Paradise
A Holy Charge
Season 2
Episode 4
Editor’s Rating
Shailene Woodley’s powerhouse performance as Annie makes for Paradise’s most devastating hour yet.
Photo: Ser Baffo/Disney
Shailene Woodley is so good on this show. In what amounts to just two full episodes, Annie feels really layered and lived-in. To give us this arc of a woman who is so broken, yet so desperately wants to fight to trust other people, to love, to open herself up to the world, who is scared but trying, and to make it feel so believable so quickly, I mean, two-for-two knockout episodes right there. I was unprepared for being that moved by a two-episode-only character’s death — surprise! — and yet somehow should’ve known that between Woodley, Sterling K. Brown, and Sterling K. Brown’s otherworldly ability to allow tears to fall from his eyeballs with such impact, I stood no chance.
When Xavier finally comes to in the Jungle Room at Graceland after that knife to his gut, he’s still cuffed to the couch. Annie is providing excellent medical care, but she has not changed her mind on forcing this guy to ditch his plans to save his wife in Atlanta and instead take her to the Colorado bunker. But we know Annie enough to know that she isn’t inherently cruel. She operates mostly out of fear and an inability to trust other people. But as she gives Xavier two weeks to properly heal, the two begin to genuinely like each other. Sure, she is forever annoyed by his mansplaining pregnancy to her, but that’s really his worst offense.
Over a cup of tea, the two sit on the deck to watch the first real sunset Xavier’s seen in years. He tells her that he is going to Atlanta first before returning to Colorado. He is gentle, but you know he means it. She opens up to him about why she wants to go — that the baby’s father is there and he wanted her to go with him, but she was too scared. She has always been this way, only this time, she had a theme park to hole up in. Xavier knows what that’s like, especially with a kid on the way, but as scared as she feels now, when the baby is here and safe, she’ll find the joy in it all. As he talks about watching your kid splash in the pool or score a goal in soccer, Annie gets teary-eyed. At this point, we’ve seen her check her blood pressure with a concerned look, take a peek at her swollen feet, and now she’s holding back tears as Xavier talks about the future she’ll find happiness in as a mother. Now, maybe she is really crying because she knows her child is born into an actual hellscape and the only soccer they’ll be playing is with dead animal heads — these are legit fears. But eventually, we’ll realize these were all hints at Annie’s fate. For now, she simply admits that she’s been alone for so long and never trusted people, even before the world ended — her version of an apology for holding him hostage — and that they will go to Atlanta first to find his wife and then he’ll take her to Colorado. See? That wasn’t that hard. Just a little empathy and unwitting twisting of the knife for a pregnant lady who is grappling with her own imminent death!
The next morning, with one last deep breath, Annie rides her horse through the gates of Graceland and lets Xavier, on foot, lead the way. At their first pit stop to camp for the night, Xavier gets a look at Link’s student ID — so glad Link had the forethought to keep that handy little card — and recognizes him from the dream/memory/hallucination he’s been having repeatedly. In a new development, we learn Link is having the same exact one, though still no hints as to what it means. But thankfully, Xavier decides not to inform the incredibly pregnant, emotionally fragile woman with trust issues that he’s been hallucinating her boyfriend, whom he’s never met. The man can read a room. No, instead, Xavier continues to be the good guy he is — he makes sure Annie is well-covered and warm as she sleeps. The fact that he’s taking care of her, that he is probably one to be trusted, is not lost on her.
That doesn’t mean Annie is emotionally healed or anything. As they travel down a long dirt road, they see a Chevy-turned-covered wagon approaching. Annie is instantly on alert. She begs Xavier not to say anything to them. They don’t know what kind of people they are. They do look intimidating as they pass in silence — sure, there is a kid among them, but we know creepy kids abound in this new world order — but they don’t even pull their guns when Xavier goes dork dad and gives them a “howdy.” Dying over a “howdy” really would’ve been a bummer.
Before long, Annie is in pain, and Xavier has them make camp at an abandoned waffle diner, which, honestly, would be such a tease. Anyway, Xavier does stuff like teach Annie how to swaddle a bag of flour and give a speech about how joy really will come to her, even if it is surrounded by storms, that you can still protect yourself from the worst of people while believing in the best of them, that starts to sound less like Xavier Collins and more like Randall Pearson, which is concerning. But all of this is Xavier showing and telling Annie that there are good people out there.
Her water breaks the next morning, and Xavier realizes pretty quickly that they do not have the right supplies, nor can he get her through this alone. And when she makes the big reveal the episode has been setting up — that she has preeclampsia— well, he knows he is in over his head. Against Annie’s wishes, he bolts down the road toward the house that the wagon they passed by earlier was headed to. Even after a bit of a misunderstanding and a sick chokehold move by Xavier, just when you think Annie was right to believe everyone is terrible, Xavier returns to the diner with a whole group of women, led by Marie, ready to help Annie give birth. There are good people in the world. For a show about the end of the world and bunkers full of evil billionaires and their psycho henchmen, Paradise really is an optimistic show.
But “optimistic” doesn’t mean totally free from pain, and I’m sorry to inform you this one’s about to hurt like hell. The women successfully deliver Annie’s baby girl. She is perfect and healthy, and Annie looks like she feels the joy in that moment. But it doesn’t last. Just a few seconds with her daughter in her arms, she feels incredible pain and starts bleeding uncontrollably. The women try to help when her placenta won’t come out, but it only ends up hurting her more. Annie tells them to stop. She knew this is what would happen to her. She was ready for it. She manages to reach over and hand Xavier a note she wrote to her baby on a paper menu. She needs him to give it to her daughter. She needs him to find her baby’s father at the bunker. “You will not let her be afraid of people, promise me, Xavier.” He is still begging someone to help; he doesn’t understand that there is nothing they can do. An Ingrid Michaelson cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” plays — because Paradise loves to just lay it on thick (compliment) — and Xavier holds her until she dies there in his arms. Brown and Woodley are so incredible in this scene, I thought, maybe this show shouldn’t be about the bunker at all?
And so, Xavier is going to protect Annie’s baby. They bury Annie in a graveyard full of others who have been lost along the way. I hold back sobs over watching a horse stand by his best buddy’s grave. Xavier gets supplies from his new friends and chats with Marie, who tells him how we are all descended from survivors and that “our sins become our children’s burdens” and time is a flat circle or whatever. Life outside the bunker is wildly different from what’s going on deep in the ground of Colorado. Marie would fucking hate Samantha Redmond.
Speaking of the bunker and Samantha, throughout this entire episode, we also get flashbacks to five months post-Apocalypse when Xavier is witness to another birth — the first child born inside the bunker. Cal Bradford is jazzed. He can finally give people good news! This bunker baby will provide hope. Can they name the baby Hope? A bunker birth is much safer than one up top, and Luisa — who honestly seems well-adjusted for all the trauma she’s faced — gives birth to a healthy baby boy named Calvin. Samantha, who has been avoiding all the hoopla around this momentous occasion (dead son issues and all), eventually goes to visit Luisa to congratulate her, and even Samantha Redmond can’t resist the smell of a newborn baby. She offers to hang out with Calvin while Luisa takes a nap. Don’t worry, she still does some creepy Samantha stuff, like tell Calvin about how no one else knows this, but one day he will get to see the real sun and the real stars. She has a plan, she says. But she doesn’t give baby Calvin any deets on how quantum entanglement plays into that plan just yet, so we’ll have to wait a little longer for that reveal.
It seems like we may have more imminent issues than physics to deal with, though. We see Link lead a rather large group right up to the entrance of the bunker and go evil Love Actually on its ass. He wants to speak to their leader, and he’s asking nicely, for now. How far is Link willing to go to “kill Alex”? Surely, we’ll find out the answer to that question before this is all through.
And how far is Xavier willing to go to save Teri? That question might get an answer much sooner than the former. Xavier straps on that baby, gets on Annie’s horse, and makes it all the way to the location he tracked Teri’s radio signal. But he does not find Teri in what looks to be a post office, possibly? Instead, he finds a man who knows exactly who he is and knows Teri, too. He tells Xavier, who both has that baby strapped to his chest and is now brandishing his weapon at the guy, that Teri is his best friend, his favorite person left in this world — and she was taken from him. So, I guess this trip to Atlanta will be a little longer than expected.
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