Paradise Season 2 Episode 8 “Exodus” had a lot to cover in its screen time of just under an hour. They had to get everyone back together at the bunker, stop a nuclear meltdown, answer some lingering questions about Alex, and deal with an underground uprising. Is the best time to watch and review it when I’m on enough cold medicine to already question my own reality? Probably not, but we go with the hand we’re dealt. And maybe it’s not the cold medicine. Maybe it’s secretly Alex, sending messages from the future. Read on and decide for yourself.
Days of Future Past
As fans had hoped, we finally have an answer for who/what/how Alex is. A supercomputer that is so smart (thanks to AI) that it can answer questions that haven’t even been asked yet. I mean, ChatGPT can’t reliably answer 2+2 correctly yet. But okay. I can actually believe that AI will one day grow even more terrifying than it already is. I’ve seen the Terminator franchise, after all. And the Matrix. And Jurassic Park. I know we as a species have way more hubris than foresight. I could totally see some tech bros watching the finale and thinking, “You know, we should build that.”
And I don’t know. Maybe they should? Alex doesn’t seem like a bad thing. Or maybe it does? Is it actually working to prevent the climate catastrophe that sends everyone underground, or is it working to create it? After all, without that catastrophe, Alex never gets built. So the catastrophe has to happen in order for Alex to be invented to prevent it.
It’s a paradox, and I’m not sure my brain is able to handle paradoxes even when it isn’t on enough NyQuil that my body may well qualify as a controlled substance.
It’s like the questions about the message to Jane in the episode by the same title earlier this season. Was the message an attempt to stop Jane from becoming a killer? Or was it sent to ensure she would? Was it even about her at all? Who knows! Maybe we’ll find out in the third (and – tragically – supposedly final) season.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen with Alex next season. However, at least we know now what it is. And, whatever reason Link (Thomas Doherty) has for wanting to destroy it, I personally hope it happens after Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) is somehow…saved? Resurrected? Has her death unwritten? I don’t even know what I’m expecting here. The writers just better do some “bibbity bobbity boo” shit and bring her back, though, because I love her.
Whole Lotta Heartbreak
My love for Sinatra is well-documented in my reviews. That said, from the moment her death was foretold by Alex, I braced myself for the ending. With the nature of Alex’s reveal, I didn’t imagine it would be permanent anyway. So I thought I was prepared. And I was.
Until they showed her son (as he was when she lost him) taking her hand. In front of one of those damn mechanical horses that destroyed me at the end of the second episode of the series.
Thanks, writers. I didn’t need that heart. I have another around here somewhere, I’m sure.
But that wasn’t the only moment of heartbreak this episode. Xavier (Sterling K. Brown) bringing Teri (Enuka Okuma) back to the bunker to reunite with the kids was, in its way, also heart-wrenching. Perhaps not so much for the reunion itself (which was, due to the events of the episode, somewhat shortchanged). But for that little moment when she’s seeing how much her children have grown in her absence. When it hits home for the viewers how much of her children’s lives she has missed. Man, that one hurt.
And let’s not forget what Link had to process this episode. First, he finally gets into the bunker and is trying to find Alex to destroy it. He loses a friend in the process. Then he finds out he’s maybe/possibly/I guess Sinatra’s “dead” son? Somehow? And, oh yeah, Xavier knew Annie (Shailene Woodley). Oh, but Annie’s dead. She had a baby, though! You’re a daddy, Link! The baby’s outside waiting for us. Maybe we commit murder later?
Look, that’s a lot to put on a guy, even under the best of circumstances. And Paradise is far from the best of circumstances. You gotta feel for him.
Stuck On The Surface
So where does that leave everyone as we wrap up Paradise season two? Well, Sinatra is dead. Xavier and Teri are reunited with their children. Link is a new dad. And, oh yeah, Jeremy (Charlie Evans) was mildly redeemed by trying to (and eventually successfully) saving Robinson (Krys Marshall). Oh, yeah, and Dr. Torabi (Sarah Shahi) confessed to killing Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom) but everyone kinda shrugged it off and moved on. To be fair, they had a lot going on at the moment.
Due to an (oopsie daisy) nuclear meltdown, they can’t go underground again. Everyone is stuck on the surface, where they will have to figure out how to survive. While Xavier tries to figure out what message, exactly, that Alex wants to give to him.
I don’t know if it’s as gripping as a season finale, somehow, as the first season. Though that could admitted be the NyQuil. Everything’s a little fuzzy, I confess. But Paradise 2×08 “Exodus” did a great job of wrapping up the show’s sophomore season. Throughout the prior 7 episodes, it got us invested in characters we’d never met before, and it laid the groundwork for more mysteries in the next season.
I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. And I’m denial that one of my favorite shows is close to the end. Ultimately, what more could anyone ask?
All episodes of Paradise season 2 are available to stream on Hulu.
