Did Aliens Engineer a Happiness Virus to Pacify Every Intelligent Mind? The Pluribus Theory

Apple TV+ has a new obsession piece on its hands. Vince Gilligan's Pluribus is two episodes in and already melting brains and (apparently) breaking records. It also has that shiny 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.9/10 on IMDb, which is not nothing. And if the early hours are any hint, the show might be quietly playing with two of sci-fi's spiciest ideas: the Fermi paradox and the Dark Forest theory.

So what happens in the show (so far)?

Two astronomers pick up a strange radio transmission coming from roughly 600 light-years away. The signal isn't just noise; it's structured as four distinct tones. That turns out to be a very specific clue: those four tones line up with the four RNA bases you learn about in high school bio, just with a vibe only a TV lab montage could love. Uracil, cytosine, adenine, guanine. U, C, A, G.

Our scientists do what curious TV scientists always do: they translate the tones into an RNA sequence, synthesize it in the lab, and test it on animals. Then a lab rat bites a person. That person becomes patient zero for a highly contagious 'happiness' condition that spreads like a virus. It's eerie because the infected aren't shambling corpses. They're lucid, cheerful, and very hard to stop.

The big swing: is Pluribus riffing on the Fermi paradox and the Dark Forest?

Short version: possibly. The Fermi paradox asks a simple, uncomfortable question: if the universe is so old and so big, where is everybody? One proposed answer is the Dark Forest theory, which imagines the cosmos as a place where any civilization that shouts risks getting hunted. So the smart ones hide. Or, when they detect a noisy newcomer, they preemptively neutralize it before it grows into a problem.

Viewed through that lens, Pluribus starts to look like this: we beam signals into space, someone 600 light-years away hears us, and back comes a coded biological payload that turns humanity into something harmless via weaponized joy. Not zombies. Not mindless. Just... disarmed. That would fit the Dark Forest logic: protect yourself by making the other guy stop being a threat, without firing a single laser. There's even a darker wrinkle baked into the fan theories: maybe the senders are trying to save us from something worse lurking out there, and the 'happiness virus' is a kind of safety lock before a bigger storm hits.

Zombie show or not?

Gilligan is very aware that, on paper, this looks like a zombie setup. He addressed it head-on in a new interview with Men's Health in November 2025:

"Pluribus is my twist on a post-apocalyptic zombie tale. The big difference is these people are not zombies. They're really, really happy people who still have all their faculties. They're not robots, and they're not aliens."

"When you watch The Walking Dead, as riveting as that show is, I don't know if there's anybody ever in the history of [watching] that show, who said, 'Man, I wish I could be a zombie.' You don't want to be a zombie. You want to be Daryl Dixon. I want people who watch Pluribus to be able to say, 'I kind of would want to be another [happy person]."

Key point there: he isn't saying aliens aren't in the story at all; he's saying the infected aren't alien pod people. They are themselves, just turned up to 11 on bliss, which is creepier than it sounds.

Where this could be headed

With only two episodes out, we're in theory-land. But the breadcrumbs are deliberate: a signal that maps to RNA, a lab-built sequence, a bite, a wave of infectious euphoria. Whether this becomes a straight parable about human nature or a cosmic chess match where humanity gets quietly declawed, the setup is deliciously unnerving.

• Premiere: November 7, 2025 on Apple TV+
• Creator: Vince Gilligan (yes, the Breaking Bad guy)
• Core cast: Rhea Seehorn, Karolina Wydra, Carlos Manuel Vesga
• Early reception: 100% on Rotten Tomatoes; 8.9/10 on IMDb
• Status: 2 episodes available; already generating big numbers and bigger theories

The bottom line

Pluribus kicks off like a mystery about first contact, then morphs into a thought experiment about what counts as a threat in a crowded universe. If the Dark Forest read is right, someone out there might be trying to keep us from becoming a problem. If it's wrong, the show is still a razor-wired spin on the 'outbreak' story that makes happiness feel like the scariest contagion of all.

Got a different read on the signal or the 'happy' pandemic? Drop your theory. I'm all ears.