The exception is Seehorn’s character, Carol Sturka, a romance novelist who Gilligan described, in a conversation with TV Insider, as “the most miserable person in the world who decides she needs to save Earth from happiness.” Gilligan notes that his story, which he’s been kicking around for years, takes influence from Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and The Twilight Zone—including taking Carol’s last name from apocalyptic 1960 classic “Third From The Sun.” Gilligan paints the character (who he originally conceived as male, before hitting on the idea of using the series as an opportunity to reunite with Seehorn) as a reluctant hero, saying, “Carol does not want to be tasked with saving the world, but no one else is rising to the occasion. She goes on a quest to the other side of the world trying to save it from a crisis that in her mind is apocalyptic.”
A lot of these latest comments line up with stuff Gilligan said to Entertainment Weekly two weeks ago, when he first rolled out the show’s basic premise. That has included repeated requests for people not to freak out about the fact that the series is once again set in Albuquerque, even if he can’t help but leave an Easter egg or two to his previous work in. “I’m sure maybe a lot of folks are going to say, ‘There’s got to be some deeper secret point to that. She’s really Kim Wexler,’ or whatnot. She’s not. I love Albuquerque. I love my crew, I love the people. I love the landscape. It looks fantastic on film. There might be some Easter eggs along the way, [but] I can’t imagine Carol running into Kim Wexler. That would be pretty weird.”
Which feels like it would be fairly obvious—it’s hard to imagine Gilligan taking the mostly-grounded criminal universe he and his collaborators spent 14 years crafting and suddenly throwing it into a sci-fi apocalypse—but this is the kind of thing some people need to be told, apparently.
Pluribus premieres on November 7 on Apple TV+.
