Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Pluribus Episode 8.There’s only one more episode of <em>Pluribus</em> Season 1 left? Say it ain’t so! It feels like we’ve only just started spending time in Vince Gilligan‘s inventive sci-fi world, but with every passing week, the Apple TV series has been hooking new viewers desperate to learn answers to the story’s greatest mysteries. Curing the world of a strange extraterrestrial virus that’s linked almost every survivor via shared consciousness isn’t something that can be achieved overnight, though, as romance author Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) has discovered firsthand. What this week’s episode, “Charm Offensive,” written by Jonny Gomez and directed by Melissa Bernstein, makes abundantly clear is that one of the world’s only immune parties has decided to play nice with the Others — but as they, using Zosia (Karolina Wydra) as their mouthpiece, let Carol into more of their world, there’s a lot about their approach that skews into emotional manipulation territory. Their reconciliation and the fun outings that ensue all culminate, so to speak, in a moment between Carol and Zosia that some fans may have inwardly been rooting for (if you write it, they will ship), but still has massive implications heading into the finale next week.

Carol and the Others Make Up in ‘Pluribus’ Episode 8

In the immediate aftermath of last week’s episode, Carol is, to put it mildly, flailing now that Zosia is back and sitting in her house. Still in her paint-spattered jeans, she makes lemonade (the frozen kind, from a cardboard tube) out of an effort to be hospitable, before all but squirming when Zosia points out the Georgia O’Keeffe painting hanging on the wall. Carol splurts out some fib about wanting to keep the piece safe by taking it, suggesting that the wild animals who have been freely roaming around could have wandered into the museum and started rubbing up against the paintings. Ludicrous as it is, the real truth emerges in the silence that falls over the living room, only broken by Carol quietly, meekly admitting that she doesn’t really know what to talk about. Zosia suggests a board game, but after perusing through the potential options (and Carol’s realization that the Others would be able to beat her at most of them with their unlimited knowledge base), they settle on a few rounds of Spit, a game Carol used to play with her cousins when she was younger. Speaking of family, when Zosia asks if Carol wants a visit from her cousin Henry, whom she hasn’t spoken to since Christmas 2005, Carol tersely declines — not only because it would be exactly like talking to Zosia, but “he didn’t want to see me these past 41 days. Why bother now?”

As the afternoon winds down and the remaining Others trickle back into Albuquerque, Carol’s preparing to awkwardly part ways when she realizes she’s never asked where Zosia has been staying. Turns out it’s with most of the Others in the near vicinity, with everyone bedding down on sleeping bags inside what used to be an ice rink at the Rio Rancho Events Center; it’s more energy-efficient, as Zosia explains, to heat and cool one big room rather than hundreds of smaller houses. Zosia makes herself comfortable in a sleeping bag, and even though Carol initially makes an excuse about taking her leave, she ends up staying, surrounded by the Others, letting the sounds of their snoring and breathing lull her to sleep. In the morning, Zosia drives Carol home and offers to make her breakfast, which Carol declines — and once inside, alone, she marches over to her whiteboard to add a very important reminder for herself onto the list of what she knows about the Others: They. Eat. People.

Regardless of Carol’s efforts to drill some very important reminders into her brain about the Others, she spends more and more time with Zosia in the days following — hiking in the hills, where Carol confesses her love for train horns; getting massages at a local spa; looking at the stars from a local observatory; playing croquet in the middle of a football field. Despite these outings all feeling very date-like, Carol’s quietly and deliberately learning more and more information about the Others in the process — how they communicate (unconsciously, through the body’s electromagnetic field), their ability to collectively perceive events even if they can’t individually feel them, where the virus originated from (a planet known as Kepler-22b), and their drive to “share” the “gift” that’s been given to them in the form of the Joining with other worlds, no matter how long it takes. Now, Carol’s whiteboard is covered, although she lies to Zosia when she puts in a request for new dry-erase markers, claiming she’s been struck with inspiration for her fifth Wycaro book.

Carol’s About To Get an Important Visitor at the Wrong Time in ‘Pluribus’ Episode 8

After asking Carol some pointed questions about writing during their croquet date, Zosia drives Carol to a diner called Lauchlin’s — which, as it turns out, was once the place where Carol spent hours holed up in a booth writing what would ultimately become the first Wycaro book on yellow legal pads, her coffee mug never running empty courtesy of a waitress named Bri. The Others are eager to know everything she’s feeling after being dropped back into this core memory but then Carol’s initial glow of excitement starts to wear off. A harsher reality sets in as she sees the real Bri (Jai Yunae) in person and then remembers that the original Lauchlin’s burned down. The building she’s sitting in now is a recreation something that the Others rebuilt from an empty lot; despite this grand gesture’s extent, Carol becomes increasingly unsettled and eventually runs out of the diner with everyone in the vicinity stopping and turning to watch her go.

Later that night, Zosia shows up at Carol’s house trying to understand what’s happened to make her so upset. At first, Carol inquires about Bri the waitress and where the Others plucked her from to play a role in this little facade but what rebuilding her favorite diner clearly signals to her is thatthe hivemind is trying to distract her from her world-saving mission. Everything from Lauchlin’s to their excitement over a potential new Wycaro book is just further evidence in Carol’s mind that the Others know she hasn’t given up and Zosia’s initial silence in response speaks volumes. Carol’s even willing to go as far as admitting that she’s come around to likingthe Others in certain respects but with how things are now? It’s an unsustainable train wreck. “Someone has to put the world right even if it means you all leave me again,” Carol tearfully declares. “Even if it means that I’m…” Before she can finish that sentence aloud Zosia leans forward to kiss her — and Carol at her most desperate most lonely most eager for simple human connection reciprocates.

The next morning Zosia wakes up in Carol’s bed alone to find that Carol’s actually written the first chapter of a new Wycaro book after all — with Raban retconned to a woman as she’d intended for this character all along. While making breakfast Carol tries to encourage Zosia to use first-person and asks questions about her own personal preferences and tastes leading to another woman tapping into her own memories for this first time as she confesses having loved mango ice cream ever since childhood in Poland. It’s a clever means of emphasizing that Zosia could potentially still be her own individual deep down but will something like this also have a greater effect on the hivemind moving forward?

Any evidence along those lines is interrupted when the Others inform Carol through Zosia that she’s about to have a visitor very soon. Speaking of Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga) he’s been in a Panama hospital still recovering from devastating wounds he suffered from that chunga palm tree. Despite his injuries’ severity he’s unwilling to accept any more than absolutely necessary hospitality from Others. He also wants things how they used to be including how much his hospital visit would have cost him before Joining — after holding one of Others (Manoli Ioannidis) hostage via scalpel Manousos haphazardly scribbles down an IOU for both his treatment totaling $8277.53 and ambulance he commandeers driving Albuquerque-bound. Judging by closing minutes episodehe’ll be showing up at Carol’s place within hours — something tells me he’s not going happy about what he finds.