Pluribus has milk on its mind in its fifth episode, fittingly titled, “Got Milk.”
The drink takes center stage as Carol (Rhea Seehorn) continues to investigate the Others, who have now abandoned her due to her drugging of Zosia (Karolina Wydra) in episode 4. The isolation is equal parts a curse and a blessing. A curse, because even the world’s most miserable woman needs some company (and someone to pick up her trash). A blessing, because now Carol can do her detective work far from the prying eyes of a global hive mind.
Surprisingly, what she finds during her snooping has everything to do with milk. It’s the drink of choice of many an unsettling TV and film villain, from A Clockwork Orange‘s Alex to The Boys‘ Homelander, so the Others are in good company. Sure, they’re nowhere near as violent or depraved as other onscreen milk drinkers, but their takeover of the human race certainly puts them in antagonist territory.
But while other milk-guzzling villains like Homelander enjoy the drink with Oedipal undertones, the Others seem to solely treat it as sustenance. What’s really going on with them and milk?
The Others in Pluribus sure love their milk.
Carol notices that the only things in Albuquerque’s recycling bins are milk cartons. She can’t be drinking all that milk herself (although I’d be mildly impressed and mostly grossed out if she were), so she reasons that it’s the Others’ only food source.
The carton discovery leads her to Duke City Dairy, where all the milk is manufactured. There, she learns it’s not actually milk (sorry to Homelander and co.) but a mixture made of water and a strange white powder. The resulting liquid is a light amber or straw color, as Carol puts it. It’s neutral on the pH scale, and it has the texture of “olive oil, but thinner.”
So what does this mystery not-milk liquid actually do to the Others? Is it just their food, or does it help strengthen the hive mind? Is it a physical manifestation of the “psychic glue” that keeps them together?
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The key must be in the white powder, which Carol investigates next. Thanks to some bar code sleuthing, she winds up at Agri-Jet, a manufacturing plant that’s full of produce and mysterious items wrapped in plastic bags. Whatever’s in there is probably what gets reduced to that white powder, right?
Well, it’s also apparently nothing good, because when Carol takes a peek under the plastic, she throws her hand over her mouth in terror. Cut to black, leaving us to speculate about the true nature of the Others’ “milk” for another week.
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What is in the bag Carol finds at Agri-Jet?
What could make Carol react with such horror? Unfortunately, there’s only one thing my mind goes to when presented with the idea of “absolutely sinister food sources,” and it’s human corpses.
That’s right: I think Carol has made the grand discovery that in addition to being a parasitic hive mind, the Others are also cannibals.
We know that the Others are unable to kill any living thing. However, they could certainly eat something that’s already dead, and you know what Earth has a lot of currently? Dead humans, on account of the trauma of the Joining, and of Carol’s emotional outbursts. Those incidents left millions dead, giving the Others a free supply of meat that they didn’t have to kill outright.
However, the implications of cannibalism might be a red herring meant to throw us off the scent. Perhaps what’s under the plastic isn’t corpses at all. Maybe it’s hints of what the Others’ true alien forms look like, wherever they come from in the universe. Or maybe it’s some kind of experiment that proves they can bring Carol or the other survivors into the fold.
For now, though, I’m sticking with my initial theory. Pluribus is putting its own spin on Soylent Green. And guess what? It’s still people.
