Vince Gilligan Won’t Explain Everything In Pluribus — And That’s The Point

Vince Gilligan is back on TV with Pluribus, a show that is blowing past records and picking up fans at a wild pace. And while the hype machine is running hot, Gilligan is very intentionally not doing the one thing most sci-fi shows do: handing out answers.

The plan: keep the mystery, on purpose

In a recent interview, Gilligan said he knows where the story is headed, but he has zero interest in mapping everything out for viewers or locking the show into one tidy explanation. He sees that as flattening what Pluribus is actually poking at: tech, power, and how Silicon Valley has, in his view, messed up the world. This is a big, confident, very behind-the-scenes strategy: build a framework, keep it flexible, and resist the urge to pin the butterfly to the board.

• Gilligan and writer Gordon Smith don’t want Pluribus to behave like traditional sci-fi where every plot device gets a manual. The writers room has an endpoint in mind, but if a better path or ending comes up, they’ll change course — unusual for a glossy, high-concept show.
• The series uses the Joining — the show’s core phenomenon — as pressure, not a puzzle box to be solved. It’s there to stir uncertainty and push characters, not to become a spreadsheet of rules.
• Instead of exposition dumps, the show leans on visuals, character perspective, and emotional logic. You’re meant to feel the world’s instability more than decode it.
• The open-endedness isn’t about not having answers. It’s because too many answers would dilute what the show wants to say.

The protagonist is the anchor

There is one thing Gilligan wanted to lock down: the hero. He thinks Hollywood needs more straight-up good guys right now, and that shaped Rhea Seehorn’s lead, Carol Sturka, from day one. After years of building morally twisty protagonists in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, he wanted a character whose decency isn’t a reveal — it’s the engine. Seehorn’s Carol is confirmed to return for Season 2, and she’s meant to be the steady hand in a world that’s constantly shifting. You’re not supposed to decode her intentions; you’re supposed to trust them.

'I wrote on The X-Files for seven years, and I started to take for granted the idea of heroes... But at this point in humanity and in world history, I think we need more good guys again. We need more heroes.'

As part of that shift, Gilligan also pushed back on comparisons to recent survival epics, saying Pluribus isn’t cut from the same cloth as The Walking Dead or The Last of Us. The point here isn’t apocalypse cosplay; it’s moral clarity inside a deliberately unstable world.

Why this approach matters

There’s a bit of fatigue out there with the endless parade of antiheroes. Gilligan’s answer is to make the world thornier and the lead more grounded — a counterweight to the ambiguity rather than another source of it. It’s a smart swing: embrace uncertainty in the mythology, bring certainty in the character. The result is a show that plays big with ideas while giving you someone solid to hold onto.

Pluribus is currently breaking records and growing its audience faster than ever. It’s streaming exclusively on Apple TV+.

What do you think of Gilligan’s playbook here — less rulebook, more heart, and a hero you can actually root for? Drop your thoughts below.