Before the Joining CanonMajor
Carol and Helen
Carol Sturka, a successful but deeply unhappy romantasy novelist, lives in Albuquerque with her wife and manager Helen Umstead. The couple are pursuing fertility treatment, planning for a child.
Pluribus Universe
Timeline
From the world before the Joining to the signal, the assimilation of humanity, and Carol’s Season 1 resistance.
Before the Joining
Carol, Helen, and an ordinary human world.
The Joining · Nov 2025
The signal arrives; humanity becomes the Others; Helen dies.
S1E1 · We Is Us CanonMajor
The signal reaches Earth
An extraterrestrial signal carrying viral RNA reaches Earth and spreads by aerosol, beginning the Joining, the assimilation of humanity into a single collective consciousness, the Others.
S1E1 · We Is Us CanonMajor
Helen dies; Carol wakes immune
As the Joining takes hold, Helen collapses with seizures and dies while Carol rushes her to the hospital. Carol buries her in the backyard, and realizes she is one of only thirteen people on Earth left unjoined.
Season 1 · the resistance
Carol, Zosia, and the immune thirteen in a joined world.
Season 1 CanonMajor
Zosia, and a world of the Others
The Others assign Zosia to chaperone Carol. Unfailingly gentle and bound by a no-kill ethos, the collective wants only to welcome Carol into the whole, and will wait as long as it takes.
Season 1 CanonMajor
The immune thirteen
Carol makes contact with other immune people worldwide, Manousos in Paraguay, Koumba in Mauritania, Laxmi in India, Kusimayu in Peru, and finds them scattered, unalike, and far from a united resistance.
Season 1 Canon
Manousos tries to reverse the Joining
Manousos, who wants to fight rather than save, experiments on an Other named Rick to restore an individual. It fails, the strongest sign yet that the Joining may be one-way.
Season 1 Canon
The getaway
Carol's isolation warps her judgement and she falls for Zosia, touring a peaceful, functioning joined world, hot springs, a beach, a ski lodge, with her chaperone.
S1E9 · La Chica o El Mundo CanonMajor
Kusimayu joins
Gas is delivered by plane to Kusimayu's Peruvian village; she inhales it and joins the Others. The tribal singing around her abruptly stops, a culture switching off.
S1E9 · La Chica o El Mundo CanonMajor
Carol and Manousos meet
Carol learns the Others still intend to join everyone. She and Manousos finally meet, across a language barrier and a philosophical gulf, and his failed Rick experiment and hard line win her over.
S1E9 · La Chica o El Mundo CanonMajor
Carol takes the bomb
Carol chooses to fight, "You win. We save the world", and returns to Albuquerque with an atom bomb in a crate, giving Zosia a stricken look as she goes.
Season 2 (unaired)
The bomb, the choice, and what Carol does next.
Season 2 (unaired) Theory
The choice
Carol has the bomb, an alliance with Manousos, and a world of the Others that will not stop until everyone is joined. Season 2 is renewed but unaired, everything past here is prediction.