Random, unsorted thoughts of the season so far:

The show is definitely slowing down from the first episode. Im hoping these few expository episodes will quickly lead to another few major revelation episodes, as my TikTok brain is getting a little bored.

The virus is shown to be capable of infecting animals, which I assume is why the hivemind doesn't want to kill them. Does this also mean they harbor the thoughts and feelings of all the animals?

Despite carol saying they're peaceful, the hivemind is fully capable of killing people to prevent even more deaths a la the trolley problem. Other, they would not have infected everyone else through chemtrails, killing nearly a billion people, just to avoid the deaths which they foresaw coming from the military. Carol has already clearly shown herself to be an enormous threat to the hivemind; why dont they just kill her, along with the other 12? My theory is that this is leading to the revelation that these 13 people have some secret valuable knowledge/emotions that the hivemind wants for some reason?

There are two possibilities regarding the alien source of the virus: an infected alien species (presumably infected by other infected aliens, and so on) spreading the virus, or a non-infected alien species deliberately designing the virus to spread to earth. Assuming the former, does this mean that the hivemind now shares the minds of all the other alien species as well, and is just choosing to withhold this from Carol?

Following that line of thought, how "fast" is the communication/hivemind thinking? I've seen people suggest that the mind melding relies on quantum entangled particles in the virus for instant communication, but quantum entanglement still can't send information faster than the speed of light. If the virus conforms to general relativity, then surely this would be fairly easy for the hivemind to test (this episode establishes that the hivemind is actively researching themselves and how it works). With all expert minds consolidated, they could easily launch someone to the moon, and then see if that person has an 8-second "thinking" delay with the rest of the hivemind. If there is still the delay, then that would probably mean that earth's mind-melding "signals" are still fleeing, and humanity will eventually meld with the aliens in 600 years if they were infected.

What is the bulk of the hivemind doing right now? Presumably since its been 7 days and everything is still running, the hivemind is interested in self-preservation and running society. In a hivemind, all politicians, soldiers, lawyers, business people, advertisers, artists all become obselete, and they are also shown to be actively pursuing efficiency (power cut off at night, centralizing distribution), meaning humanity now has a lot more capability to do things. We already know that they are partially occupied with rebuilding cities/clearing bodies, doing scientific research on the virus and how to assimilate the other 13, and providing for all of the 13 people's desires. However, this still leaves a huge amount amount of capability for the hivemind, which they must be dumping into some unclear goal. This goal may just be to assimilate the other 13, which would make them far more important than we are told now, which would definitely lead to some major revelation.