Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Hulu’s ‘Paradise’ expands its post-apocalyptic world by adding more characters and mysteries into the mix. The previous season ended with the revelation of the truth behind President Cal Bradford’s death, while also sending Xavier out of the bunker in Colorado and on his way to finding his wife, Teri, who is revealed to be alive. Before taking us back to the bunker or showing us where Xavier is headed, the show takes a turn back to the pre-apocalypse world and introduces us to new characters who will play an important part in the journey forward. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Anne of the Post-Apocalyptic Graceland
When Annie was little, her mom got sick and later died by suicide by swallowing some pills. The trauma stayed with Annie even in her adulthood, where she tried to become a doctor. A panic attack led her to drop out of it, and the only safe space that she could think of was Graceland. As a child, she used to regularly go on tours of Graceland because her mother was an Elvis fan. Now, the place becomes her saving grace as she is employed as a tour guide. After spending many happy days there, especially as she bonds with the guard who gave her the job, Annie starts to find her happiness again. But then, the apocalypse arrives, and Annie and her friend hide in the bunker inside the house. This is where they stay as the world freezes under the ash cloud, and after a month or so, Annie’s friend passes away due to the cold and a wound she got on the first day that never healed.
Fortunately, stocked up on resources, Annie survives the next 600 days or so, which is also when sunlight finally comes back. All this time, she had kept an eye on the outside world through the telescope in Graceland’s balcony. But now, the world has come knocking at her door. When a group of men arrives in the building, she hides. They find her, and logically, she is scared of them. But they turn out to be friendly. One of them is a young man named Link, with whom Annie forms a strong bond. It turns out that the group has been going around shutting down nuclear reactors, which are disasters waiting to happen when there is no one running them anymore. Having company heals Annie, and she and Link end up sharing an intimate night. This is when he tells her that they are going to Colorado, where there is a bunker with all the supplies in the world. But what they really want is something very dangerous that has been kept hidden there.
Link doesn’t specify what that thing is, but he does ask Annie to come with him. In the morning, he hears a resounding no when she refuses to come out of her room. Link desperately begs her to come with him, but his team tells him to move on, reminding him of what is at stake. It is mentioned that they are going to find and kill Alex, but nothing is elaborated upon. Anyway, Link and the group leave, and Annie is left alone, or so she thought. A few months later, we see a heavily pregnant Annie, who watches a plane crash at a distance. She decides to check it out and finds a wounded Xavier, which is where we catch up with the ending of Season 1.
Xavier Goes into Survival Mode
When Xavier flew the plane out of the bunker, he thought he would be headed straight to Atlanta. But a hailstorm changes his plans when the plane crashes in the middle of nowhere. Before going down, he sends out a message to anyone who is hearing it, but he addresses it to Teri, telling her the children are safe in the bunker, whose location he also broadcasts along with the message. He is found by a group of children who seem helpful, but they are hiding from the raiders who won’t be so amicable towards a man who came flying in out of nowhere. The children patch him up a little, but they also steal the map he needs to get to his wife. The raiders make it more difficult for him to get back on track, and an incident where he has to fight off a raider leaves him even more injured.
The children come to the rescue again. They patch him up and take him back to their hiding place. He pleads with them to give him his stuff back, mentioning the reason behind his quest, so they do it. He decides to get back on his journey, which means going back to the plane, but he is too battered to even think clearly, and this is when Annie finds him. She takes him back to Graceland, where she handcuffs him, patches him up, and asks him questions. A disoriented Xavier talks about his family and the bunker. When he comes to, he expresses his desire to go to Atlanta to find his wife, but now that Annie knows the bunker is real, she tells him to take her there because she wants to be reunited with the father of her child. Also, she has a gun, so Xavier has no choice in the matter. Parallel to this, we get a flashback of Xavier while he was still in training for the secret service. He got injured and was sent to the hospital, where the patient next to him turned out to be Teri, who would eventually become his wife.
Another Day of Murder in Paradise
Before Xavier left, he had to take the blame for the rebellion, as well as for shooting Sinatra. He thought he was doing the latter as a favor to his friend, Jane, who he still doesn’t know is one of the more dangerous people down there. Anyway, now Xavier is gone, and Jane is promoted. Nicole, on the other hand, has been demoted, but that hasn’t fazed her. She is spending her time looking after Xavier’s children and continuing to follow her instincts, which tell her that something is off with Jane. Seeing that Sinatra has recovered from her wounds, so much so that she can speak again, Jane visits her to assess the situation, but Sinatra claims to have no memories of the traumatic time. That is good enough for Jane, who is now working right alongside the new President Henry Baines, who has cracked down when it comes to implementing the rules. He is not ready to let any voice of dissent create any problems, which means Jeremy and his growing following pose a problem.
We also get a flashback to when Sinatra talked to the scientist who first talked about the exploding volcano and the upcoming apocalypse. It turns out that he knew the world would go back to normal in a couple of years, and it is likely that a lot of people will live to see that day. However, that is not the end. The climate will undergo another drastic change when the heat will evaporate the oceans, and the pressure itself will crush people to death. That will be when they’ll hope they died the first time around. But that’s not the only critical information we receive. It turns out that a scientist is working on a technology that Sinatra wants to use to build the bunker. The scientist won’t give it up, so she hires a trained killer, Billy, to do it. The scientist anticipated his death, so he is not scared of Billy, but he does ask the assassin to spare “the boy,” and Billy does as asked. The said boy turns out to be Link, which puts a lot of things about him from the first episode in perspective.
When Billy gives the update to Sinatra, she asks how she can get him to do a job the next time. He says the code “breath mint” will be in enough, along with the name and the picture of the target. In the present, we see Sinatra tell Jane about giving someone a breath mint, and the victim turns out to be the President. Jane effortlessly kills him, and she finds a patsy as well. It seems Nicole got a bit too close to the sun when she found Jane’s file, which mentioned CIA. Jane caught on to her suspicion and killed two birds with one stone by framing Nicole for Baines’ murder. Elsewhere, Jeremy is taken into a prison, several floors down, but he is not the only one there. It turns out that the man who designed the whole place is also being held captive there, and now that Jeremy has found him, he wants the man to tell him how to blast down the gates. The episode also mentions Alex when Sinatra asks her not-really-a-maid about how Alex has been doing. Interestingly, no pronouns are used to confirm whether Alex is a person or the name of yet another project Sinatra had been secretly cooking all this time.
Read More: Who Killed Cal Bradford?
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