Diksha Sundriyal
After giving the audience a tour of the Earth’s surface and revealing how people managed to survive the apocalypse, Hulu’s ‘Paradise’ takes a break to explain the life of perhaps one of the most intriguing characters in the show. The episode begins with a flashback to May 1997. A man receives a cryptic email telling him that a killer will be born at the stroke of midnight on June 6th. But she can be stopped. While the man tries to ignore the message, the notifications keep coming from his email to his pager, so much so that it becomes impossible not to take the message seriously. Sure enough, when he arrives at the hospital on that day, he sees a mother leaving the hospital with her baby, who, it turns out, was born on the exact date and time from the message. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Origin Story of Jane
The man from the opening scene tries to tell the mother about the message he is supposed to relay, but, not surprisingly, he is considered a madman and the woman brings her daughter home. Even before the man showed up outside the hospital, the woman had shown signs of not liking her baby, and this continued over the years. The daughter, Jane, develops peculiarities, like talking to an imaginary friend, when she is already well past that age, and locking up her mother and her boyfriend in the sauna and cranking up the temperature. The fact that her mother has been cold-hearted towards her since she was born doesn’t help either. Eventually, this girl grows up to be Jane, stirring all sorts of trouble in the bunker.
As the flashbacks continue, we see a grown-up Jane training at the Farm as a CIA agent. Her task is to successfully escape her armed captor, but despite her best efforts, she fails. So, her boss, who runs the program, calls to chat with her and understand why she is failing. Jane starts talking about her difficult childhood and how she sometimes hears voices, believing this might be what’s holding her back. However, her boss disregards all that and teaches her a meditation technique that will help her calm her mind, slow things down, and look at the things in front of her with a keener eye. In the next test, the trick works. From here, Jane’s training soars, and the path is paved for her redacted career in the CIA.
She is also deeply grateful to her mentor, but her loyalty runs so far that when she discovers her mentor lost her well-deserved promotion to a man, she attacks him and cuts off his manhood to bring it to her mentor as a gift, because now she will get the promotion. She carries this sense of loyalty to the Colorado bunker, but this time, it is directed towards Sinatra. With the new President dead, the keys to the kingdom are in Sinatra’s hands now, whose biggest issue at the time is the group of people, led by Link, standing at the doors of the bunker, demanding an audience. At the board meeting, she shares her plan with the members, who are shocked to discover that people are still alive out there. Gabriela leaves the meeting in protest, but the rest of the board gives Sinatra full autonomy to handle the situation however she likes.
Jane Negotiates With Link
Sinatra’s idea is to start with a negotiation, so she calls Jane. Before they move further, they have to have an honest conversation. Without beating around the bush, she asks Jane why she said Sinatra was no use to her if she were dead. Jane says that without Sinatra, she would have no one to direct her actions, and Jane needs that. With Sinatra dead, she wouldn’t know who to work for and be loyal to, so she needed her alive. This sounds like a good enough reason to Sinatra, and she tells Jane that she needs to go out the door to negotiate with Link and his group. Jane’s hesitation about going back to the surface appears for a moment, but she is glad she is the only one Sinatra can trust.
She observes the group for a minute before she goes in, projecting the air of someone who seems harmless. But she breaks the illusion just as easily when she holds one of the men at gunpoint, forcing Link to come out in the open. The negotiation begins with her asking him to come alone and unarmed to the bunker with her. He asks to bring ten armed men, but eventually agrees to bring five unarmed men, along with getting a piece of apple pie. After getting arrested for the President’s murder, Robinson is taken to the prison, where she notices Jeremy cosying up with Anders and discussing a plan to open the doors of the bunker. At first, she keeps her distance, but then, she watches them being too obvious and tries to tell him that they will be caught.
Jeremy mocks her by calling her a side piece and continues to plan the escape. Anders reveals that the only way they can open the doors is by shutting off the oxygen in the bunker, which will lead the doors to open automatically. To shut it off, they will need access to the tunnels beneath, but the entrances have been sealed. There is only one place from which they can enter the tunnels, but the window to access it is pretty small. Still, this is a chance they must take. So, when everyone is asleep and the guards are otherwise occupied, they make a run for it. As Robinson predicted, a guard finds them. But fortunately for them, Robinson shows up just in time to attack the guard and render him unconscious. If she cannot stop Jeremy from acting, she can join him.
Gabriels Tries to Find Alex
Interestingly, the President’s son isn’t the only one Robinson helps. Earlier that day, Gabriela shows up to meet with her. Ever since the events of the Season 1 finale, she has been trying to understand more of what is going on in the bunker. In the previous episode, she overheard Sinatra’s conversation and heard the name “Alex.” She tries to find a mention of the word in their previous sessions, but it only reminds her of when things used to be fun and friendly between them, when they could trust each other. In another conversation, Sinatra tells her she has to do bad things to save others, but she doesn’t mention what those bad things are. Because she cannot ask Sinatra about Alex, she comes to Robinson, wondering if Cal ever mentioned it.
He didn’t, and Robinson also mentions that Sinatra is not the one they should be scared of. It’s Jane who has been making sure Sinatra is able to do whatever she wants. This leads Gabriela to confront Jane, whose fixation on Sinatra has increased, especially after Sinatra gifts her a vintage game that she loves. Gabriela tells Jane that she is going to find out what Sinatra is doing and stop her at all costs. And Jane makes it clear that to get to Sinatra, Gabriela will have to get through her. Elsewhere, Presley starts to get impatient about the increasing number of missing people. Her father is gone, Robinson has been arrested for murder, and Jeremy is nowhere to be seen either. She doesn’t know how to find out what happened to them.
Gary Betrays Xavier
Because Presley cannot ask Sinatra, she tries the next best thing: her daughter, Hadley, who has no idea what Presley is talking about, including the fact that her mother is Sinatra. Concerned about the fact that people are going missing, Hadley decides to ask her mother, who feigns ignorance about the whole thing but promises to do something about it. The fact that Hadley is not convinced is confirmed by the fact that later that night, she texts Presley that she will join her in her quest for truth. Meanwhile, Xavier prepares to attack the group that he believes has Teri.
He plans to distract the armed guards by blowing up something that is at a distance so no one gets hurt, but it is also close enough to attract their attention. He tells Gary to stay behind and keep an eye on the guards. The plan is for Xavier to set the bomb, return to where Gary is, trigger the explosion, and then use the distraction to find Teri. As he plants the bomb, he looks at the last picture taken of his wife and tells Gary, over the walkie-talkie, that, in case he dies, Gary must find Teri and tell her their kids are in Colorado and protect her at all costs.
As Gary says, protecting her is what he’d wanted all along. Xavier’s eyes fall on Gary in the picture, who is looking at Teri. Right as he gets a hint of what might be happening, Gary says he’s sorry and triggers the bomb. Xavier manages to throw the bomb away, but he is still close enough to be thrown back by the impact. As everyone comes running towards him, he sees Teri in the crowd. Clearly, she is not being held captive and is with the group voluntarily, which means they are not the bad guys. Gary is.
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