This post contains spoilers for Pluribus season one, episode six. You can’t see them unless you continue reading. You also can’t understand that reference until you watch the episode.
The underlying story of Pluribus is absolutely terrifying. Rhea Seehorn’s Carol is obviously right to be horrified by what’s happened to humanity, which is now guileless and completely vulnerable to a possible alien invasion. …..But……….if everyone else on Earth turned into a singular hive mind obsessed with making us happy at any and all costs, we’d be tempted to go the Koumba Diabaté route, too. He’s having fun! He’s living the high-life via the most extravagant role-playing game ever. Diabaté also knows that a seven billion people sharing a single brain means he knows everyone on the planet. Everyone.
That’s how he helped Pluribus delivered one of the year’s funniest TV cameos. Because whether you want to learn how to do a sunset flip powerbomb or you need someone to explain why the hive mind is eating people on Pluribus, there’s no one better for either job than John Cena.
Carol’s shock at finding human remains at a food processing plant quickly gave way to an even bigger surprise: Diabaté already knew. The hive mind already told him and the other survivors about “Human Derived Protein” and why it’s necessary to mankind’s survival. The enjoined are using the remains of dead people in its calorific drink served in milk cartons. The hive mind need human remains because it won’t harm any living thing. In addition to not killing any animals, it won’t pluck wheat, fruit, and vegetables. As a result, most of mankind will starve to death in ten years. And it’s this cannibalism revelation on Pluribus that leads us to a John Cena as John Cena cameo.
The bizarre alien virus that ended violence, inequality, and every other human ill also turned malnutrition into a global condition. Because the enjoined won’t eat an apple unless it falls from a tree, every person on Earth will starve to death. And a smiling John Cena told us all about it on Pluribus. Yes, John Cena plays himself on Pluribus, but himself as part of the Hive Mind collective.
Diabaté knows Carol is, on some level, right. But unlike her, he’s willing to at least see if this virus is a good thing….for everyone else. He told her in this episode the enjoined can’t make any of the survivors join them without their consent, which he refuses to give. Why would he? He’s having too much fun being an individual the whole world caters to. He immediately understood the possibilities posed by the hive mind. The existence of the enjoined, a planet-wide singularity, gives him access to literally everyone and everything on Earth.
That’s….amazing! Terrifying, yes, but amazing. The possibilities of what the hive mind can offer are endless. That’s why he arrived to the meeting with Carol in Air Force One. Diabaté also realized he could have John Cena teach him wrestling moves. And since the former WWE champ was already on hand, the affable, charming Cena was the perfect option to deliver horrifying news to Carol on Pluribus.
This John Cena appearance was a perfect cameo that captured the inherent fun of the strange world of Pluribus. Of course, this was all possible only because John Cena is now part of a hive mind. And we don’t just mean because of the existence of the enjoined. It’s because if John Cena were still an individual named John Cena, Carol and Diabaté wouldn’t be able to see him.
The time for that is now.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He’d ask the hive mind to finish The Winds of Winter. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.