As the credits roll on the debut episode of Vince Gilligan’s new Apple TV series, Pluribus, you might find yourself struggling to remember the last time a single episode of television left you so stunned.

The series, with its genre-defying narrative, leans heavily on a science fiction premise. It depicts a world where nearly all humans are swept up in an epidemic of happiness after an alien phenomenon. At the heart of the story is Carol (played by Rhea Seehorn), the planet’s most discontented individual, who embarks on a mission to rescue the world from this blissful invasion. The show masterfully blends elements of drama and comedy, yet the first episode is dominated by sheer horror, intense discomfort, and spine-chilling terror.

With its vast, meticulously orchestrated ensemble scenes and an ambitious single-take sequence, paired with Seehorn’s emotionally charged performance, the pilot of Pluribus stands out as one of the most remarkable episodes of the year. In a discussion with Decider before the show premiered, Seehorn described the “technically and physically demanding” process of capturing that complex, end-of-the-world scenario.

Warning: Spoilers for Pluribus Episode 1 follow.

The story kicks off as astronomers intercept a radio signal from hundreds of light-years away, which turns out to be the blueprint for a nucleotide sequence. When synthesized in a lab, it behaves like a virus, spreading happiness among humans. The scenes in the lab, depicting patient zero and the virus’s initial outbreak, are particularly unsettling, resonating with the recent memories of the COVID pandemic. However, Pluribus escalates the tension when the entire global population, except Carol, is overrun by the virus, leaving them frozen and convulsing. Amidst this chaos, Carol discovers her wife Helen (played by Miriam Shor) and a room full of people in a catatonic state. Desperate, she rushes Helen to the hospital, where the staff and patients eventually break free from their trances, not only beaming with happiness but also interconnected through a collective consciousness.

“If you notice, it’s exteriors, and it’s nighttime all the time. So those are night shoots, and you have to shoot a lot of them to get all the coverage we need to establish this crazy world for people to understand,” Seehorn explained. “It’s very breathless, and Vince is really great at helping me understand — I try to keep track of myself, but when you’re doing this whole apocalyptic evening, you’ve got to know where you are in that arc. If we’re coming back two days later to go back to the ER, or to go back to the car when she’s driving, or whatever, where was she in her panic state at that time? And making sure that panic and that fear has its own different variations and colors, because we can’t just watch you at nine the whole time. That’s boring. So what is the journey she’s going through as well?”

While Seehorn had several demanding solo scenes throughout Episode 1’s mini horror movie, she stressed that achieving the outstanding final product was a true collective effort. “I have to give a huge shoutout to the Albuquerque and outlying areas of New Mexico, as well as the background actors, because they’re doing these motions for our choreographer, Nito Larioza, and had to have separate rehearsals to come up with the convulsions, or seizures, or spasming that’s happening to them,” she said.

A great deal of thought and attention to detail went into each individual movement, in hopes that the team would craft not only an eerie viewing experience, but an authentic vision of how the “others” might appear in that scenario. And they succeeded in spades.

“What do they look like? What does this contentment look like? Because it can’t be too smiley. It can’t be evil. It’s not robotic. What is it?” Seehorn recalled. “Part of what I think is unsettling is they are individual humans, not what would happen if you CGI’d it and they all had exactly the same convulsion. The fact that there’s idiosyncrasies within, it’s almost more disturbing. Even the choice to not sync voices completely, which we could have done.”

Pluribus creator Vince Gilligan chimed in to reveal that those personalized movements weren’t his initial desire, but after seeing the final result, he’s thankful things didn’t work out as planned.

“I wanted it to be a little more the same all across, but there’s no way to do that with real human beings,” Gilligan explained. “So I’m glad.” 

During the first episode of the Pluribus companion podcast, the team revealed they had open auditions for background actors and uses hundreds throughout Season 1’s big group scenes. Before each of them, Seehorn would give a speech to the actors to thank them for their work and stress how crucial their involvement was to the show.

“Those guys were all doing night after night with me, take after take. In that tavern bar. In the ER. And it’s difficult. It was taxing on them as well,” Seehorn told Decider. “I thank them tremendously for doing such a great job for the show, but also doing such a tremendous service to me. I was reacting to it in real time. I didn’t have to be told, ‘This is what it will be later, and right now it’s seven people on a curb staring at you.’ They were really doing these things.”

With Episode 3, “Grenade,” set to premiere on Friday, November 14, we can’t wait to see what other impressive scenes Pluribus has in store for Carol, Zosia, and the others.

New episodes of Pluribus premiere Fridays on Apple TV.