Notes from Sony and Apple executives led to the “atomic” end scene of the “Pluribus” season finale. Studio executives thought the episode had a dull ending, which led to an “explosive” change to the ending.
At the end of the last episode of the season finale, which was released on Christmas Eve, the show’s main protagonist “Carol,” played by Rhea Seehorn, landed in a helicopter that was toting a large crate that was placed in front of her home, courtesy of “The Others.” The crate contains an atom bomb, seemingly proving their assertion in an earlier episode that they would indeed hand over a bomb to her if she requested one.
That ending was not the originally filmed closing scene, according to Gordon Smith, a screenwriter, executive producer, and director for the episode speaking to The Ringer.
“We had a much subtler ending,” admits Smith. Originally, it was meant to have something “like a secret handshake” between Carol and another character, “Manousos,” agreeing to work together.
However, Apple and Sony executives had notes about the ending, telling showrunner Vince Gilligan that the ending wasn’t quite right for such an ambitious show. Gilligan admits that it was “a great note,” albeit one with great expense.
This isn’t the first time studio executive have “had notes” about Apple TV shows. The premature end of “The Problem with Jon Stewart” was at least partially due to Apple’s notes over planned guests for the show, as well as urging Stewart to avoid specific discussion topics, related to China and artificial intelligence that were causing concern among Apple executives. (China is makes up a large portion of Apple’s revenue.)
Apple also provided notes to the producers of “The Studio,” pushing back on plans to have several celebrity cameos throughout the first season of the popular and award winning series. However, the production was able to pull off most of the cameos it wanted to include.