Paradise's Massive Twist Caps A Highly Satisfying Premiere — Read Recap And Grade The Episode
If there's a Plot Twist Hall of Fame, Dan Fogelman might've just earned himself entry.
Fogelman is the creator of Hulu's Paradise, a drama positioned as a murder mystery involving the president of the United States and the head of his Secret Service detail. Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us) plays the agent, James Marsden (Jury Duty) is the commander-in-chief, and the cast includes heavy hitters like Julianne Nicholson (Mare of Easttown), Sarah Shahi (Sex/Life) and Gerald McRaney (NCIS: Los Angeles).
In retrospect, I should've seen it coming: Of COURSE the man behind This Is Us and Pitch — both of which featured big twists at the end of their inaugural episodes — would throw a world-flip at us in the final moments of Paradise's first hour. But even if I had predicted a surprise, I could've never predicted this one, which is truly his biggest gotcha! yet.
So while Paradise certainly is a mystery about a murder, whose victim happens to be the aforementioned president, it's also... set in a city built under a mountain after something very bad happened to the rest of the world.
Read on for the highlights of the show's premiere, "Wildcat Is Down."
JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE | Xavier Collins (Brown) is the head of the Secret Service protective detail for President Cal Bradford (Marsden). As such, he is fit, regimented and diligent, quietly watchful at all times. Xavier is raising his two children — teen daughter Presley and her younger brother, James — alone. As Xavier goes for a run in the morning, we see that he lives in a picturesque town full of white picket fences and wholesome-looking storefronts.
On the way, he swings by his workplace, where another agent — Billy Pace (Jon Beavers, Animal Kingdom) — is standing guard outside. They good-naturedly rib each other, but it's clear that Xavier is the boss; Pace reports that it was a quiet night.
Later, when Xavier returns to his workplace, we see that it's a large, heavily guarded estate. Xavier dismisses the two agents who've been inside the residence all night, then goes up to see why his boss — the president — hasn't gotten up yet. After a few unanswered knocks on his bedroom door, Xavier announces, "Mr. President, I'm coming in." And he opens the door to find the leader of the free world dead in a pool of blood on the floor.
THE OFFER | Xavier immediately flashes back to the morning after Bradford's re-election, when the president summoned him to the Oval Office. In the memory,Bradford is charming and glib, a proper foil for the earnest, serious Xavier. "I'm looking for someone to be by my side for my next four years" and potentially beyond, he explains, saying his current lead agent is old and no fun. Plus, Bradford — a Southern progressive — likes the optics of having a Black man in close proximity. "So I'm here because I'm Black," Xavier notes. "You're here because you're good, and the other guy was boring and old," Bradford says. "It just doesn't hurt that you're Black." Bradford continues to monologue about everything from how some of his best friends cabinet members are Black to how he's not super bright but people seem to like him; he concludes with a pitch about how he's a decent guy who tries to do the right thing, and hopefully that's something Xavier can get behind... or, if a bullet's fired, in front of.
POTUS' LAST DAY | In the present, a stunned Xavier confirms that Cal is dead, then goes to a nearby safe and finds it open and empty. Via radio, he instructs another agent, Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom, The Gilded Age), to lock down the house but not to alert their superiors; she's confused about why he's bucking protocol, but complies.
Another flashback, to a week into Xavier's new job, finds a tipsy Cal smoking outside and confiding in Xavier that the First Lady hates him and is planning to take their son and leave "the second I'm outta office." After some prodding, Xavier says that he and his wife, Teri, are capping their family at two kids because she's a scientist with a big project starting in Atlanta, and she wants to focus on her career after years of their focusing on his. "Smart move right now," the president says cryptically. "Definitely a very, very smart move." When Xavier says he doesn't understand, Bradford dismisses him.
In the present, Xavier calls Billy and tells him something horrific has happened, then asks him to come back. Billy agrees without hesitation. Xavier then goes to the house's surveillance room and asks for a run-through of Bradford's day up until he went to bed the night before. The footage is all fairly normal, including Cal's drinks with his father (who lives on the grounds) and sexy funtimes with a lady (whose earrings are still on his bedside table). Xavier was the last person to see him that evening when he bid the president goodnight around 10 pm.
Another flashback, this time to a press conference held on the White House grounds, reveals that Xavier indeed did take a bullet for Cal when a man with a gun infiltrated the event, posing as a journalist. When Xavier wakes from surgery, the president is by his bedside; they joke a bit, and Cal orders him to take a few weeks of paid leave, then he says he'd like them to talk "about the future" when he's back at work.
THE INQUIRY BEGINS | Whoever offed Bradford "had to know a lot. Someone had to have a lot of access," Xavier tells Billy when he arrives. While Billy investigates the grounds, the surveillance team alerts Xavier that Billy took a nap on the couch during the evening, and the cameras inside the house were frozen and offline for almost two hours right after he laid down — aka during the time of the killing. The only other agent in the house at the time was the relatively inexperienced Jane.
And then, it's time: Xavier has Jane call a Code Red, and the house soon fills with people.
In the driveway, the First Lady is angry that no one will let her inside. A woman who appears to be in charge (Nicholson), and with whom Cal was arguing during a visit the day before, shows up and orders everyone to keep her informed. Cal's father (McRaney) enters the place, agitated, wondering why he can't speak with his son.
Eventually, Xavier is taken aside for questioning. His boss, Agent Robinson, shows up — and we see that she was the booty call who left her earrings by Cal's bed. She and Xavier don't seem to like each other much. She demands to know what he and the president discussed before he signed off the night before, which leads us into another flashback: Cal, drunk, careens around his bedroom in his bathrobe, grabbing a tablet from his safe and begging Xavier to have a nightcap with him.
Xavier is clearly angry, so the president tells him to speak his mind. Xavier declines. Cal gets ready to smoke a cigarette on the terrace and dismisses him, but them asks, "Will you ever be able to forgive me for what happened?" Hmmmmm....
THE MAIN EVENT | We go straight into a different flashback, this time to when Xavier returned to work after the assassination attempt. He's summoned to the Oval Office to find a group of people, including Nicholson's character, assembled. Xavier is informed that he's about to be privy to information that nearly no one has. "The president tells me you have children?" Nicholson's character asks. "You're going to want to hear this." They inform him that the box on the table before him contains incredibly sensitive information. "I assume you're aware of what's going on in Colorado?" Cal asks.
Then we're back on Cal's final night, where Xavier is talking about how he and his wife chose their children's names, and how he's tormented by having questions he now can't ask her. "You want to know when I'll forgive you? I'll forgive you when I can sleep again. And I'll sleep again when you're dead," Xavier says.
'AN EXTINCTION-LEVEL EVENT FOR HUMANITY' | In the present, after Xavier is dismissed, he sheds his jacket and runs through the town. We see people using bands around their wrists to open their cars and pay for things like ice cream, then he runs past a pond where a worker — wait, what? The guy is holding one of the ducks we saw earlier, only now we realize that the animal is mechanical, the worker is fixing it, and the big pond is no deeper than a puddle.
When Xavier comes to a stop, we realize that he took something from the murder scene: an open pack of the president's cigarettes, marked (in blood?) with a big X on the front. There's one cigarette left inside, and on it is written the number 812092. Just then, a digital message board behind Xavier alerts everyone that the next day's dawn is going to be delayed by two hours due to maintenance. Again: Huh?
A flashback to the big meeting in the Oval finds a military general letting Xavier know that they're preparing for "a massive catastrophe that could cause an extinction-level event for humanity in the very near, very real future." In response, they're building "the world's largest underground city" in Colorado; it may be the world's only chance at survival.
In the present, Xavier stares up at the sky, and we see that what we thought was the sun is just a very strong lamp built into the framework of the aforementioned underground city. OK, Fogelman, you got me: I'm in.
Now it's your turn. What did you think of the premiere? Did you see the twist coming? Grade the episode via the poll below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!