i have a lot of thoughts about carol and food and how it functions as being sort of symbolic of her character arc and relationship to the hive throughout the show:
the first time we see the hive serving carol food, or that we see carol sit down to eat at all, is during the lunch with the other survivors. koumba mentions his meal being like out of a memory, which is a recurring theme with the hive's food offerings. carol gets some kind of salmon dish it looks like, but we never see her eat any of it.
the next morning the hive offers food again, and again food from specific memories/moments in time. carol does not take them up on the offer.
next episode they send her more food from the past, and again she refuses to eat it.
after the sprouts montage we see carol eat an actual meal for, i think, the first time in the whole show. and it's a premade frozen meal, which she also has in episode 5. i think this is pretty symbolically significant: the only food she can stomach is something that was made pre-joining. not a recreation of her past by the hive, not something new made by her either, but something that was made in the world she knew before and which has been preserved. she's clinging to the past but not in the idealized way the hive offers.
in episode 4 and 6 we see manousos rejecting the hive's food as well, something he and carol have in common (for now). he too only eats food preserved from before the joining, in episode 4 the canned dog food, and in episode 6 the leftovers from his fridge.
in episode 6 carol eats food prepared for her by someone else for the first time, but it's from koumba, another individual. he shares his food with her, she shares her way of eating it with him. human connection, however small it may be in the grand scheme of things (and in the face of her loneliness).
in episode 7 carol breaks. just in general, but also specifically her self-imposed rule of not eating hive food. she gives in to their whole thing of recreating past memories through food, letting them use helen's memories specifically which is breaking another boundary she previously set with them. her resolve is cracking.
and then, at the end of episode 8, she is not only eating food the hive has made for her, she is literally cooking with them.
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