Copyright The Ringer
Pop culture can be a lens through which we view the world, but what if we’d rather avert our eyes? Taking stock of the past five years, you wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting to leave things in the rearview—least of all living through a pandemic. To me, it feels like the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic happened a lifetime ago, yet it’s been only five years since mask mandates and social distancing were an inextricable part of everyone’s lives. The financial impact of COVID is in the literal trillions, but we may never understand the true cost of the pandemic on our collective psyches: the prolonged isolation, the constant sound of sirens blaring, the mass graves, and so on. Ironically, many folks found themselves gravitating toward postapocalyptic programming during the lockdowns—shout-out Station Eleven—but whenever Hollywood attempted to explore the actual experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, it rarely resonated. (The less said about Songbird, the better.) Perhaps we just needed a little more distance before embracing pandemic art, especially if it’s not even marketed as such. For anyone who was hooked on the Breaking Bad universe—[raises hand]—a new show from creator Vince Gilligan sells itself. Indeed, Gilligan’s new Apple TV series, Pluribus, has kept its cards close to the vest, delivering a slow drip of cryptic teasers for months and an even more cryptic logline: The most miserable person on earth must save the world from happiness. By the time screeners arrived, the do-not-spoil list was so extensive that critics would be hard-pressed to say much of anything about the show. (Thankfully, it’s no great secret that Better Call Saul alum and patron saint of The Ringer, Rhea Seehorn, is the lead.) Here’s what I’m allowed to say: I’m of the opinion that Pluribus is, while not just about COVID, a series that perfectly captures the surreality of living through it. The pilot introduces us to Carol Sturka (Seehorn), a bestselling fantasy romance novelist who describes her life’s work as “mindless crap.” On the night that curmudgeonly Carol returns to Albuquerque, New Mexico, from her latest book tour with her manager and romantic partner, Helen (Miriam Shor), an inexplicable, cataclysmic event changes the world. It’s a virus of some kind, spreading with such ferocity that it seems like everyone in Albuquerque is affected by it at the same time. Millions of people die; billions more are infected, causing them to be permanently—and eerily—cheery. Carol, however, is immune and is now surrounded by a transformed populace that’s desperate to find out why she’s different so that she can join their ranks. There are lots of twists and turns along the way, but while Pluribus is clearly inspired by films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, what’s so fascinating is that these new humans—let’s just call them the Others—aren’t outwardly malicious: If Carol can’t be changed into one of them, they’ll do everything in their power to make her happy. (Given her temperament, that’s easier said than done.) Anytime the Others encounter Carol, she’s greeted with smiles and what appears to be warmth; there’s a hotline she can call for anything she desires. Now, setting aside that these people are objectively creepy—and that Carol hopes there’s some way to reverse the virus—you can understand why this kind of treatment could be alluring. She is, in effect, a celebrity to the rest of the world. But like the intense isolation brought on by COVID, Carol’s predicament only ends up exacerbating her loneliness over the course of the season. This becomes even more pronounced when the Others start using drones and other forms of technology to address Carol’s needs, creating another barrier between person-to-person interaction. It’s a revealing window into how the things intended to make our lives more convenient inevitably lead us to lose touch with our humanity. Can we reverse course, or are we already doomed? That Carol, of all people, is mankind’s savior gets to the heart of what Pluribus is concerned with: Yes, she’s a tough hang but her perpetual crankiness is the purest expression of free will left on the planet. Without these qualities, we’re no longer human. “Do you seriously think the world is a better place now, just because it’s peaceful?” Carol says at one point, illustrating how Pluribus blurs the line between contentment and oppression. (To each their own, but, c'mon: It’s the latter.) Despite the apocalyptic setup, I suspect that Pluribus will ultimately strike an optimistic tone and that Carol’s journey to save the world from happiness will, in fact, bring some gratification to her own life. But wherever the story goes—a second season has already been green-lit—Pluribus hasn’t just cemented itself as one of the best shows of the year: It’s proof that you don’t need to explicitly address the pandemic to evoke the feeling of experiencing it. What’s made 2025 a banner year for pandemic art, however, is that we’ve also seen the inverse: a star-studded thriller willing to tackle COVID-19 head-on. One of the most polarizing releases of the year is Eddington, the latest film from rising provoc-auteur Ari Aster. Like Pluribus, the movie is set in New Mexico, but Eddington’s premise hits a little closer to home: It’s 2020, and there’s a tense standoff between the eponymous town’s sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor (Pedro Pascal) about whether pandemic safety measures are violating personal freedoms. Eddington’s sprawling running time also leaves room for subplots involving a nearly all-white chapter of Black Lives Matter staging protests, a pseudo–cult leader (Austin Butler) who believes that pedophilia runs rampant in the corridors of power, and the controversial construction of an AI data center on the outskirts of town. Like Aster’s other films, Eddington ratchets up the tension to a nauseating degree until violence spills out. (The galaxy-brained implication that crisis actors arrive in town to sow chaos certainly hits different after one politically motivated assassination drew a plethora of conspiracy theories.) But whereas other Aster protagonists fall victim to demonic forces or pagan cults the characters of Eddington are their own worst enemy, descending down digital rabbit holes that deepen distrust in public figures, communities, and reality itself. In other words, YOUR BEING MANIPULATED. This, in turn, makes Eddington a discomfiting watch—whereas Pluribus borrows elements of science fiction to show the world coming undone, Aster’s film holds up a mirror to the corrosive relationship between the pandemic, politics, and social media that everyone can relate to. How Eddington addresses these hot-button issues has drawn criticism—namely, that Aster is interested in merely observing what’s ailing this country rather than committing to a moral or political viewpoint. But while COVID-19 drives the plot, it’s instructive that Eddington begins and ends with the aforementioned data center: a symbol for all the ways that technology is bridging the gap between the world we’re living in and the online echo chambers we can retreat to. An ideological conflict in the throes of COVID-19 may spark violence in a town like Eddington, but artificial intelligence is the kindling that’ll set the world ablaze. “Whatever space there was between our lived reality and this imaginal reality—that’s disappearing, and we’re merging, and that’s very frightening,” Aster said in an interview with Letterboxd. “The weirder things get, and the longer we live in them, the more normal they become. But something huge is happening right now, and we have no say in it.”
