Diksha Sundriyal
Xavier finally reaches Atlanta in the fifth episode of Hulu’s ‘Paradise’ Season 2. Since leaving the bunker in Colorado, he seemed to have one streak of bad luck after another, from his plane crash and his injury to Annie’s death. Somehow, he finds his way to Atlanta, but his wife is nowhere to be seen. A man, named Gary, tells him that he and Teri were each other’s best friends, but she has been taken from him by a group of yet unidentified unarmed people. In this episode, Xavier launches a plan to rescue his wife, while the flashbacks reveal how Teri survived the apocalypse and what really happened to her. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Xavier Prepares to Fight for Teri
Gary tells Xavier that a group of armed people stormed the shelter, where he spent the last few years with a group that includes Teri, and took everyone hostage about twelve days ago after one of their friends betrayed their location. When Xavier asks who the people are and why they took Teri and the others, Gary has no answers. Xavier is shown around the place where his wife had lived, and is taken to the broken radio through which she transmitted her message. Gary later takes him to the location where he says Teri is being held. It is a train track, and Xavier notes that the group of about sixteen people is not armed, but they are protecting something. Because he doesn’t have the ammunition or manpower to take sixteen people, he comes up with an idea to create a distraction to take them on. But for that, he needs some resources.
The group goes to a nearby place that has turned into a sort of trade center. When the seller sees that Xavier is carrying a gun and all the stuff he needs is for something shady, he refuses to be a part of anything nefarious and sends Xavier away. This is when two women, Jackie, aka Jack, and Crystal, show up. They are happy to see Gary, though he seems a little cautious of reuniting with them. It turns out that they were part of the original group, and they know all about Xavier. They are shocked to discover that Teri has been taken, but not shocked that it was Ennis who betrayed them. They talk about how much they admire Teri and her perseverance, mentioning that once, when she was bedridden due to her chronic back pain, she made them read stories to the young boy in their group.
This detail makes Xavier trust them, and he entrusts them with taking care of Annie’s baby, something he didn’t do with Gary. Jack and Crystal also persuade the seller to give Xavier what he needs because it is for Teri. Now that he has all the means to build a bomb and hence a distraction, Xavier and Gary move on to execute his plan. Before they go forward, Xavier points out that Gary is hiding something, and it would be better if he came clean about it before it’s too late. Gary takes a beat and then confesses that he is in love with Teri but she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings. He believes the best way he can help her now is by reuniting her with her family. This makes Xavier trust him as they shake hands. However, additional information reveals that Gary is not being entirely honest about what really happened to Teri.
The Story of Teri
Before the apocalypse, Gary was a mailman. In his spare time, he used to play video games, which is where he befriended a man named Ennis. Ennis told Gary about the conspiracy theory of the secret bunker in Colorado and the impending apocalypse. Their conversations about what they’d do in a hypothetical zombie apocalypse turn into a serious discussion about how to survive the real apocalypse. Ennis gathers a group of people, each of whom possesses the skill to help weather the apocalypse, like medicine, gardening, and engineering, while Gary finds the place where they will hide. It turns out that Gary’s post office used to be a nuclear fallout shelter, which makes it a perfect place to hide. Slowly, they start to stock up, and when the time comes, they are ready. As the tsunamis raze the Earth and nuclear missiles make their way to Atlanta, Gary decides to add two more people to the group.
The first person he rescues is Bean, a boy whose house Gary regularly visited to deliver mail, which is why he knew that his parents were drug addicts and in no position to take care of him. The other person he rescues is Teri, who first finds Bean, and is hesitant to leave the boy with a strange man. So, she accepts the invitation to join the group. Ennis is not happy about either of them because he thinks they will add nothing to the group and will just be another mouth to feed. After some initial hesitation and pondering the prospect of having lost her family, Teri decides to pull her weight with the group and helps them recover. As time passes, Earth becomes habitable once again, and the group rebuilds their little corner of the world. To cheer up Bean, Teri starts the ritual of celebrating Christmas. To make Teri happy, Gary builds a radio for her through which she can broadcast messages that will hopefully reach her family. He also confesses his feelings to her, and while she appreciates his feelings and his gift, she cannot love him back the way he loves her.
For two and a half years, she keeps sending the message, but then Ennis breaks her radio out of anger and jealousy towards her. This, however, makes her even more adamant about finding a way to Colorado. As time passes, the weather starts to clear. In the meantime, Teri finds a way to make biofuel, enough of which can help her drive a car to Colorado. Around the same time, Jack and Crystal get engaged and decide to move out, which gives more confidence to leave on her journey, joined by Bean. Watching the couple leave, Ennis remarks on how Teri, too, will leave soon enough and that Gary must prepare himself for the heartbreak when she finally leaves. Gary is unsettled by this, but he doesn’t have much time to think about it. Bean, who had been out exploring, reveals that a train is headed their way. Ennis and Gary decide to go see it for themselves and find out who the train people are and what they want from them.
Is Ennis Dead? Why does Gary Kill Him?
Ennis and Gary approach the train believing that the strangers are the bad guys. However, they turn out to be a part of the group led by Link. They reveal that they are going around shutting down nuclear devices, and they only stopped at this point because they need to refuel. Once that’s done, they will leave first thing for Colorado, which is where they are to reunite with their group. On their way back, Ennis is quick to find out that once Teri finds out the train is headed to Colorado. She will immediately jump at the chance. After all, this is what she wanted, and this is how she can be reunited with her family. He tells Gary that while she may have left a little later because she still doesn’t have enough biofuel to power her journey, the train’s presence changes all that because she doesn’t need biofuel anymore. She just needs to wait a few days, and she will be good to go.
Realising that Teri won’t know about the train until they tell her, Gary makes an impulsive decision and shoots Ennis. This scene shows that Xavier’s initial instinct about not trusting Gary had been right, and the mailman had been lying to him all along. We also see that Bean witnessed this murder, which means that there is a chance he found Teri and told her everything. Following this, Gary, who has the gun, may have forced Teri and Bean to stay with him, holding them hostage in some other part of the post office. Or, Teri acted quickly and escaped to the train, where she is now under the protection of the people of the train. This means Gary has duped Xavier into stopping his own wife’s plans. There is a good chance that he plans to kill Xavier once he has Teri and there is no opposition left against him. For now, Xavier trusts him, and that is clearly a huge mistake.
Read More: Is Annie Dead? Did Shailene Woodley Leave Paradise?
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