One thing Paradise is going to do is end its season on a cliffhanger.
If you thought this season would end without one last puzzle for us to ponder during the hiatus, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Paradise packs as much as possible into every hour, and I imagine the powers that be cackle in their lair as we obsess over theories, looking like that gif of Charlie Day smoking and analyzing his conspiracy board.
At the end of Paradise Season 2 Episode 8, my first instinct was to pause and take a breath; so much happened that it felt busy rather than satisfying.
After the events of Paradise Season 2 Episode 7, the bunker was on the verge of collapse. While there were reunions to be had and questions to be answered, much of the hour still centered on the bunker’s collapse, connecting the chaos of the previous episode to the current one.
Anders was blown to hell and killed, while Presley and Hadley were still stuck in that elevator. And all this was happening as Link and crew were mounting their attack on the city.
Attack may not be the perfect word, but they arrived with tanks and a mission, so it fits.
For a show that often hinges on tension, there wasn’t a whole lot in this one, because with the lingering thoughts of time travel out there, it was difficult to imagine many people being in true danger.
And maybe that was the wrong approach to take into the episode, because it certainly wasn’t true.
The time travel aspect loomed large over this one, and our final flashback of the season took us to Caltech and the very first time Henry and Link met. Through this flashback, we discovered Link was the one who created the first prototype of what would become the infamous Alex.
I’ve said before that I’m not an authority on time travel. Even after watching many such stories, it’s possible to enjoy them without fully grasping the mechanics.
I’d actually venture to say that a well-done time travel story is the one that allows everyone to get it, making it digestible enough to appeal to a wider audience.
Paradise doesn’t quite do that, but learning about the AI’s creation and Samantha’s role brought more clarity to the story.
Essentially, Alex had become something that couldn’t be controlled, have Henry tell it. And you could absolutely see why.
You’re working on the fastest computer to ever exist, and suddenly you’re noticing that this entity you built was doing things not only that it shouldn’t be able to do, but also things it wasn’t being told to do.
Henry’s effort to shut it down now makes sense, as does Samantha’s determination to control Alex.
Finding out it had been stored some 100 miles away under the Denver airport, and not activated to this point, almost feels like she was keeping it there for a rainy day.
And that day finally arrived.
The idea of seeing Dylan being the first anomaly Samantha recognized is wild when you think about it. And it begets the bigger question of how her dead son could be alive in the same universe as she is.
I’m assuming here that Alex is essentially a ridiculously intelligent AI that can see into the future, but that comes with the aforementioned anomalies. They can also apparently manipulate time.
So, is this a case where there are multiple universes, and Alex has manipulated time to bring people from different universes into this one? Or are there just multiple timelines, and there’s a glitch that has caused them to converge?
It’s probably neither of those things because what am I actually talking about! But even if I don’t know the answer, it’s all intriguing nonetheless.
The real meat and potatoes of this one were the reunions between various people and the chaos of getting everyone out of the bunker. As a result, this hour may have been the most interesting some of these characters have ever been.
Gabriela, for starters, has come into her own during Paradise Season 2. No longer being misted by Samantha, she stepped up when no one else in that place was willing to do so, and she did it all while Jane’s blood was seeping into her shirt.
There were some wonderful Samantha moments this hour, which we’ll get to, but I absolutely loved the one with the two of them in the tower when Gabriela just admitted that she killed Jane.
The bunker was literally imploding all around them, and what’s a little murder confession when you’re watching the world come down around you for the second time?
Samantha had this odd calmness about her the whole hour, especially considering she knew she was going to die, but that’s also who Samantha Redmond has always been at her core.
When everything is going to hell, someone has to step up and be the person that everyone looks to. Samantha has always been that person, even if she wasn’t the outward face of it.
So, with the bunker in freefall, her attitude was completely on-brand. Her welcoming Xavier back to the bunker like she didn’t try to ruin his whole life ten times over during Paradise Season 1? Of course!
We’ve been robbed of that delicious banter between Samantha and Xavier this season, and even though it was brief here, it was wholly welcome.
These two have a ton of history and heavy animosity on Xavier’s end, but there’s also a deep respect on Samantha’s end for the one man in that place who, as she said, was a decent person.
At his core, Xavier’s a hardworking, kind, and generous human being. And for as flawed and borderline evil as Samantha could be, even she could see the beauty in someone like that.
I couldn’t figure out at first why Presley and Hadley were randomly paired up this deep into the series when they had never been together before, but it was solely to force Samantha and Xavier to team up and save them.
The only time Samantha’s ever rattled is when it comes to her children. And while I kept thinking she’d do something during this hour to tip back into her supervillain era, as the hour went on, I realized she’d come to terms with the end.
Link and his friends coming to help Samantha and Xavier pull the girls out of the elevator shaft was a nice touch, as it finally brought us into the dream sequences we’ve seen both Xavier and Link have. However, I won’t lie, everything with Link this hour felt super rushed.
Since Paradise Season 2 Episode 1, we’ve been building toward Link getting into the bunker and destroying Alex, yet once it was seemingly right at his fingertips, Big Papi was there to speak reason. How rude!
The bottom line was truly that the bunker melting down, as everyone was so ominously reminded in the towers, basically meant the end of everything. So, Big Papi was right, but he lost his life trying to do the right thing.
Link was so scatterbrained, but he and his friends jumping right in to help Xavier and Samantha shows the kind of people they are at their cores, which was good. But boy did I want a bigger moment between Xavier and Link than him stepping in front of Link’s gun so he wouldn’t shoot his maybe mother.
We kept seeing those dreams all season, and I loved the moment of recognition on Xavier’s face when the dreams came to him, as well as the realization that he was going to fulfill Annie’s wish.
And I just wish the whole scene had a little more time to breathe.
The last 20 minutes of the episode were just hit after hit. So much so that even Samantha straight-up telling Link that he was her son got such little reaction because there was entirely too much happening.
Link couldn’t even process Annie’s death in the moment or the fact that he had a daughter because he had to haul ass out of that bunker.
The nosebleeds also came back between Xavier and Link, and I may have to officially give up on figuring out what they mean because I do not get it. They have something to do with Alex, but are the people experiencing them in the wrong timeline?
Are they from the future?
We obviously didn’t get that answer, but we did get one last scene between Xavier and Samantha, and I knew from the beginning that whatever Alex put together with the coordinates and dates was meant for Xavier.
Xavier is at the center of ALL of this.
There was never a doubt that he would get out of the bunker before it imploded, but for some reason, I assumed he’d go right to the other bunker and to Alex. But it seems that will be a story for Paradise Season 3.
From what I can glean, Xavier will be tasked with saving the world, something Samantha believes he’s already done. And thus, he would be able to prevent everything they just went through from happening.
But where is the satisfaction in that?
There’s no point in dwelling on something that may never happen, but the idea that we may be in for an ending that takes us back to the beginning and erases everything we’ve just been through fills me with dread.
Samantha’s long walk through her life’s work was a poignant ending for her story, at least as we currently know it. As the bunker fell around her, she went to the place where she could be reunited with Dylan, and it was a moving moment.
Samantha will make you crazy, but so much of what informed her decisions and who she was centered around Dylan’s death. It was the defining moment of her life, and it was poetic justice for her to go down with it.
The beauty of Paradise has always been in its ability to make you think and feel. And the finale certainly did that, though it wasn’t nearly as strong as the hours that preceded it.
But if there’s one thing we can confidently say now, it’s that nothing we’ve seen is set in stone.
Paradise has always asked the big questions, and perhaps the biggest one we’re facing right now isn’t whether Xavier will save the world, but whether he should.
Thinking Twice About These Paradise Details
- Robinson getting her big moment to declare her love for Cal, only to think she was going to die, and then Jeremy coming back for her was a really sweet moment. Jeremy can be so very annoying, but he has a good heart.
- All of the reunions with Teri were very lackluster. Someone had to say it!
- Season 3 will definitely have Teri discovering that Xavier and Gabriela had a little fling. It won’t matter because Xavier and Teri are soulmates in every timeline, but it will bring a little drama, I’m sure.
- The way Link showed such little reaction to Samantha revealing she was his mother was baffling
- So, Jane is alive, right? They showed us that empty shower for a reason!
- Annie’s baby, now just called Annie, was really sweet. If we ARE fixing things, bring back Annie!
There are still 83354729 questions floating around, and since we have no idea when the next season is coming, there is plenty of time to hypothesize!
It has been so much fun chatting about this season all season, and I can’t wait to hear what you all thought of this one in the comments below!
You can watch the first two seasons of Paradise on Hulu.
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