Summary
Paradise Season 2 has already delivered — no pun intended — potentially its best hour in “A Holy Charge”, an emotional gut-punch of real force, aimed with clinical expertise.
There’s a peculiar feeling you get when you know something awful is going to happen, but can’t quite put a finger on it. There’s probably some complex evolutionary explanation, a biological early-warning system that can detect dread in the atmosphere. Among its many other achievements, Paradise has managed to weaponise this feeling. Season 2 was already good, with a multifaceted three-part premiere resituating audiences in the tattered post-apocalyptic landscape of Dan Fogelman’s daring Hulu thriller. But Episode 4, “A Holy Charge”, is a level-raiser that might in hindsight end up being this run’s best hour. Not just a beautiful coda to the story that began with Annie and Link’s Graceland love story, it’s also a truly moving exploration of childbirth and parenting that completely adjusts the stakes moving forward, especially for Xavier.
After a brief opening showing Link and his — surprisingly large — group getting ready to take their final steps towards the bunker, things pick up directly from the end of Episode 2. Xavier remains a “guest” of Annie at Graceland, although “hostage” might be a better word. She makes it pretty clear that he won’t be going to Atlanta; instead, he’ll be taking her to Colorado to find Link and the bunker. That’s the plan, anyway. But as Xavier heals up from the six stitches she put in his spleen, they spend two weeks hesitantly bonding in relaxed quasi-domesticity. And given the growth of their relationship in that time, she eventually agrees to accompany him to Atlanta to find Teri, as long as he agrees to escort her all the way back to Colorado.
But Annie is heavily pregnant, which changes everything. It also reminds Xavier of the last time he saw a pregnant woman, setting up this week’s string of flashbacks. In them, we’re told the story of Louisa, the first woman to give birth in the bunker. Cal was deeply involved in the whole process, seeing it as an unprecedented galvanising moment for the community. But he’s also just generally a nice guy. It’s nice to see James Marsden back in this role, even if it’s only temporary, and it’s set far enough back in the timeline that Billy Pace is still working his security detail, so his appearance in the previous episode wasn’t a one-off after all.
Here’s how this plays out in Paradise Season 2, Episode 4. Xavier and Annie hit the road, making pitstops here and there while the former gives the latter a crash course in parenting. Now and then, something in the present day sends Xavier’s mind reeling back to the past, where we get a little bit more detail about Louisa and her kid. And so it goes. Xavier tells Annie about the dreams he has been having since the accident, snippets of things that haven’t happened, including snapshots of Link’s face, which he recognises from his ID card that Annie carries. Louisa is taken to the OR for an emergency C-section, as Cal, in scrubs, sits by her bedside and reassures her that babies are built to survive, have been found in the rubble of buildings three days after an earthquake decimated them.
As I intimated at the top, you know something bad’s coming. You can feel it. But at every opportunity, “A Holy Charge” subverts the expectation. Xavier and Annie pass a group on the road whom she’s deeply suspicious of, but no conflict ensues. When Annie’s waters break outside of the Waffle Barn they spent the night in, Xavier rushes to the same group, despite Annie begging him not to, to fetch help and supplies. When a man returns to the Waffle Barn with a shotgun, he’s followed by his entire community, carrying clean towels and medical equipment. These strangers all come together to help Annie deliver her daughter.
And she does. The present-day scenes become more rapidly intercut with the flashbacks, as Louisa’s baby is dragged squalling from her womb. Both babies are fine. The crisis is averted. It’s a beautiful sequence, framed really tactfully, and highlighting the spirit of togetherness and empathy that Xavier keeps insisting still defines people, even in these trying times. “A Holy Charge” continuously proves him right. But it’s also a reminder that even if other people might not be as far gone as we thought, the times have drastically changed. Annie has preeclampsia, which she diagnosed in herself through her blood pressure readings, her swollen ankles, and her double vision. But she kept it from Xavier because she thought he might not take her with him if he knew the truth.
After the birth, Annie can’t part with the placenta. The bleeding won’t stop. She’s dying, and she knows it, and in a Waffle Barn that has been MacGyvered into a makeshift delivery room, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Annie gives Xavier a note she wrote for her baby, with instructions to pass it on whenever she’s ready. But that means taking responsibility for the kid, keeping her safe, and taking her back to Colorado to meet her father. This is Xavier’s “holy charge”. Annie dies in his arms, finally not afraid anymore.
Xavier and the group of strangers who helped to deliver the baby bury Annie on their property, in a graveyard created to give everyone they find “out there” a bit of dignity and grace. As the camera pulls back, we see so many headstones that there’s scarcely space for another. It’s a powerful image, a reminder of the state of the world that Xavier is now going to have to navigate with a baby that isn’t his slung across his chest in a homemade papoose. But as he echoes Cal’s words to Louisa, we’re reminded that babies are built to survive. Annie’s horse seems to agree. It finally leaves her grave to check the baby out, and lets Xavier and the kid climb astride to carry them to wherever they’re going.
Atlanta, obviously. Paradise Season 2, Episode 4 ends with a final scene in the past, and another couple in the present. In the bunker, Sinatra, who was reluctant to engage with Louisa’s pregnancy given her own backstory, turns up at Louisa’s house with a LEGO set and well wishes, and ends up staying for a couple of hours while Louisa gets some sleep. She has named the baby Calvin. As he peacefully sleeps, Sinatra tells him that one day he’ll see real stars.
And in the present, Xavier finally reaches Atlanta and makes his way to the location where Teri’s radio signal emanated from. There, he’s greeted by a man who seems to know who he is. He claims to have been Teri’s best friend and partner for the last three years. And now, someone has taken her from him. Meanwhile, Link arrives at the bunker, asking nicely to come inside, but promising he won’t ask nicely for very long.
Nothing’s ever easy, is it?
