Pluribus is set in the Breaking Bad universe — these details give it away

Pluribus is a sci-fi show airing its first season on Apple TV+, the new home for prestige TV. It’s about what happens after scientists intercept a message from outer space that turns them into an annoyingly happy hive mind. Pretty soon, the whole of humanity is joined together, except a few people who are mysterious immune. That includes Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), who is none too pleased with this brave new world. Her mission is clear: as the show’s tagline says, “The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness.”

Pluribus is the brainchild of Vince Gilligan, who also created crime shows like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Obviously, Pluribus is a very different beast, but there are mounting hints that it’s set in the same universe.

We’re not crazy

No one has definitively said that Pluribus isn’t set in the same universe as Breaking Bad

Before we get to the actual hints, I want to lay out why this isn’t an absurd claim to make. If you ask Google whether Pluribus is set in the same world as Breaking Bad, the AI overview will tell you no, and then cite interviews Gilligan gave to outlets like NME as evidence. But if you actually read that interview and others like it, Gilligan never says that Pluribus isn’t set in the same universe as Breaking Bad, just that it’s a very different sort of show, which it is. “And that’ll turn some people off,” Gilligan told NME. “There will be plenty of people who tune into Pluribus out of curiosity. ‘Oh, it’s that Breaking Bad guy.’ And they’ll watch 20 minutes of it maybe and say, ‘Ah, nobody’s getting killed. Nobody’s getting their throat cut with a box-cutter. This is not for me. I hate this!’ So be it.”

I cannot find anything where Gilligan definitively states that Pluribus isn’t set in this wider shared universe, and until I do, I’m going to hold out hope. That said, we shouldn’t mistake surface-level similarities for confirmation.

For instance, Pluribus is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the same city where Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul took place. But that doesn’t mean anything. Friends and The Avengers both take place in New York City, but that doesn’t mean they’re happening concurrently. Gilligan has said that he set Pluribus in Albuquerque mostly so he could use the same crew he used for his other shows. Some fans have pointed out that Carol drinks Macallan whiskey at one point, the preferred drink of Howard Hamlin and Chuck McGill on Better Call Saul. But Macallan is a real whiskey, so all that proves is that these three characters have good taste.

With that out of the way, let’s get to some of the actual connections between the various series.

Airplanes and phone bills

These companies exist in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul… and now Pluribus

Credit: Apple TV+

So Macallan is a real brand of whiskey, but there are entirely fictional companies introduced in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul that show up in Pluribus. A big one is an airline called Wayfarer. Long story short, thanks to a chain of events set off by Walter White, a Wayfarer flight is involved in a midair collision at the end of the second season of Breaking Bad. And then, in the second episode of Pluribus, Carol travels around the world on a Wayfarer flight to meet a few of the other people who haven’t been absorbed into the hive mind.

Then there’s FionaCom, a telecom company we first learn about in Better Call Saul. In Pluribus, we see that Carol has a bill from FionaCom, perhaps for her cable or internet.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Vince Gilligan downplayed the importance of these little Easter eggs. “[W]e don’t want to necessarily be so literal that people think Breaking Bad starts on the other side of this,” he said. “We don’t want a crossover that makes it feel like these are two universes that are supposed to shine light on each other. It’s more, ‘Hey, isn’t this fun to see?'”

And they are fun to see. At the same time, they’re definitive enough that I don’t think fans are out of line concluding that they mean something more. After all, Wayfarer exists as an airline in exactly three places: on Breaking Bad, in Better Call Saul, and now on Pluribus. What other conclusions are people supposed to draw?

More connections are on the way

Is Jesse Pinkman part of the hive?

It sounds like there will be more crossovers in future episodes. The Hollywood Reporter hinted at “an incredible Easter Egg coming up that is loosely tied to Bad and Saul‘s Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (Laura Fraser),” so look out for that. And during a visit to The Rich Eisen Show, Vince Gilligan fielded a question about whether any “survivors” from Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul could show up on Pluribus, perhaps as part of the hive. “We might have some cameos,” he hinted.

If the likes of Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) or Skylar White (Anna Gunn) show up on Pluribus, I think it becomes all but impossible to deny that the show is set in the same universe as Breaking Bad. And even if Gilligan denies it anyway, at that point it might be out of his hands. At the end of the day, fans get to decide what a show means to them, and if they decide en masse that Pluribus is a sci-fi sequel to two of the greatest crime shows ever made, that’s the story history may remember.

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Let’s hear it for the fans

Even Gilligan sounds like he’s keeping an open mind. “Maybe we’ll discover that this is a prequel, but I would be surprised,” he told THR. Personally, I don’t think they’ll include actual characters from Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul in Pluribus; that feels like it would go too far. And obviously they’re not going to include Kim Wexler, the morally flexible attorney from Better Call Saul who, like Carol on Pluribus, was played by Rhea Seehorn. Regardless, there’s already enough here to make the case for all of these shows happening in the same universe, even if Pluribus never gives us the specifics.

Ultimately, it all adds up to fans having fun. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul were the kinds of shows that created super fans, because they were impeccably made, deeply felt, and filled with details to pick over. Hopefully Pluribus will have similar success, and then it won’t matter whether or not the shows share a universe; all that will matter is that they’re really, really good.

New episodes of Pluribus drop Fridays on Apple TV+, and if you can’t wait that long, there are plenty of other great sci-fi series out there for you to check out in the meantime. And if you’re looking for something a little closer to Breaking Bad, consider these detective series.