Paradise season 2 key art
Disney UK
Major spoilers ahead for Paradise season 2, episode 4
Murder has been the name of the game in Paradise season 2, but episode 4’s major character death wasn’t a killing. It was a complication from child birth that had been alluded to throughout “A Holy Charge.”
Episode 4 gave viewers their first look at labor in a post-apocalyptic world both in the bunker and above ground. Unfortunately, it also came with saying goodbye to Annie (Shailene Woodley) just after her daughter was delivered. Now Xavier (Sterling K. Brown) has been charged with shepherding the baby to her father, Link (Thomas Doherty), in Colorado.
What Happened To Annie In Paradise Season 2?
Before Xavier and Annie left for Atlanta, there was a scene showing Annie checking her blood pressure and entering the information into a journal. She’d been tracking it throughout her pregnancy. However, her results foreshadowed what would come once she and Xavier camped out an an abandoned diner on the road.
They’d made it through the first leg of their trip unscathed. Despite a brief disagreement about Xavier acknowledging a group of people they’d passed on the road, they seemed to be doing fine as companions. Xavier even took the time to show Annie how to swaddle a baby, displaying his knowledge as a father of two.
He’d given Annie a talk about life being lived at “full volume,” a turn of phrase he’d picked up from his father. She was skeptical, but took in his words about how lucky people are when they get to experience a moment that heightens life. Xavier told her holding her baby would be one of those moments.
What he didn’t expect is Annie going into labor the next morning just as they were about to get back on the road. She knew it was a possibility since she was sure she had preeclampsia, a condition the Mayo Clinic defines as having “high blood pressure, high levels of protein in urine that indicate kidney damage (proteinuria), or other signs of organ damage,” as a complication of her pregnancy.
She hadn’t told him because she didn’t think Xavier would take her with him. At first, they tried to handle the situation themselves, but Xavier quickly realized that wouldn’t be possible. Against Annie’s wishes, he decided to take a chance on the kindness of the strangers they passed and went to look for help.
He was right to make the gamble, they hurried over to the diner with him and in a flurry of motion it turned into a birthing room. Intercut with scenes from Paradise where the first baby in the bunker was being born to Luisa Moreno (Jessica Marie Garcia), Annie brought new life into the world through traditional labor. Luisa had to go through a C-section, but she had specialists handling the procedure.
While both babies were delivered successfully, Annie suffered a fatal complication. The placenta wouldn’t pass and she was losing too much blood. Though the women who helped her with birthing her daughter moved to assist, she demanded they stop. There was nothing to be done and she suspected this would happen. It’s why she wrote a letter to her daughter for Xavier to give to her when she’s older.
Annie’s wish was for her child to grow up not being afraid of people and for Xavier to make sure she got to Link. She called it his “holy charge,” a call back to a moment they shared while discussing life and raising children.
Xavier told her he would and held Annie as she died while watching her daughter be held by a woman in the room.
Xavier Takes Annie’s Baby With Him
Though leaving the baby with the group he met on the road was an option, Xavier stayed true to his word. With a makeshift baby carrier, supplies for both him and the baby, and Annie’s horse Bandit, they headed off to Atlanta as planned to find his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma). They made it safely only to learn from Teri’s friend that she’d been taken.
As Xavier processed this new twist in his journey, Link and a caravan of people arrived at the Colorado bunker. He took a page out of Love, Actually to inform Paradise via cue cards that he and his people are asking nicely to see the bunker’s leader, but being “nice” about it would only last so long.
Paradise season 2 releases new episodes Mondays on Hulu.
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