Paradise's [Spoiler] Dies In Harrowing Episode 4 — Read Recap

By the time the credits roll on this week's "Paradise," the net number of citizens in our post-apocalpytic world remains the same — but that's a much sadder state of affairs than it might seem.

The decimated world population stays the same because, although Annie's baby is born, Annie herself doesn't survive the harrowing birth. And little does Xavier know, becoming a surprise guardian for the motherless infant is just the first Really Rough Thing that's going to happen to him before the end of the hour.

Read on for the highlights of "A Holy Charge."

In some kind of camp on the way to the bunker, Link sleeps. He has the same fuzzy vision of walking down a hallway with Xavier behind him that Xavier did in the previous episode. Then Geiger wakes him up with some bad news: A train they were waiting for is delayed, but Link doesn't want to delay any longer. He gives the signal, and everyone in the rather large camp starts packing up. They're going after that bunker.

Meanwhile, Xavier comes to and finds himself still chained to the couch at Graceland, though Annie has bandaged his hand and appears to have attended to his other wounds, too. She unlocks him so he can move around. He's incredulous when he realizes he's at Elvis' home, and surprised to see her very pregnant belly. As he stares, she wonders when the last time he saw a pregnant woman was.

That's an intro to a flashback if ever I heard one, and just like that, we go to three years before, when the first baby was about to be born in Paradise, five months after they arrived. Cal is excited to announce the imminent birth to Sinatra, but she's unimpressed, and she chides him for not knowing enough detail about the nuclear reactors and other mechanisms that make Paradise possible. He thinks she's deflecting because she doesn't want to hear about people having kids after the death of her son, but she shuts that down sharply, and the president backs off.

As Annie inspects the stitches she had to put into Xavier's side, he's surprised to learn that she knows about the bunker in Colorado. "The rumors were everywhere," she says, slightly annoyed, as if he should've known. But when that wears off, even she is taken aback a little. "Wow, so it's real. He was right," she whispers, declining to say who "he" is when Xavier asks.

Agent Collins briefly tells her about life underground ("It's like before, only creepier"), then she reiterates that he's got to put his Atlanta plans on hold until he gets her to Colorado — and they have to leave in two weeks. He's not on board, but he doesn't have much of a say.

As the weeks pass, Xavier slowly regains his strength, and Annie quickly begins to realize that something may be very wrong with her pregnancy. Her blood pressure is elevated and her feet are very swollen, though she doesn't say anything about it to Xavier. One night, as they take tea on the upstairs patio at sunset, he thanks her for saving his life and taking care of him, but "I can't take you to Colorado until I've found my wife," he informs her. "It's a non-starter."

She grows teary and mentions that the "he" she previously mentioned is in Colorado. Then they bond over how incredibly scary it is to have kids, "but you will not believe the joy," he promises her.

By the time they're done, Annie seems to have decided something. "We go find your wife in Atlanta, and then you'll take me to him in Colorado?" she asks quietly. "Yeah," Xavier agrees.

Then, all that's left is for them to go. She rides the horse, he's on foot. Annie pauses for a moment of trepidation at Graceland's gates, but then she's good, and they set out for Atlanta. Along the way, Annie accidentally drops Link's school identification card; when Xavier sees it, it sparks the memory of his hallway vision. When he later asks Annie who Link was, she says "just someone passing through." He starts to tell her about his flashes of Link — "I've been having these dreams. Maybe not 'dreams,' almost like memories of things? But they're things that haven't happened." — and she writes it off as symptoms of the concussion he maybe got during the plane crash.

Meanwhile, in the flashback half of the episode, Cal, Xavier and Billy are at the hospital to see Louisa, the laboring mom who's about to become the first woman to give birth in the bunker. When things start to go wrong, and the doctors wheel Louisa into the operating room for an emergency caesarian section, Cal decides he's going with her: He feels a personal responsibility, given that her husband was a staffer who died on the plane carrying congressmen. And when Xavier says he won't allow Cal to go in alone, the president makes Xavier scrub up and join him.

As Louisa (understandably) freaks out, and as her son eventually makes his way into the world unscathed, Cal soothes her by reminding her how resilient babies are. Which is good, because Xavier is going to have to remember that really soon...

Speaking of which, back to Annie and Xavier! When they cross paths with a family in a horse-drawn cart, Annie warns him not to keep his head down and say nothing. But he ignores her, tossing them a "Howdy" as they pass. They don't seem super friendly, but they also don't give Annie and Xavier any trouble, so it's a wash. Later in the day, as Annie and Xavier approach an abandoned waffle house, she starts having pain; they call it a day and shelter inside.

As he's teaching her how to swaddle, using an old sack of flour as the baby, they discuss how she doesn't trust anyone, ever, nope. "You can guard against the worst of people while still believing in the best," he promises, adding that everyone is capable of great love, great trust, great things: "It's a holy charge."

Her labor pains start in earnest the next morning, and her water breaks as they're preparing to leave the restaurant. Even worse, she's having blurred vision, which unfortunately confirms her grim self-diagnosis: preeclampsia. She tearfully apologizes for not telling him; she feared he wouldn't take her if he knew. But Xavier says it'll be OK, and speaks in a reassuring tone as he ushers her back inside.

After Annie reels off a list of the basics they'll need for delivery, Xavier has a moment of panic upon realizing the restaurant has none of them. So, as Annie panics HARD, he say he's going to find the people they saw yesterday and ask for help. He gives her the gun. She begs him not to go. He runs. She freaks.

Xavier does his T-1000 run onto some property flanked by huge NO TRESPASSING signs, and when no one answers his banging on the door, he goes inside and starts gathering what he needs. He's able to disarm the first man who comes at him with a gun — and, because he's Xavier, he apologizes while kneeling on the man's back — but then the man's father comes at him with a bigger gun, and the game's up.

The next thing Annie knows, that second guy and his gun are poking their way into the waffle house. She immediately starts pleading with him to leave her alone, that she has nothing, but then she sees his wife and some other women following him, and Xavier bringing up the rear. They're all there to help! See, Virginia, there really IS a Santa Claus!

Annie labors in a makeshift birthing suite that probably still smells a little bit like fried food drenched in maple syrup, and her daughter is born while Xavier holds Annie's hand. Yay! But I'd like to remind you that this is a Dan Fogleman show, and we all remember how "This Is Us" got started, right? Bottom line: Things are going to get bad right about... now.

Annie's placenta is stuck, she's hemorrhaging, and no one there is capable of doing anything about it. As the women try to help her, Xavier isn't quite sure of what's happening, but Annie is — and she asks her birth attendants to stop their efforts, because there's nothing they can do. "I knew, I knew," she wheezes.

She gives Xavier a letter she wrote the baby while she was in labor. It's scrawled in crayon on the back of a paper placemat, and it's all the kid will have of her after she's gone. She begs him to take care of her daughter and give her the letter when she grows up. "It has to be you," she says, weak-voiced but very serious. "And her father, he was leading a group to the bunker to restart the world. You will not let her be afraid of people. Promise me, Xavier?" He nods, now fully understanding exactly how bad things are. "This is your holy charge," she adds.

She's deteriorating quickly. The baby is crying in the background. Xavier is crying in the foreground. Just before Annie goes, she asserts "I'm not scared anymore." Then she shivers violently and collapses into his side. Xavier holds her as she gasps out her last breaths and dies. "OK, Doc," he whispers, kissing her head as tears course down his face. 

Let's take a break from all that, yeah? Back in the Paradise flashback, Sinatra — who surreptitiously watched Louisa's C-section from an observation gallery and cried when the child was born — visits the new mom with a gift. When Louisa admits she hasn't slept much since little Calvin was born, she wonders if Sinatra might come in and relieve her for a while while she naps? Sinatra is So. On. Board.

After Louisa lays down, Sinatra coos to the baby: "Can I tell you a secret, gorgeous boy, something no one else knows down here? Someday, you're gonna see the real sky. You'll feel how warm the sun can be on your skin. You'll know what the moon looks like in all its phases. You'll see how the constellations travel across the sky at night. I swear, Calvin, I have a plan for you. For all of us. Someday you'll see real stars."

And in the present, Link's group arrives at the bunker's doors. He stands in front of a security camera and holds up a series of hand-written signs, "Love Actually"-style (which he acknowledges — heh). "Please," the signs read, "as they say, take me to your leader. I'm going to ask nicely. But not for long."

The family that came to Xavier's aid buries Annie on its land. They also offer to raise Annie's daughter, but Xavier politely declines, saying, "It's a promise I can't break." The Graceland horse won't leave Annie's graveside, no matter how much Xavier pulls on its lead and grumbles at it. But when Collins walks out of the house with the child strapped to his chest in a makeshift infant carrier, the animal ambles over and — I am not kidding in any way — bows to the pair of them as though he were Buckbeak and the baby were The Girl Who Lived. (I mean, I guess that's kind of accurate? Xavier, quick! Figure out Sinatra's horcruxes and destroy them! Start with that ride-on pony machine in the town square!)

Xavier climbs on the horse's back and the three of them ride off. They arrive in Atlanta some time later, winding up at the post office from which Annie broadcast the message Sinatra played for him. It's eerily quiet until a man calls, "You must be Xavier." Collins quickly pulls his gun on him, but the man swears he means no harm. He claims to be a good, post-apocalyptic friend of Teri's. "And she's been taken from me," the man says. As the baby starts squalling, a reeling Xavier absentmindedly hushes her.

Now it's your turn. What did you think of the episode? Got any new theories? Hit the comments!