Balancing on a knife edge
This show has to stay perfectly balanced between the hive being good and being bad. If we learn that the hive is evil, then it becomes like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or any number of other sci-fi tropes where the goal is to destroy the aliens and then the show's over because we've seen all that before. If the hive looks exactly like what they say it is, people who join are still there but now expanded by the thoughts of everyone else and they experience bliss, well then it would be hard to see why Carol didn't go for it, she is literally the loneliest person in the world at this point and they have exactly the cure for that. At that point it's virtually impossible to keep going - if Carol joins, the show's over, and if she becomes unjoined then either she wants to get back to being joined, which is the second scenario, or she knows what's wrong with it, which is the first scenario. Which is why they don't even have her ask whether there's a way for her to try it out.
So they have to stay balanced in between where you think the hive might be the real deal but they keep doing things that make you question that, but then redeem themselves.