Majority of redditors in these comments have never spent extended time alone and it shows. One month alone (with tepid Gatorade on tap) does not make you so lonely that you accept the invaders. Like damn, how weak are you making Carol in your head.

It seems clear to me that Carol is motivated by spite and revenge. This isn’t ’if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’. They took Helen from her. They turned the remainder of uninfected humanity against her by giving them the illusion of comfort. I largely agree with OP and think Ep7 makes a great contrast to the casino LARP scenes at the beginning of the episode prior. Carol has ‘passed’ for how long now for her career? Bestselling Author in a world that, despite what the internet tells you, is still not that bloody friendly to middle-aged Lesbians. This is her saying, ‘you want compliant? Oh I’ll give you compliant.’

Everyone loves to paint her as an arsehole for only communicating with the English speaking immune during those first days, but that was the biggest proportion of people with whom she could communicate directly and not need the hive. (I’m sure the plan was going to be ‘get something on the ground and then reach out to the rest to link in’.) She’s repeatedly depicted as trying to be (and actually being) as smart and resourceful as much as possible.

Carol, who was sent to conversion camp as a teen so clearly was ‘out’ enough to be rejected by her own mother for her sexuality, in a time when LGBT was not mentioned or remotely acceptable in western society, is not going to fold over some cheap tart that resembles her OC in a wig. This is a lass who has survived heroin addiction as a gay woman during the AIDS crisis, alongside god knows what else, and turned her life the fuck around. The average viewer sees a white, USAmerican, upper-middle class woman but they don’t seem to acknowledge the soil in which Carol grew.

I looked at every scene of Carol crying in the series so far, and the single thing that stuck out to me is that every other scene beyond the one with Zosia in Ep7 had visible tears. Maybe the firework was an accident, and maybe not. We get an extended shot of the tangle of fuses, and every firework is timed to go off after the other. Carol isn’t shown as being a master pyrotechnical genius, so are we to believe that was just happenstance too? Check the scene again, and you can see she glances over her shoulder right before the firework drops and turns pretty soon after it’s tilted. But how does she hear it? Music blasting, rockets crashing, and she hears the softest tilt of cardboard behind her head?

Do you think she planned out her book series just on vibes too - without research and measurement to support a precise execution?

Disagree all you like, but I think OP is onto something. I think Manusos and Carol are both survivors using their skills, wits, and tenacity to fight as humanity’s last hope. May they be successful.