That Outrageous Paradise Episode 1 Twist, Explained

The following story contains spoilers for the first episode of Paradise, “Wildcat is Down.” THERE’S SOMETHING ODD happening from the very first moment of Hulu’s newest event series, Paradise. We open on a man named Xavier Collins, played by the always charming, always smooth, and always collected Sterling K. Brown; we don’t know exactly who

The following story contains spoilers for the first episode of Paradise, “Wildcat is Down.”


THERE’S SOMETHING ODD happening from the very first moment of Hulu’s newest event series, Paradise. We open on a man named Xavier Collins, played by the always charming, always smooth, and always collected Sterling K. Brown; we don’t know exactly who he is or what he’s doing as he takes a morning jog around a seemingly-idyllic small town, but because we see Sterling K. Brown, a natural bit of comfort sets in. But despite the title, Paradise proves to be anything but.

The curtain slowly but surely gets pulled back; Xavier is a Secret Service agent charged with protecting President Cal Bradford (played with a JFK-esque charm by James Marsden), but the first time we see President Cal, when Xavier goes to check on him… Whoops! He’s dead.

That alone should be enough to fuel an exciting and compelling show, especially one like Paradise where the leads are all Emmy winners/nominees, in Brown, Marsden, and Mare of Easttown‘s Julianne Nicholson. The show spends much of the rest of the episode jumping around in time, flashing back to Xavier and Cal’s first meeting; Xavier is honored with the opportunity to lead the President’s secret service, but is somewhat offended when he essentially insinuates that his race is factoring into why he wants him for the job. Cal is forthright, and if anything, you have to give him credit for his honesty (We can overlook the fact that his politics, which describe him as both a “southern progressive” and a former outside who was/is “one of the richest men in the world” somehow attempt to meld someone like Stacey Abrams and someone like Elon Musk into one single character).

There’s a lot going on in Paradise, and the political conspiracy thriller at it’s core seems to be our chief mystery. Who killed the President? We see a number of suspects: an argument with a mysterious woman called Sinatra (Nicholson). A late night rendezvous with another Secret Service agent (Krys Marshall). A potential drinking problem, trouble with his wife and kids, and a whole lot of stress about…. something.

There’s a lot of stress in the presidency—that’s no secret, no mystery, and no plot twist. Just look at how the color of Barack Obama’s hair changed between 2008 and 2016. But the stress alluded to in Paradise is, well, more than just that. But the show wants you to be so distracted by the presidential assassination of it all that you’re not thinking too much.

But throughout the first episode we get references to mysterious events in Colorado, an extremely important lockbox, and, yes, all that stress the president has in his relationship with his wife and kids. Cal, in trying to talk himself down at one point, asks Xavier about his own family; eventually he alludes to the fact that this may not be a good time to bring any more kids into the world after all. Xavier has no idea what the hell he’s talking about or what that means, but if the President of the United States says something like that… it’s probably not nothing, right?

Well, by the end of the episode, we learn that it is indeed not nothing. The present we’ve been seeing throughout the entire episode isn’t just any small town, but a strange small town. It’s a small town that, we must assume, is in Colorado. Because it is a small town where people pay for everything using a special wristband, where monitors display messages about sunrise and sundown, and where, uh, the entire town is actually a man made location built inside a mountain.

What in the world?

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So, what exactly is going on at the end of Paradise episode 1?

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So, yeah. While the most compelling part about Paradise remains the mystery surrounding President Cal’s death, it does drop that massive game-changing twist on us at the very end. Not only is the President dead, but the rest of the United States (and maybe the world?) has come under some kind of extinction event, and the people inside this man-made mountain town have managed to escape it.

What are we supposed to make of this? That much is not quite clear, though certainly it will figure into the rest of the show going forward, giving the conspiracy thriller we were already preparing for a decidedly sci-fi and post-apocalyptic twist.

It helps that the timing of Paradise is working out in its favor. With recent mysteries surrounding aerial drones and the Doomsday Clock being as close to catastrophe as ever, a story about what happens at the end of the world (and how the government might go about solving that problem and/or covering it up) feels pretty relevant.

What’s clear in Paradise is that there’s a lot more information that we don’t know that’s yet to be revealed. Xavier, we learn, has been separated from his wife, and he won’t ever forgive President Cal for what happened. What did happen? That much we do not know, though we have to assume that she died as a result of whatever is going on outside this town. Sinatra, whoever she is, is clearly a very powerful woman (and she better be to have such a dramatic code name).

We’ll find out what this all means as Paradise moves through its first season. Creator Dan Fogelman (of This Is Us fame) has always been an ambitious storyteller, and one who likes to play around with twists and perspective, and it’s clear that’s happening on a massive scale in his latest show.

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