as Variety reports that former recurring cast member Samba Schutte has been upgraded to a series regular for season 2.
Schutte appeared in the show’s first season as Koumba Diabaté, one of 13 human beings immune to the Joining, the mass-infection event that kicks off the events of Pluribus. The character was an immediate fan-favorite, contrasting with both the deliberately miserable Carol, and the endlessly agreeable Others, even as he took advantage of his sudden position to indulge his most hedonistic whims and score a little bonus face time with John Cena. Given that Diabaté represents the pretty extreme edge of those willing to collaborate with the show’s cheerful hive mind for his own benefit—and the way Carol began leaning at the end of the show’s December 2025 finale—the fact that Schutte’s smooth-talking performance is being moved up to regular status suggests some pretty exciting things about where the show intends to go.
Of course, we’re all still in wait-and-see mode for when those new episodes will actually arrive; although Gilligan (who won, alongside Seehorn, an Emmy for his work on the show’s first season) has said he and his team are working as quickly as they can on the show’s second season, that apparently hasn’t been as fast as he would have liked, and there’s been no firm date set yet for its return. (Filming reportedly started just a few weeks back, and is expected to continue into pretty late in 2027.)
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