Get in here and discuss Pluribus episode three with me! I’m recapping Pluribus every week. For those of you who might be familiar with my work via my Yellowjackets recaps, we’re going to do these a little differently! I’m not going to break down the episode in full and recap beat-for-beat. Honestly, there are plenty of other places where you can find that style of recap for Pluribus and I’d rather offer something different. So instead, I’ll be touching on just a few themes and threads that stood out to me in each episode, with a large emphasis on the real-life connections to be made to some of Pluribus‘s sci-fi devices and allegories, especially when it comes to the ways I see the series as a total indictment of AI, big tech, and capitalism. So if that all sounds interesting to you, you’re in the right place! If nothing else, I hope these recaps can be a place of discussion, so I’ve also suggested some additional conversation topics at the end! Let’s return to the era of TV recapping that was super interactive! Starting with this Pluribus episode 3 recap, which contains spoilers for the episode! While watching this explosive (ha ha) episode of Pluribus, I couldn’t stop thinking about griefbots. Griefbots — sometimes called deathbots or death avatars or, the term I find most disturbing, AI ghosts, all of these terms of course sounding ripped from an 80s/90s sci-fi dystopian film — are AI programs and products designed to immortalize the dead via technology.
Griefbots — sometimes called deathbots or death avatars or, the term I find most disturbing, AI ghosts, all of these terms of course sounding ripped from an 80s/90s sci-fi dystopian film — are AI programs and products designed to immortalize the dead via technology.
The episode framing centers on Carol’s confrontation with loss, memory, and the emergent hive-mind dynamics that compress individual voices into a collective will. The piece notes how the grocery-store sequence imagines a near-future world where automation and AI replace human labor, shaping experiences of everyday life into seamless, data-driven interactions. This creates a backdrop for examining grief through technological mediation, raising questions about authenticity, memory, and embodiment.
Key themes explored include: the confrontation with grief as a catalyst for brash behavior, the critique of capitalist systems that monetize care and emotion, and the ethical implications of AI-enabled immortality via grief representations. The narrative argues that while data may preserve surface memories, it cannot recover the full human experience, and attempts to “bring back” loved ones often strip away the messy, imperfect humanity that defined those relationships.
The discussion also delves into the hive-mind concept, where shared consciousness challenges individual agency and ethical boundaries. The piece you referenced highlights how avatars and AI proxies can distort subjective experiences of memory, and how the hive’s use of Carol’s interactions with an AI-generated Helen avatar raises questions about consent, identity, and the meaning of personhood in a world where minds can be interconnected and replicated.
Overall, the tone emphasizes that Pluribus uses speculative technology as a lens to interrogate real-world concerns about AI, data surveillance, labor dynamics under tech giants, and the commodification of human experiences. The author invites readers to consider how grief processing is deeply personal and inherently non-replicable, even as digital systems attempt to codify or reproduce it.
Author’s summary: The episode uses grief, AI proxies, and hive-mind dynamics to critique AI-driven immortality, capitalism, and the erosion of authentic human memory, while highlighting the limits of technology to truly replicate loss and personal connection.