Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Paradise Episode 7.
Fiction has dealt with theend of the world onscreen in films such as2012,Don’t Look Up, andThe Day the Earth Stood Still, but never like inParadise. Since the pilot, “Wildcat is Down,” revealed thatwhat is left of humanity survives underground, we have pondered what must have occurred to cause such a way of life to be necessary. The latest episode, “The Day,” sets up viewers for an ominous hour of television from the title alone, and pays it off not just with the thumping soundtrack throughout that highlights everyone’s raised heartbeats, but through the characters and their reactions to the apocalyptic scenario.
Not only does the latest episode showXavier (Sterling K. Brown)torn between his work and personal duties, butCal’s (James Marsden)actions during the event may have had a huge impact on the show. In the end,the chaos portrayed is realistic and terrifying. The breakdown in communication and selfish reasoning exhibited by individuals and states demonstrates how quickly our civilized society could collapse in such circumstances, reducing us to a state of savagery.
How Does the World End in ‘Paradise’?
Many theorized whether the end of the world inParadisewould be caused by a natural disaster or an outbreak of nuclear war, and it turns out both were correct. We find out that theend of the world is triggered by the eruption of a supervolcano in Antarcticathat “instantly melted trillions of gallons of water,” causing a 300-foot-high tsunami, moving at 600mph, as well as a “high-pressure sound wave” that is terrifying when we hear it on the broadcast. This wave is estimated to go around the globe at least a dozen times before settling, and we see how it wipes out coastal cities like Melbourne in an instant.
However, humanity’s role in this event cannot be ignored, as not only did we likely contribute to the Antarctic supervolcano erupting, but the mania humanity responds with displays just how much worse we could make the situation, and it is frightening both in what we see and hear. White House staff such as Marsha (Amy Pietz) panic about what they are supposed to do for their family, and even Secret Service members like Ryan want to disobey orders for the chance of safety. On a global level,Russia goes “dark” andnuclear warmoves closer to a zero-sum game of nations “securing resources.”While they might not be able to prevent the wave, they certainly add to it by the amount of attacks Cal is told about where the aggressor isn’t even known.
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Xavier Fights to Help His Family While Serving a Greater Purpose in ‘Paradise’
Throughout the episode, Xavier is pulled between checking on his wife and serving Cal, which makes his interactions with Marsha fascinating. WithTeri (Enuka Okuma)in Atlanta and Cal’s promise that they would “go get her” and keep her safe, Xavier is shown checking his phone, even ignoring people such as Agent Robinson (Krys Marshall) giving him orders. While he promises to help Marsha save her kids,he fails in this mission as he chooses to stand by Cal, protecting his evacuation.
When Xavier then gets angry with Cal for not saving Terri, there is a contradiction in Xavier’s words that even he cannot see that Cal has been put in the same “impossible situation” as Xavier was, andXavier calls out that Cal’s family is on the plane yet ignores that Xavier did the same thing to Marsha. At the end of the episode, his helpless “I love you” to Teri is heartbreaking as a man who couldn’t do enough for so many yet tried so hard at the same time.
Cal Makes an Impossible Choice During ‘Paradise’s End of the World
Meanwhile, Cal’s role in the end of the world is upsetting to watch because of the “impossible situation” he is in. While we first see him as reassuring and calming his VP, he slowly loses his facade of coolness when he approaches a White House janitor who is far too relaxed about the situation. This causes him to forgo his previously scripted speech and be honest with the people, which leads to a mass panic where many die. Still,Cal tries to give people “a chance” and commits to the idea that people are “inherently decent,”which is a far more liberal view than Sinatra’s (Julianne Nicholson) utilitarian approach — that people dying via nuclear war is better than the potential of starving.
Ultimately, what makes the President so fascinating in this episode is that when everyone is moving towards nuclear war,Cal demonstrates significant strength by choosing the other, less selfish option.He appears to enact a global EMP using the “nuclear football” to stop a full-on nuclear war whilesetting humanity back “500 years.”It’s another “impossible” choice he has to make, and the episode does such a good job of making this fear hit home every second of the world ending by showing that neither option is going to work. The point is about lessening the suffering as much as possible — and making an active choice in either direction, no matter the intention, will directly cause someone’s pain.
It was obvious this episode was coming, as there was no way we weren’t going to learn how the world ended, but few of us could have expected just how harrowing it would be. It is something the brain cannot compute, yetParadiseexcels in getting as close as possible to making us understand the fear, panic, and self-contradicting nature of the apocalypse. Humanity may not have directly caused the supervolcano to erupt, but they certainly didn’t help and even worsened it via nuclear war. Undoubtedly, the best part of the episode is the parallel between Xavier and Cal’s positions and actions. Both men attempt to do the best they can but come short, and in the end, nothing will ever be good enough. This lack of power is what makesParadise’s political thriller aspects so brilliant, aswe realize just how little money and resources will be worth when the end of the world is near.
The Season 1 finale ofParadisewill premiere March 4 on Hulu.
