This review contains spoilers for Paradise Season2 Episode 4.
Following last week’s three-episode premiere, Paradise continues with weekly releases through March 30. Season 2 picks up directly from the Season 1 finale, where Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) reveals that Teri (Enuka Okuma) may be among the survivors on the surface. Xavier (Sterling K. Brown) boards a plane and leaves the Colorado bunker to find her. From that moment, the second series expands its world beyond Paradise as Xavier encounters other survivors. Among them is Annie, a Graceland tour guide, played by Shailene Woodley.
Annie has spent nearly two years alone at Graceland following the tragedy. That is, until Link (Thomas Doherty) and his biker gang arrive and force her out of isolation. Link believes a bunker exists in Colorado; an underground city stocked with aeroplanes, electrical grids, and energy sources capable of jump-starting the world. After the pair sleep together, he urges her to join them on the road to the bunker. Frightened, she refuses. When Annie later finds Link’s note promising to return, she changes her mind. Heavily pregnant, she goes after him, only to discover Xavier unconscious after his plane crashes.
Premiering on March 2, “A Holy Charge” is a 54-minute Sterling K. Brown and Shailene Woodley showcase. Continuing from their last scenes in Episode 2, Annie tells Xavier that once he heals, he will take her to Colorado. Xavier insists he is going to Atlanta to find Teri, which is the reason he left the bunker in the first place. Annie strikes a deal: if she helps him find his wife, he will take her to Colorado. It’s a simple arrangement that becomes emotionally devastating.
The episode takes a turn when Annie reveals she has preeclampsia. Her swollen ankles, dizziness, and high blood pressure are dangerous for both mother and child. She kept it from Xavier because she feared he would leave her behind. Brown and Woodley share compelling chemistry, drawing you into a pairing to root for until the very end, hoping they will somehow make it to safety.
Paradise continues to use its shifting timeline between past and present effectively. As Annie goes into labour, Xavier draws on memories of the first birth in the bunker, when he scrubbed in so the President (James Marsden) could remain at Luisa’s side while she gave birth. Knowing they cannot manage this alone, Xavier leaves Annie to find help and gather supplies from nearby survivors they had passed earlier. The decision feels inevitable but distressing, especially as Annie is terrified, begging him not to go.
Xavier finds their house empty and searches for supplies. Tension spikes when a man enters the room with a gun. Xavier tackles him, only for another man to appear and order him away from his son. The confrontation softens off-screen, and they return to Annie, accompanied by several women eager to help. For a moment, the hope that Xavier and Annie might somehow make it to safety begins to strengthen, only for the episode to squander it mere minutes later.
Annie gives birth to a girl, but her placenta will not detach, and the bleeding will not stop. As an ex-medical student, Annie understands the reality of the situation before anyone else. When she tells Xavier that there is nothing they can do, it lands like a gut punch for both him and the audience. Woodley is heartbreaking as she asks Xavier to take her daughter and find Link, adamant that he cannot let her daughter grow up afraid of people, as she once was. She is not afraid anymore. Xavier holds her as she dies, in what is certain to be one of Paradise’s most affecting scenes thus far.
It’s a career highlight for Shailene Woodley, who has not been given material as rich since Big Little Lies. Annie deserved better, but that’s entirely the point. Paradise has never promised fairness, particularly as the stakes in Season 2 heighten through its converging stories outside and within the bunker. It understands that survival is arbitrary and often cruel. Annie’s death shocks, certainly, but also underlines the fragility of the future everyone is fighting for. Sterling K. Brown reaches extraordinary heights as a man experiencing yet another loss, delivering what may well be the finest work of his career.
The group buries Annie, leaving markers to identify her resting place. One of Paradise’s greatest strengths lies in how it captures humanity’s resilience, alongside the vital importance of people showing up for one another. Writer Stephen Markley delivers the show at its most emotionally astute here.
Xavier takes Annie’s baby and the horse from Graceland, which she loved, and continues towards Atlanta. The episode then returns to the bunker. Sinatra visits Luisa and her baby, Calvin, offering to take him for an hour while Luisa rests. She tells him a secret that no one else in the bunker knows: one day he will see the real sky, feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, know what the moon looks like in all its phases, and watch the constellations move across the night sky. She swears she has a plan for him and for all of them. Julianne Nicholson delivers a beautiful performance, and like Brown, is at the top of her game this season.
In the episode’s final moments, Xavier reaches Atlanta and meets a friend of Teri’s. Gary (Cameron Britton) explains that for the past three years, Teri has been his best friend, partner, and the closest thing he has to a sister. Now she has been taken from him. Whether Xavier can trust him or not remains to be seen.
“A Holy Charge” is Paradise at its very best. Writer Stephen Markley and director Ken Olin have created what is one of the best episodes of television so far this year, and one that will feature on best-of lists come the end.
