This article contains spoilers for "Pluribus" season 1, episode 6
The cliffhanger at the end of "Pluribus" season 1, episode 5 ("Got Milk") teased it, and this week confirms it: The liquid in the Others' milk cartons is people. Well, parts of it, at least. The huge discovery at the end of Carol Sturka's (the superb Rhea Seehorn) admittedly clever detective work is a gigantic cold storage where chopped-up human bits wait to become ingredients in a nutrient mulch, dispensed to members of the hive mind in handy milk cartons.
As /Film's Devin Meenan has pointed out, the show's hive-minded "pod people," Others, make Pluribus come across as a secret remake of the sci-fi classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The reveal that the hive mind has added human remains to its diet is a nod to another old-school science fiction great, "Soylent Green" (1973). Set in the distant future of the year, uh, 2022, Richard Fleischer's film stars Charlton Heston as Robert Thorn, a detective whose investigations lead him to the horrible truth behind the movie's corporate-controlled dystopia: that Soylent Green, the supposedly plankton-based food that's taking over as humanity's favored source of nutrition, is actually made from human remains.
Heston's desperate "Soylent Green is people!" remains one of the most iconic lines in science fiction, and Carol certainly treats the discovery with similar severity. Unbeknownst to her, of course, all the immune people who actually communicate with the Others already know about the situation, and it's not quite as ominous as it appears to be ... but the fact that Carol eventually gets the wind taken out of her sails doesn't make the initial reveal and the obvious "Soylent Green" homage any less effective.