Halloween in Albuquerque usually means plastic pumpkins and the odd tourist asking for directions to Walter White’s car wash. This year it also meant Vince Gilligan’s crew getting the cameras out again, as Pluribus season 2 began shooting on 31 October, the start date that had been pencilled into the production listings for weeks.
Rhea Seehorn is back as Carol Sturka, the romance novelist who turned out to be one of the very few people on Earth not absorbed into a cheerful, terrifyingly helpful hive mind. Seehorn has so far read only the first script, which she has described as “insane”, admitting she was already asking Gilligan what on earth was going on by page three. Coming from an actress who spent six seasons of Better Call Saul watching Jimmy McGill set fire to his own life, that counts as a glowing review.
The rest of the season is, shall we say, still settling. Back in September Gilligan admitted the new episodes were not technically all written yet, which is the sort of thing showrunners say shortly before a long night and a great deal of coffee. Apple did at least remove one source of stress early on by ordering two seasons before a single episode had aired, so nobody in New Mexico has had to sweat over a renewal.
That gamble paid off nicely. The first season, which we previewed back in October 2025, became Apple TV’s biggest series and went on to become an Emmy magnet, as we noted when Gilligan finally got his statue. Not bad for a show whose central threat is everybody being terribly nice to you.
As for the plot, Apple is saying nothing, which suits a series that ran its whole first season on unanswered questions. The smart money has Carol joining forces with Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga), the gruff holdout from Paraguay, to find out where the Joining came from and whether it can be undone. Karolina Wydra’s Zosia, the hive’s unnervingly pleasant go-between, is widely expected back as well, though no cast beyond Seehorn has been confirmed.
Don’t hold your breath for new episodes. Apple has not named a date, and with a long shoot and post-production still to come, late 2027 or, more likely, 2028 looks like the realistic window. Here at SFcrowsnest we’re perfectly happy with that. A show about a planet that has stopped arguing should take as long as it needs, and the rest of us can keep arguing in the meantime.
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