Paradise Reveals Link's True Identity, And It's A Doozy — Read Episode 7 Recap

I'll get to the potential hows and whys in a minute, but here's the major takeaway from this week's "Paradise": It appears that Sinatra has, as the show has hinted at all season, figured out a way to bend time to her will. And we know that, because the final moments of "The Final Countdown" imply that Link is actually her son, Dylan.

Yes, Dylan died as a little boy a long time before Sinatra & Co. entered the bunker. Yes, there does seem to be some kind of temporal tomfoolery afoot. And yes, this all could be a red herring, because Dan Fogelman loves a misdirect more than Dr. Torabi loves cashew-cheese fries. Let's parse it all out, shall we?

Read on for the highlights of Episode 7 — which also includes a very happy reunion for Mom and Dad Apocalypse (aka Xavier and Teri).

Let's start with Mr. and Mrs. Collins. The episode picks up right where we left them, with Teri running to her husband as his ears ring from the bomb blast. The people holding guns on him keep her back; Xavier quickly manages to get a gun away from one of his captors, then knock another one to the ground, which allows him to announce that he doesn't want to hurt anyone but he does need to ascertain if Teri is OK. She makes sure everyone knows Xavier isn't a threat, then she sprints to him. Their three-years-in-the-making hug is perfection.

She immediately asks about the kids, then lets Xavier know she's shared her knowledge of the bunker with the rest of the group. The woman in charge — the same one Gary and Ennis met with in a previous episode — takes Xavier for questioning but promises Teri no harm will come to him. After a reluctant parting ("I like your hair," he says, touching her curls. "You got skinny," she observes, teary), a woman approaches Teri and hands her a note from Gary: "I have Bean. Please come home."

When Xavier has offered all the intel he can, he and Teri have another, more private reunion in a tent. Both of them are crying as he apologizes for everything that happened and she absolves him of guilt. "I never stopped trying to find my way back to you," she says between kisses. "You just found me first." Xavier wonders what the train crew is planning to do when they get to Colorado, but Teri's like, we've got more immediate problems, and shows him the note.

"We can't leave without the kid. It's hard to explain, Xavier. That child is my family now," she says, gearing up for a long explanation, but Xavier doesn't need one. "Let's go get your boy," he replies. He gratefully accepts some weaponry from Awesome Lady in Charge, heeds her warning about how the train will leave without them if they're not back in time, and then he and Teri set off to the post office.

On the walk, he updates her on life in Paradise, including the fact that Presley is dating President Bradford's son, and that Cal is dead. She fills him in on how she came to be Bean's surrogate mother, and how she's very aware how messed up Gary is about her. When they arrive, they watch Gary through the window from the rooftop of a nearby building, and Xavier suggests taking him out via rifle before they go inside. "Murder?" she says, unable to hide her shock. "That's new." Xavier reiterates that "we have a lot to catch up on." But Teri talks him out of it, saying she can talk to Gary and retrieve Bean without anyone getting hurt. Xavier doesn't like it, but he concedes. She kisses him and leaves. He watches her from the rooftop, his eye glued to the gunfire.

Once Bean is safely outside, Gary is hurt that Teri thinks he would harm the boy. "What about Ennis?" she asks, causing him to fly into a teary, unhinged rant about how he was desperate and panicked and that's why he killed his best friend. She's transparent with Gary about both Xavier's proximity and proclivity to put a bullet in him if he even blinks funny. As Gary spirals, he rushes at the window, hoping Xavier will shoot him and put him out of his misery.

Teri puts herself between the window and Gary, wrapping her arms around him and telling him that he will rebuild and eventually be OK. He sobs that the three years following The Day were the best in his life. She validates that they were "beautiful and terrible and important" but they're also over. "Will you make sure that Bean remembers me? The best me?" he asks in a truly pathetic voice. She says of course. "I'llll tell him about the man who saved us." She walks out of the post office, collects Bean from the greenhouse, and leaves peacefully as a broken Gary watches. Xavier keeps his gun focused on Gary until the mailman goes back inside.

As the trio heads back to the rail yard, Xavier announces that they have to make a quick stop "You still like babies, right?," he asks Teri. Oh RIGHT. (Am I the only callous heel who was so happy about the Collins' reunion that she temporarily forgot about Annie's infant?) Later on, we see Teri (holding the baby), Bean and Xavier on the train heading west. While the others sleep, Xavier seems to have another vision of those overhead hallway lights.

At the Redmond home, Hadley brings Presley to her mother's laptop, which she easily gets into by using Sinatra's password: the birthday of Hadley's dead brother, Dylan. She taps into security footage that shows Jeremy being taken to the dungeon, and she adds clearance to her and Presley's monitors so they can travel down to the jail level themselves. I would think that the system might be designed to flag anyone getting new security clearances, but I'm also not the tech whiz who uses the same, easily guessable password for all of her devices, so what do I know?

In the Paradise deep downs, Jeremy continues to be an absolute jerk to Robinson, who nevertheless sticks by him because she knows how much Cal loved his son. The president always talked about him and his achievements, she tells the teen. "That's funny," Jeremy shoots back, "because he never said a word about you." It's nice to know that, even after the world ends, adolescents still will retain their ability to cut adults to the freaking bone with just a few awful words.

Anyway, Anders leads them to Paradise's central control room, an automated system that was designed — as we saw in flashbacks to six years prior, when the architect showed Sinatra and Cal around the bunker's infrastructure — to withstand pretty much any disaster known to man. The system has backup upon backup, Sinatra made clear, which means that they'd be covered from all angles. At the time, Cal pointed out that empires usually don't fall because they're underprepared; they fall "high on their horses, and loaded with redundancies."

As we leave Jeremy and Robinson joyfully taking sledgehammers to the pipes that directly affect the bunker's air quality/production, remember Cal's words for later.

As Sinatra gets dressed for her day, she and Tim talk about how Dylan would've been 26 that year. (Side note: Anyone else wish they would've seeded these Dylan hints earlier in the season rather than stuffing them all into this episode?) She heads to a council meeting, where everyone preps for the big summit with Link and his group. Jane wants to be one of the five members of Sinatra's retinue, but Dr. Torabi voices her dissent, and Sinatra agrees with her and asks Jane to hang back.

After the plans are set, Torabi follows Sinatra into her office. The doc says that Jane is unstable and killed President Baines, and she worries that Jane will kill her next. "You're fine," Sinatra says casually. "The girl doesn't make a move unless I tell her to." Breezing by Sinatra's admission that she had Baines killed, Torabi demands to know who Alex is. "Don't say that name again," Sinatra warns her, but Torabi says she's done looking the other way.

For the rest of the episode, Jane stalks Torabi, eventually sneaking into her house and attempting to kill her while she takes a shower. But it's a setup: As Jane opens the shower door and finds it empty, Torabi attacks her with a knife from behind. She stabs her several times in the back, leaving the Secret Service agent — who also hit her head on the way down — bleeding on the tile floor.

Sinatra and her group meet Link and his group at the bunker doors; in the brief moments before the travelers enter, Sinatra revels in the feel of actual sunlight on her skin. But then it's down to business: Link gets his apple pie and digs right in, then after he geeks out about seeing the presidential plane parked in the bunker, he suggests that he and Sinatra have their conversation inside the aircraft.

The way the camera keeps lingering on Link's pie makes me think that it's poisoned or something — and truly, shouldn't he have considered that possibility before nomming away? — but he seems fine as he makes his request: His group wants one of Paradise's nuclear reactors so it can "restart the world." Sinatra says no, and wonders what he REALLY wants. So he tells her: "I'm here for Alex." She acts like she doesn't know what he's talking about, and announces that they've reached an impasse and are finished. He makes sure to surreptitiously grab a retractable ballpoint pen on the way out.

Before he exits the bunker, Link promises that he and his group will get in, and they'll get Alex. "I will do everything in my power to protect her," Sinatra replies, undercutting what she told him on the plane. "And I won't let you, or anyone else, destroy what I've built." Link takes great umbrage at her word choice, sneering that she stole and pillaged but didn't "build" anything, and that she and her rich friends ruined the planet. Geiger calls to Link that they should go, but he uses the kid's real name — Dylan — for the first time we've heard. Sinatra immediately looks as though she's seen a ghost.

She asks his birthday, grabbing his arm to stop him; both of their entourages instantly pull guns. But he answers her that he was born on May 16, which you may remember from the password conversation earlier. Then he leaves, dabbing at his nose, which has started to bleed. As she stares, dumbfounded, we see that Sinatra's has, as well.

His name, birthday, and nosebleed could be a coincidence! But they also could be evidence of the popular theory that time manipulation — loops, fracturing, etc. — are at play, no? 

Anyway, Sinatra all but skips home to climb on top of Tim and announce, "I think it worked." She adds that she's OK, "and I can't explain it, but I think Dylan is, too." Tim doesn't know what she's talking about, but he's so pleased to see the return of his lighthearted, flirty wife, he doesn't ask many questions. They make love, then she slips out while he's dozing.

She scans through a few levels of security and rides in a trolley deep underneath the bunker. Meanwhile, the council can't reach her and are freaking out about Link & Co.'s imminent invasion, so they initiate a full lockdown. Presley and Hadley happen to be in an elevator down to the prison at the time; their car abruptly freezes in place. And all of this coincides with Jeremy and Robinson's control-room malarkey, which then forces the lockdown to stop.

The council gets a warning that nuclear meltdown is imminent. But Sinatra is oblivious to all of the chaos above her as she walks down what appears to be the same hallway from Xavier's visions. She enters a room and puts on a coat (protective maybe?), then smiles as the lights come up around her. We can't see what she's looking at as she says, "Hi, Alex."

Now it's your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!