People are interpreting Vince Gilligan’s new sci-fi show Pluribus in a lot of different ways, questioning whether it’s really about AI, consumerism, or something else entirely. While the debate sucked me in, something else made me stay: Gilligan’s care in handling the main character’s identity as a lesbian. Carol’s sexuality isn’t the most important thing about her, but it does play a key role in how it colors her view of the weird extraterrestrial attack that has most of humanity in its grip. More importantly, Pluribus raises the bar for how to handle one of the worst clichés about queer characters with the respect and care it deserves.
[Ed. note: Spoilers below for Pluribus episode 1-4.]
Pluribus establishes early on that Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) is angry and frustrated with her life, even before almost everyone else on Earth gets merged into one big hivemind. Despite the fame and fortune she’s amassed thanks to her bestselling romantasy book series, Carol is a grouch who despises her own work and the fans who love it.
It’s a privileged viewpoint that makes her seem unlikable at times, but she earns sympathy and relatability through the way she handles her grief over the loss of her partner Helen (Miriam Shor), who dies when an alien transmission leads to the merging of almost all human minds. The transmission puts everyone into a happy hivemind state — all except Carol and a handful of other immune people worldwide.
Carol is also a closeted lesbian. That made Gilligan nervous as a writer, because he didn’t have first-hand experience with a queer perspective. In the same interview, Gilligan expressed concern about Carol being his first female protagonist. But so far, it seems like operating with that concern in mind has pushed Pluribus‘ writing team to navigate the treacherous ground of queer characters’ deaths with care and close attention.
In a scene from the show’s opening episode, before the hivemind takes hold, Helen encourages Carol to be open with her fans: Would it be so bad for them to know she’s attracted to women? It’s a sore point for both of them, but before they can really get into it, the hivemind merging enters its final stage, and absorbs Helen, gaining entrance to her memories.
It isn’t a peaceful joining. While most people come together relatively unscathed, Helen dies during the merging, along with millions of others, for reasons that are so far unclear. But since the hivemind has access to Helen’s memories, Carol is effectively outed to the entire world. The hivemind knows everything she’s shared with Helen: every kiss, every loved-up vacation, every secret. She can’t even privately grieve Helen’s loss and the life they shared, because she can no longer hide it. Helen’s love for Carol was unique, and now it’s shared by everyone who’s obsessively trying to please and appease her. But what made Helen and Carol’s relationship so distinct was that Helen wasn’t afraid to call Carol out on her negativity, and challenge her in ways that the hivemind absolutely can’t.
As haunting as Helen’s death is, it initially had me on the defensive. As a queer woman who actively seeks out TV and film where I can see myself represented, I’m vividly aware that 2025 has been a mixed bag for queer women on TV. There were some incredible wins: Yellowjackets is a bright star for its fascinating, wonderfully grotesque story and its large cast of queer characters. It isn’t the happiest show, but it doesn’t have the burden of only including one or two characters to “represent” the entirety of the queer audience.
But 2025 has also featured some real duds for LGBTQ+ representation, particularly for queer women of color. Despite being alive and playing a prominent part within the books, Siuan Sanche dies in the Wheel of Time TV series, leaving her lover Moiraine to mourn. Andor made history with the first prominent same-sex relationship in Star Wars screen media, with significant series roles for Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) and Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu), but Cinta dies after the two share their first kiss, and just after Cinta commits to their relationship.
The stray bullet that kills Cinta echoes the similarly accidental, purposefully random deaths of Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lexa in The 100. Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy was quick to shrug off the couple’s significance, and put down the decision as a pure story choice (“Shit happens,” he told TVLine), just part of Vel’s character development (which, uh, wasn’t even shown, due to the show’s yearlong time-skips).
Some fans felt it was a classic case of the Bury Your Gays trope, also known as Dead Lesbian Syndrome, due to queer women being the most prominent target. That story cliché has been a notable part of queer stories since the 19th century. Originally, queer creators used the trope to get their stories into media while protecting themselves from being seen as “endorsing” homosexuality. Effectively, queer characters were punished as a moral lesson.
Over time, the trope has grown beyond its original trappings, with each use shaped by the broader media context, as seen in the AIDS storyline in Rent. But its historical use hasn’t stopped heterosexual creators from using the trope irresponsibly or ignorantly, often for spectacle or shock value. Regardless of intent, the trope hasn’t quite lost the devastating effect of reminding queer audiences that our lot in life seems to be to die, or to survive a dead partner, becoming miserable set pieces amid larger stories.
In mainstream media, every death of a queer character hits a little harder, given their relative rarity. While GLAAD noted an increase in LGBTQ+ characters on television over the past calendar year, the organization also noted that 41% of them won’t be returning to TV “due to series cancellations or endings, limited series format, or a character dying or leaving the show.”
The Dead Lesbian Syndrome makes it darkly funny that Pluribus’ series tagline is “The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness.” My snarkiest response to that is, “Of course the most miserable person on Earth is a lesbian mourning a dead partner.” That grief and angst is what this particular story cliché is all about.
So watching Helen die in Pluribus gave me pause. The death of a loved one is common across a variety of stories, because death is a fact of life. I don’t believe every queer character should have a happy ending or simply not die, but the ways the writers, directors, and actors treat those deaths makes all the difference. While every couple in Andor ultimately falls apart in some way, Cinta’s death stands out explicitly due to its execution and how it was poorly used to add “some baggage” (in Gilroy’s words) to her love interest Vel, rather than treating Cinta as an actual character with her own merits.
That isn’t the case with Helen’s death: She isn’t just abruptly, randomly gone. Her personality and identity are explored through flashbacks, and through Carol asking the hivemind questions to find out what Helen was holding back. Her presence continues to haunt both Carol and the narrative.
While the hivemind is able to channel the skills of each individual person it contains, those people lose their true individuality. To most of the immune folks, this is an acceptable price to pay, because, as Koumba Diabaté (Our Flag Means Death’s Samba Schutte) points out, sexuality, gender, race, physical ability, and so forth don’t matter to the hivemind. Their existence is blissful, pacifistic, and free of prejudice.
That makes Carol’s apparent fear of coming out more frustrating in retrospect. The barrier that kept her relationship with Helen contained from the world is now gone. It’s a reminder of just how much time Carol wasted on hiding her relationship, identity, and love of Helen. For a queer person, that’s a devastating, grief-ridden thing to see on screen, given how many of us feel as though our lives only began when we started to be true to who we are.
But just because you erase prejudice doesn’t mean the scars it leaves behind are suddenly healed. Director Zetna Fuentes and writer Alison Tatlock explore this in Pluribus episode 4, “Please, Carol.” When Carol visits Zosia (Karolina Wydra) in the hospital to find out whether the joining can be reversed, she also reveals why she had such an immediate adverse reaction to the hivemind. Carol’s mother sent her to a conversion camp at age 16.
“The counselors there were some of the worst people I’ve ever known,” Carol tells Zosia. “And they smiled all the time. Just like you.” When Zosia tries to apologize for what Carol went through, Carol compares the experience to the hivemind wanting to change her.
Zosia, however, turns the mirror back on her: “You want to change us too, don’t you?” Carol scoffs, but Zosia presses on to say that the hivemind understands pain and anger like Carol’s, because they’ve been able to experience everything that humanity has been through due to the joining process. Carol, by contrast, doesn’t know what it’s like to be them — she only knows what she sees on the surface. But she still knows she’d rather be herself, pain and all, than something she was forced to be. Carol’s grief for Helen, and everything else Carol has been through, ultimately defines her just as much as the joy and love she’s experienced.
Gilligan and his writing team don’t coddle Carol and treat her differently as a queer woman, but they also don’t neglect the ways Carol’s life and identity bear on her perspective of the hivemind. Better yet, the show doesn’t throw Helen to the wayside. Even after her death, it allows her to exist as a haunting, but nonetheless important presence. Gilligan and his team don’t just use Helen’s death to establish just how alone Carol truly is after the merging — they center this couple’s story on Helen’s all-encompassing love for Carol, and how she shaped Carol’s life. That’s a level of respect that so many other queer character deaths simply haven’t been given.
The first four episodes of Pluribus are streaming on Apple TV now. New episodes arrive on Fridays.
