Spoilers below for the latest episode of Pluribus, so be warned if you haven’t yet streamed it via Apple TV subscription.
The first season of Pluribus has been a masterclass in Vince Gilligan’s measured and methodical storytelling, and fans like me have been eating it up, to the point where it’s now Apple TV’s biggest original series.. The show’s world opened up considerably with Episode 7, “The Gap,” which split its runtime between Rhea Seehorn slightly freer Carol and Carlos-Manuel Vesga’s Others-avoiding Manousos. Audiences went from the lush luxuries of Las Vegas to the hyper-dangerous wilderness between the Americas, and the ep ended with both emotional and physical wounds to contend with.
I spoke with Vesga ahead of the episode’s release, and I couldn’t have been happier to see the actor’s warm smile first thing, considering the utter lack of pleasure and contentedness stemming from Manousos during his journey north, particularly within the untamed wilderness of the notorious Durién Gap. Our final moments with the character were spent in pure agony after one wrong footing resulted in a variety of poison-tipped quills being impaled in Manousos’ back. That Chunga palm does not fuck around, people.
Given just how dire his situation already was even before he was warned against traversing the Gap’s treacherous landscape, I couldn’t quite understand why Manousos was so insistent on defying the Others and going that route instead of avoiding every possible dangerous tree by traveling up to the North American coast by boat. When I posed that question to Carlos-Manuel Vesga, he had a logical explanation:
Apparently, from what we see, he lives inland, so he doesn't know anything about boats. I don't think he does. Paraguay is a place with no coast, doesn't have any coastline. We know that he is [from] inland in Colombia, so he doesn't really have a relationship with with the ocean. I think he just sticks to what he knows, and he knows about land. He knows about driving and walking, and that's what he does. That's how he does it.
We don't know much about Manousos at this point that isn't tied to his revulsion for the Others. Sure we're aware he's got a deep sense of values, since he leaves money on the vehicles whose gas he siphons, and since he waited as long as he did to break into the surrounding storage containers. As well, he clearly loves his car.
But that does appear to be the only vehicle that he has intimate knowledge of how to use and operate with sufficent skill. Being from a landlocked country surrounded on all sides by Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina, Manousos presumably didn't have tons of opportunities to show off his sea legs, and it's feasible that he never stepped foot on a boat before, much less attempted to learn anything about how to use one.
As someone with far more impulse-control issues than this character, I probably would have doomed myself by trying to maneuver a boat without the proper know-how. So I can't deny that Manousos was probably smart (on one level) for not going outside the box to try and reach safety.
That said, Carlos-Manuel Vesga offered up the olive branch by saying there one conceivable instance where his survivor might have chosen to opt out of walking. As he put it:
Having said that, I think if he was presented with the only one choice of taking a boat, he would have done it absolutely. Just a box of of dog food on the boat and, you know, sail away, man.
Unfortunately, no such boat-delivering savior arrived, and Manousos was left to face the dangers of the Durién Gap's unyielding flora. To flip to the fortunate side, it appears the Others were keeping watch during the character's trek, as he was lifted up and saved from his surroundings not long after he fell unconscious. Whether or not he'll be in any shape to talk with Carol in the future is a wholly different conversation. i can't imagine he'd be saved just to fade into the ethers, so hopefully there's more to Manousos' story.
We only have two more episodes to go before Pluribus bids farewell to the 2025 TV schedule, though it sadly doesn’t look like Season 2 will be filmed in time for a 2026 premiere date. So here’s hoping the finale is so big and groundbreaking that we won’t be able to stop talking about it until new episodes arrive.
