Spoilers below.
The eighth and final episode of Hulu’s Paradise opens with a flashback. We’re taken 12 years into the past and introduced to the team of construction workers that built the underground world known as Paradise. (They’re actually told that they’re building a “recycling facility,” but we know better.) Everything seems to be going according to plan until the project manager, Trent (Ian Merrigan), discovers a toxic chemical on site that makes everyone sick. After expressing his concerns to the higher-ups, he’s immediately fired and told that the people behind the project have intelligence that something catastrophic is coming, and that messing with them is inadvisable. The rest of the team is then instructed to continue working, despite the hazardous conditions.
Trent suspects that something serious is afoot, so he does a deep dive into the project and discovers the president’s connection to Paradise. He tries reaching out to different media outlets to get more eyes on the story, but no one will take him seriously. So, he takes matters into his own hands and attempts to assassinate the president (James Marsden), but ends up shooting Xavier (Sterling K. Brown) instead. Trent is then sent to prison, where he devises a new plan to get the job done.
Fast-forward to the present day, and Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) is playing a voice recording of Xavier’s wife Teri, to prove that she’s still alive somewhere in the old world. She also warns him that his daughter Presley is in danger. He assumes the worst, and though he calls off his whole mission of upending Paradise, he’s still on the search for the president’s killer.
Xavier’s hunch leads him to the local library, where he finds a book, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, which also happens to be the title of this episode. Inside, he finds notes from the president that unveil all the classified information regarding Paradise, including how to escape. But in the middle of him flipping through everything, a man comes up behind him and hits him over the head. Surprise! It’s Trent, or as he’s known down in Paradise, the librarian.
When Xavier finally wakes up, Trent explains everything to him. While he was in prison, the world ended (as we saw in the previous episode), and all the prisoners broke out. To get into Paradise, Trent stole the identity of a librarian who was already on the list and found a random girl to assume the role of his wife. While down in Paradise, he grew to like his new life there and completely forgot about his assassination mission. That is, until the president came into the library one day, and all of Trent’s memories came flooding back. He knew he had to finish what he started. We then see how it all went down: Trent hit the president in the head with a blunt object, they fought a bit, and then he hit him again, leaving him dead in his bedroom. When he’s done telling Xavier everything, he takes the book and runs off.
Robinson (Krys Marshall) finds Xavier in the library, and they go looking for Trent. They find him at the very top of the bunker. Trent then goes on a little rant about how the powers-that-be made the new world a prison. “Paradise… what a fucking joke,” he says, before jumping off the scaffolding to his death.
Shortly after, Xavier goes to Sinatra to find out what happened to his daughter. Sinatra believes that Jane killed her and begins to apologize to him, but then Jane comes out of nowhere and shoots her. This is all because, earlier in the episode, Jane asked Sinatra if she could have the president’s Wii, and was turned down. Jane then tells Xavier that Presley is safe at home.
When Xavier is reunited with his kids, they urge him to go find their mom. At the end of the episode, he takes the book with all the president’s notes and boards a plane. “I’m coming, baby,” he says as the engine starts roaring. Is his wife Teri really alive? Will Sinatra recover from the gunshot wound? Who’s in charge of Paradise for the time being? To answer all of these burning questions and more, we’ll just have to wait for season 2.
