In my celebration of what a brilliant queer anti-hero Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) is in Apple TV+'s hit show Pluribus, I noted that she is now, presumably, the last lesbian on earth.
Carol is one of about a dozen people around the world who resisted "the joining," when an alien virus infected most of the world and connected them through a single hivemind that refuses to harm any living creature and wants to spread to the last remaining humans.
Now, it's up to Carol to save the world. If only she weren't so damn lonely.
According to a 2025 Gallup poll, lesbians only make up 1.4 percent of the American population, compared to over 9 percent identifying as any label in the LGBTQ+ spectrum.
The HRC says this means that there are around 4.8 million lesbians in the US, compared to 6.8 million gay people and 17.7 million bisexuals.
In Pluribus, there is only one lesbian in the United States, and fittingly, her name is Carol.
Lesbianism is already incredibly lonely, but in Pluribus, that loneliness becomes a weapon that might take over the world.
I adore my friends who are attracted to men and who are men, but I have to admit, I can't always relate to them. Whenever discussions come up about how great it is to lean into manhood or which male actors are the most "babygirl," I often feel like I'm outside looking in.
The way Carol looks at the members of the hivemind when they all talk or work in unison, that's how I feel when I'm at a party, and everyone is talking about the bare chests of Pedro Pascal and Orville Peck.
Thankfully, I have lesbian and women friends I can talk to, so I don't feel so disconnected. Carol doesn't. She's utterly alone.
The Others use this loneliness as a weapon. After Carol's wife, Helen, dies during the joining, they send the one person on earth most like Carol's dream woman to go be her "chaperone." This chaperone isn't a lesbian or a woman, or any kind of person with a personal identity at all. She's a representative of the global hive mind, using the body of someone who was once named Zosia (Karolina Wydra).
At first, Carol is violently reluctant to get to know Zosia and the Others. She knows the situation is dire, she knows the world needs saving, and she knows she has to save it from them.
Unfortunately, the hive mind knows exactly how to hit Carol where it hurts.
In the fourth episode, "Please, Carol," Carol reveals that when she was 16, her parents sent her to a gay conversion therapy camp called Freedom Falls. She tells Zosia that the others remind her of the counselors there – always smiling and pretending everything was okay, even though they were trying to destroy her.
"We're so sorry, Carol. As for us, we accept all beings equally," Zosia says.
"If you're so accepting, then what about what you're trying to do to me now?" Carol responds. "Make me just like you, even though you know I do not want that."
Carol has a great point. The Others want to erase people's individuality until everyone thinks the same and has the same values. It's exactly like conversion therapy.
In the same episode, when Carol handcuffs herself to Zosia and tries to get her to tell her how to stop the hivemind, the Others use another tactic straight out of the conversion therapy book: social isolation.
One common punishment at conversion therapy camps is solitary confinement. People are social creatures who need human contact to survive and be healthy. Take human contact away, and you can convince most people to do anything to get it back.
After Carol's handcuff encounter with Zosia, the entire hivemind leaves Carol, emptying the nearby town and interacting with her only through an answering machine and drones. The Others have the memories of everyone on Earth, so they know what was done to Carol at Freedom Falls, and they're not afraid to use the same tactics.
After 40 days of this isolation, the same kind she probably dealt with as a scared teen, Carol breaks and asks the Others to come back.
By the final episode of season one, Carol has fully given in to Zosia. She and Zosia are living as a lesbian couple, having lesbian sex, and traveling the globe like a happy queer couple. Only Zosia isn't a lesbian.
The Others don't have individual genders, sexualities, or identities at all. When Carol asks about Zosia's previous partners, both use "they" pronouns to spare Carol's feelings about finding out the real Zosia's sexuality.
While Carol is attached to Zosia as her chaperone, Zosia is perfectly happy to go with any of the other survivors, including sleeping with them and forming the same "bond" she has with Carol.
As Zosia tells a confused and betrayed Carol, the Others love Manousos, another survivor who has rejected all contact with the hivemind and whom they don't know at all, just as much and in the same way they love Carol.
Just like a family who agrees to "not talk about politics" with their queer kid, only to keep voting for politicians who take their rights away, the hive has been secretly working behind Carol's back to turn her the entire time Zosia is living a lesbian life of luxury with Carol.
Zosia isn't queer at all; she's not even human. She's just placating Carol to buy time so they can figure out how to make her join them.
"Carol, please understand we have to do this because we love you," Zosia explains to Carol, probably echoing the words her parents said right before they sent her to conversion camp.
Overall, the Others' main goal is to erase all individuality and culture from the world. We see an example of this in the final episode of season one when Kusimayu, one of the last immune people on Earth, joins the Others. Before her joining, the Others around Kusimayu kept her village running exactly as it was before, speaking Quechua and practicing her culture. They dropped this act as soon as Kusimayu joined.
The same thing has probably happened with queer culture.
After the joining, there's no reason for drag shows, gay bars, or queer clubs at schools. There's no reason for queer couples to stay together.
Is there even a reason for trans people to keep taking hormones after they've joined? Does their dysphoria go away? Presumably, the Others have canceled all gender-affirming surgeries to save resources.
When Carol joins, she and Zosia won't have any more lesbian sex. Carol won't have any more lesbian thoughts. She won't even be Carol. It's exactly what the counselors at Freedom Falls wanted.
Season one of Pluribus is streaming on Apple TV+
Mey Rude is a staff writer for Out. Find her on Instagram @Meyrude.
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