That’s really fine. I personally get what the show is doing, in that it is all about understood knowledge, and misunderstood knowledge. The They/We aren’t super human, they aren’t deific in any way. They just know everything that the we knows. How to make a domino’s pizza, how to fly a plane, how to do brain surgery… etc. But the We prefers, defaults, to internal communications and understanding, not external interfaces. So for me, it all adds up that from Carol’s perspective the We is wholly other and different. It probably is “DEEPENED” understanding, but it isn’t focusing on sharing said insight or collected knowledge. It isn’t a loss of soul, but rather a loss of a desire at communicating said soul.

Just my two cents. But ultimately, I predict that the reason this is setup this way is because that is the point of the problem, and the point of the conflict arc. Carol is in this situation for one goal only and that is to figure out how to extract one human (Zosia?) from the hive. Hey, Zosia might get extracted only to have her cry in disappointment. Right now, Carol assumes she’ll cry in relief, but she might be wrong. We don’t know. And that is the larger goal and point of the show, and the question that is outstanding and waiting for an answer. Is collectively shared experience the euphoric experience its cracked up to be? Or is a bumpy, chaotic, individualized consciousness the real gift?

I don’t understand why a collective mind (or a collective memory) is portrayed as emotionally empty. If anything, shared consciousness should deepen experience, not flatten it. A hive made of real human minds wouldn’t lose emotional depth. It would gain it. Grief, memory, empathy. These should become richer when shared, not reduced to sterile replicas. The show treats collective intelligence like a bureaucratic database instead of an emergent consciousness, and it leans on a familiar Cold War trope that equates collectivism with the loss of soul. It’s a missed opportunity for something far more complex and compelling. And apart from my annoyance with Karen-Carol, the stereotyped characterisation across the cast doesn’t seem to offer much promise of nuance.