Season 1 Episode 3: Grenade
Air Date: November 14, 2025
Synopsis: The World just wants to help-which infuriates Carol. A heart-to-heart conversation ends with a bang.
Directed by: Gordon Smith
Written by: Gordon Smith
You must log in or register to comment.
Once all 12 remaining individuals are subsumed into the “hive”, what might the goal of the hive be next? Infect the next nearest planet with sentient life? Do they have any other goals than that?
I have to guess that is their secondary and already underway goal. I forget the exact quote but one of the early scientists mentioned sending such a signal would require a satellite dish the size of Africa and (I think) a bunch of power.
We’ve already seen them starting to conserve power.
Something I’m curious to see as the series advances is how they’ll handle reproduction. The current population of the Earth is something like 8 billion people. Is it adventagous to increase that number to 10 billion? Or is it better to conserve resources and lower that to 6 billion?
If it’s an increase in population, do they try and build certain types of “bees”, some for work, some for science?
If it’s a decrease in population, do they let it happen naturally? How much work can be put into saving someone? In order to accomplish their goals are they allowed to send parts of the hive on “suicide missions”?
This almost definitely confirms my theory from episode 2: the hive is 100% compliant with what anybody wants. I’m guessing the other few survivors will figure this out soon and it’s going to be a huge mess.
Also I think the hive is being coy about it. They say they’d do anything so Carol to be happy but once again I’m pretty sure they also have a ‘biological imperative’ to do what they’re told to do no matter what. Maybe that was intentional so the aliens that created this code can just walk into earth and instantly take control without any resistance.
Alcohol plays a serious role in this show. I’ve got a theory Carol is a successful raging alcoholic who hasn’t left the house in forever and has been spiraling for even longer. Her girlfriend was never real and only a coping mechanism loosely based around her books character Lucasia in Wycaro. Carol very well may be all the way of the whisky barrel arguing with every last neuron (the collective) that floats her way
The succesful alcoholic part is spot on, with the measurement thingy in her car in episode 1. I don’t think Helen is a halucination though as “Us” has her memories.
There is heavy alcohol use in this show. If alcohol is poison then only those that have drank on screen are actually in control of themselves?
I think they said an 8 year old farm girl who doesn’t speak English was one of the unjoined.
Loving this show so far. Seems like an allegory for AI.
I think Carol is going to ask Us to research how to get rid of Us. Since they’ll do things that have destructive potential towards themselves if it makes Carol (or other uninfected) happy then they shouldn’t have a problem researching how to cure the infection even if it leads to their ultimate destruction.
But wouldn’t allowing someone to leave the collective cause that individual stress? They use the example of a person drowning in a river and throwing them a life preserver. So they can’t just throw someone into the river.
But then we also have the example of releasing all the zoo animals. Clearly “they” knew that some of them would die when they released the animals. But also some of those zoo animals probably wouldn’t survive without assistance. So are they also helping them the same way they help Carol?
But also they sped up their infection/activation plan after the military found out about “them”. So they have a sense of preservation.
It just doesn’t quite add up.
It feels like Carol denies herself any pleasures, like riding in first class, so she won’t get the feeling of owing Them something? Or it’s just the way she’s always been.
Did not like this.
-
“Just give me a grenade” should have been understood as sarcastic. But even a peaceful people would recommend alternative means of “peaceful mining excavation projects”.
-
absurd that they would comply with giving her an atomic bomb.
A peaceful people would still have genuine security concerns, especially from an entity with proven hostility towards them.
Direction of show seems to make the strawman “peace is stupid” because the people who have peaceful attitudes must be stupid.
It seems that this hivemind is behaving like a newborn intelligence complete with naivete and innocence, even if it’s made up of the sum of human experience and knowledge.
It’s still too early to judge how much of its behaviour is authentic as it’s trying to figure out how to live and grow, or if it’s actually malevolent and self-interested
definitely the story arc I hope for is that “it is learning towards common sense”, and would reconsider the atomic bomb gift. Self/collective interested doesn’t have to mean malevolent.
-
“We” has all of human memories. However its personality can be of external source, or it’s just a result of combining people with radically different views. It doesn’t understand nuances of human interaction, and allows Carol for far too much.
“We” has all of human memories.
Which is why I found it funny that they made a mistake and turned off Carol’s power. “They” also seem to have perfect recall of events, which means no one actually knew how the power system worked.
Well, We would very well know how it should work. But if some piece of equipment is faulty, this wouldn’t be predictable to them. So We could try to shut off power on one part of the grid only, but a worndown piece of transformer doesn’t handle this too well and burns out?
I wasn’t sold on the show after the second episode, but really enjoyed this one. You can see the realization in her face at the end that she had absolute power, and I want to see where it’s going
Seemingly absolute power, but at the same time the shop scene imo also drove home how much she relies on other people. Now, but also before the assimilation. So how absolute is it when it relies on external factors out of your control?
If I remember correctly the she says something along the lines of that she is an independent woman, who can do her own shopping. Cue to a fleet of trucks and a large group of people arriving, who are required to make it possible (which ofc doesn’t even include all the production steps before). Not quite as independent as she wants to be, the “real” independent move would have been to immediately start farming
I appreciated the clarification in this episode, for Carol her life is her own, until it isn’t. It’s a biological imperative.
But also… They’d give her an atom bomb.
So biologically speaking they must “infect” Carol. But logically speaking they’re ok risking not being able to “infect” Carol.
A live grenade isn’t a threat. A bazooka isn’t a threat. A tank isn’t a threat. An atom bomb isn’t a threat.
But “they” can feel threatened, because they previously accelerated their infection plan.
So I can only guess that they know Carol wouldn’t actually do anything that dangerous… But they either genuinely didn’t understand the sarcasm when she first asked (sarcastically) for a grenade or they’re toying with her in some way. But that in theory would make Carol feel bad so they wouldn’t do that.
They previously said that they couldn’t protect those outside of the hive mind from others also not in the hive mind. So if Carol directly threatened one of the non-hive mind people, would they stop it? Would they provide the tools?
I know we’re only four days in but Carol has asked far too few question.
She has done nothing but bitch and complain, I mean I get it, but also if this happened to literally anyone I think they would have at least a few weeks of joyriding, she went straight to grief.
Edit: I suppose I should note that she didn’t seem super happy before that happened either so maybe that’s it.
I mean it’s been shown she’s always been a miserable person even before the event, so her acting this way makes sense. She is literally the most miserable/drunk person on the planet right now.
I suppose that’s true and I thought about that a bit more for my edit, she seems like a real Karen.
She just lost her spouse in a traumatic way in front of her own eyes. Imagine you lost yours and the same day you get a free trip to a luxury resort. Would you be happy and actively go around trying out all the amenities?
Also you are right that she seems to have always been grumpy and not as adventurous as her spouse.
