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Spoiler alert! The following contains details from the Season 1 finale of “Paradise.”
The biggest mystery is finally solved in the Season 1 finale of “Paradise,” Hulu’s post-apocalyptic thriller about the slice of humanity that survived a mass-extinction event in a bunker built by billionaires. We now know who killed President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), an act of violence that started to unravel the delicate balance of power and secrets in the underground town. But knowing isn’t the same as being satisfied. And the finale left us with a lot to be dissatisfied about.
That episode (now streaming) unmasked the killer, resolved a major crisis in the idyllic town and set our hero Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) on a mission to find his lost wife in Season 2. It was a lot, and it didn’t all come together despite a strong and intriguing start. Too bad all that momentum was lost when creator Dan Fogelman (“This Is Us”) answered all the questions.
The episode opened with a typical Fogelman flashback scene, as we meet one of the construction workers (Ian Merrigan) who built the Paradise bunker into the side of a Colorado mountain. He’s a standup guy, a manager who cares about his employees, has a big heart and always does the right thing. But when he points out a safety issue that could shut down the project, he’s fired and iced out by the Powers That Be. Soon he becomes obsessed with the bunker, with the requisite conspiracy-theory cork boards. We also learn he’s the man who attempted to assassinate Cal back before the supervolcano apocalyptic event, when Xavier took a bullet for the president. Wonder if that will ever be relevant again.
But then the episode shifts back to the present day, when a desperate Xavier has a gun trained on Samantha, aka Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), even as she has his daughter held hostage and proof that his wife is alive on the surface. She informs him Cal’s killer came from outside the bunker, and demands Xavier finally figure it out or he’ll never see his daughter again. So we’re right back to where the season started.
Robinson (Krys Marshall) and Dr. Torabi (Sarah Shahi) start looking for anomalies in the records of the Paradise residents’ arrivals, while Xavier retraces Cal’s footsteps on his last day. Torabi figures out that amiable diner waitress Maggie (Michelle Meredith) isn’t who she seems to be with some nut-allergy sleuthing. Maggie quickly fesses up to her subterfuge, but says she’s done it all because “he” made her. Who is he, you may ask?
Well, simultaneously, Xavier follows Cal’s path to the Paradise library where he’s knocked out by … Trent the Librarian! Yes, the awkward balding man was behind it all. No, seriously, we discover he’s the construction worker from the montage intro, who escaped prison on the day of the volcano (naturally) and found his way to the bunker, killed a guy he kinda looked like and snuck in with a woman he met a gas station. Once there, he decided to just enjoy his new privileged life until the day Cal walks into the library and reminds him that actually, he hates everyone in Paradise ― and especially Cal, whom he wrongly believes to be the mastermind of the entire Paradise plot. And to cap it off, we’re treated to an unnecessarily graphic flashback of Cal’s murder.
Trent tries to escape (to where? they’re in a closed system), but is eventually cornered by Xavier and Robinson in the rafters of the bunker. He dies by suicide, leaving Cal with a neat little report for Sinatra. But everyone’s favorite billionaire can’t tell Xavier where his daughter is, because she’s lost control of Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), her pet killer. Jane turned against Sinatra over a video game console, of all things, and shows up at the standoff between Sinatra and Xavier just in time to shoot Sinatra in the right spot to keep her alive but incapacitated.
So that’s where we’re left at the end of the season. Jane gets to keep her identity as a sleeper sociopath, Xavier gets to take a plane to the surface to find his wife and the rest of Paradise gets to handily ignore that the very fabric of their society almost collapsed.
It’s all hunky dory and cashew cheese fries going into Season 2. Except that this finale left too many loose ends dangling, solved mysteries incoherently and lost all dramatic propulsion from earlier episodes. It makes it hard to be excited about a second season. Are all the show’s villains going to turn out to be mild-mannered civil servants we’ve barely seen?
That’s not exactly the kind of shock and awe one would expect from a post-apocalyptic thriller. Let’s hope Xavier can save his wife ― and the show ― in a second season.
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