Paradise’s Big Mysteries: So That‘s Who Killed Cal?! Join TVLine’s In-Depth, Ongoing Investigation
When “Who killed the United States president?” is a TV show’s second biggest mystery, you know you’re in for a ride.
From its very first episode, Hulu’s Paradise has proven itself to be a puzzle-box series that invites viewers to pay close attention to every single frame. Was that close moment between two Secret Service agents a loving touch or an intel handoff? Why is one of the show’s key players such an enigma? And what, exactly, brought about the end of the world as we know it — and what does the capital of Georgia have to do with anything?
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To get things started, check out my recaps of the series premiere, Episodes 2 and 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6, Episode 7 and the Season 1 finale. Then, below, we’ve gathered a few hints from what was shown on screen during the series’ first season. The list at the bottom of this page is up to date through the finale — so, 1) Spoiler Alert!, and 2) we think we’ve caught all the outstanding queries that Dan Fogelman & Co. served up over the past eight episodes.
Regardless, your role remains the same: TVLine readers are the absolute best at catching things others don’t, especially when it comes to solving TV-related riddles. So if you see or hear something that we don’t during an episode, make sure to shout it out in the comments or hit me up on social media @kimroots: If your tip is a good one, it’ll be included (with credit!) in our updates.
So scroll down and have at it, Paradise sleuths!
WHAT, EXACTLY, HAPPENED TO WIPE OUT HUMANITY?
During a flashback in the series’ premiere, Gen. Curtleigh informs Xavier that the United States government is 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, which may be the world’s only chance at survival. But the exact flavor of catastrophe is unknown. Is it the tsumani that the climate scientist warns about during the conference Cal and Samantha attend in Episode 2? Is it a nuclear attack, as potentially evidenced by the bright flash Xavier sees out the plane window on the day everything goes down? Or is it something else altogether?
UPDATE: Episode 5 opens with a shot of the Washington Monument almost completely submerged in water, which seems to lend credence to the climatological catastrophe theory. But then later in that same episode, as Cal reviews files from the ill-fated mission to the surface, he sees that the team encountered high radiation levels during their trip topside. We’re no scientists, so we’re genuinely asking: Could a natural disaster have produced that effect, as well?
UPDATE: Episode 6 (read a recap here) makes a point of highlighting the pre-catastrophe existence of two thermonuclear weapons in Atlanta, information that is found on Cal’s tablet. Discuss amongst yourselves.
UPDATE: The answers we’ve been waiting for — on this topic, at least — come fast and furious in Episode 7. A supervolcano under the ice sheet in Antarctica erupted, causing a tsunami that laid waste to most of the planet. At the same time, some nations with nuclear weapons saw the global chaos as an opportunity to strike, so the planet simultaneously experienced a nuclear war on top of a climate catastrophe. (Read a full recap.)
WHO KILLED PRESIDENT CAL BRADFORD?
Amid all the questions raised by the show’s premiere-ending twist, it’s easy to forget that there’s another mystery afoot: Who offed the Commander-in-Chief?
UPDATE: In Episode 4, we learned that Cal’s killer was not Secret Service Agent Billy Pace. So, cross him off the list. But that leaves a lot of others who might’ve had motive and ability to murder the president.
UPDATE: Toward the end of Episode 6, Sinatra tells Xavier that she did not have the president killed. “I might’ve, if he kept digging where he was digging,” she explains. “But I didn’t.” Also in that ep, Presley recalls seeing someone wearing coveralls featuring a flower logo at the Bradford residence the night of Cal’s death. (Read a full recap.)
UPDATE: In Episode 7, the DNA results from Cal’s murder scene have come back… and they beg more questions than they answer. The biological info found doesn’t match anyone in Paradise, which — as Sinatra tells Xavier (read full recap) — means that someone from outside the underground community somehow got in and killed the president.
UPDATE, AND IT’S A BIG ONE: In the Season 1 finale (read recap), we learn that the man who tried to assassinate Cal in the season premiere assumed the identity of a man named Trent, who was supposed to be Paradise’s librarian. He slipped into the cave city undetected on Arrival Day and lived as Trent for three years. But the day that Cal went to the library to make the mix CD for Jeremy reminded the man of how angry he was — he’d been a project manager on the digging of the cavern, which went forward even when toxic materials made the crew sick — and he wound up killing Cal with one of the drill bits used to create Paradise.
WHAT DOES THE NUMBER WRITTEN ON THE CIGARETTE MEAN?
Xavier asks several people about the number he finds inscribed on one of President Bradford’s cigarettes, in a pack marked with a big X. But no one knows what the digits might reference.
UPDATE: In Episode 5, we learn that Cal wrote the numbers on the cigarette the day he died, after he became privy to the tablet files he’d previously been unable to access.
UPDATE: The season finale reveals that the number corresponds to the Dewey Decimal System and leads to the biography section, where Cal had hidden top-secret transcripts about the world outside Paradise in a biography of Rat Pack hanger-on Peter Lawford. (Read recap.)
HOW DO YOU BUILD A CITY THAT SIZE WITHOUT DRAWING MORE ATTENTION?
Sure, via flashback we see that some people noticed something hinky going on in Colorado. Cal’s wannabe assassin shouted “The world deserves to know!” as he was tackled. But how did the Bradford administration (and friends) construct the planet’s biggest bunker in relative secrecy?
UPDATE: As we learn in the Season 1 finale (read recap), the workers who dug the site that would be Paradise were told it was going to be a recycling facility.
WHAT, EXACTLY, WAS CAL’S ROLE IN XAVIER’S WIFE’S DEATH?
“I didn’t lose my wife,” Xavier tells Gabriela in Episode 3. “I know exactly where she was. She was in a different city, and she died because he didn’t get her to a goddamned plane.” And while that’s an answer of sorts, Cal’s involvement in what happened to Teri is still murky.
UPDATE: Episode 6 shows us the moment that Cal promised Xavier that they would go to Atlanta and “pick her up” if Teri was there when things went sideways.
UPDATE: In Episode 7, despite his assurance early in the hour, Cal eventually admits that he knew Teri wouldn’t make it to the transport in time to make the plane to Paradise.
WHAT WAS REALLY HAPPENING IN THIS BILLY-JANE MOMENT?
Were the illicit lovers merely touching hands in a moment of tension, soon after the president was found dead, or was one slipping something to the other?
WHY DO WE KNOW SO LITTLE ABOUT GABRIELA?
Aside from the story about her parents, both of whom died long before the catastrophic event, and her involvement with Samantha’s grieving family, what do we really know about the architect of social well-being?
WHY IS BILLY PACE ‘DANGEROUS’?
“I have a message from the president,” Gabriela tells Xavier at the end of Episode 3. “He said if something should happen to you, I should find you. He said Billy Pace is dangerous.” But how? (We’ll admit — Billy parked outside Xavier’s house with a gun in the passenger seat doesn’t earn him any checks in the Not Dangerous column.)
ANSWER: Episode 4 (read full recap here) filled us in on Billy’s backstory: A violent kid who’d shot his own uncle and wound up in juvenile detention, he was recruited by a mercenary group when he was a young man. Paradise was a restart, of sorts, for him; at one point, he tells Xavier that he had no friends in his old life, and that he’d done things that might make Xavier not want to hang around with him. Eventually, we learn that Sinatra sent Billy topside after the scientific mission discovered that the air was breathable; on her orders, he shot and killed every member of the team so they couldn’t share the news with the rest of Paradise. Could that terrible event have been what Cal referenced when he told Dr. Torabi that Billy wasn’t to be trusted?
WHAT DOES SINATRA KNOW?
We don’t, for one minute, believe that Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond is being forthcoming with all of the intel she possesses. Might she actually know what happened the night Cal died? Might she (whispers) have been involved?!
UPDATE: While that’s not yet clear, Episode 4 shows us that Sinatra certainly has a killer instinct: She not only tasked Billy with offing the members of the scientific mission (in order to stop them from letting Paradise know that the air topside was breathable), she had Billy himself killed when he warned her to stay away from Xavier and his family. (More on that deviousness here.) And in Episode 5, we find out that she knew the away team had found a survivor above ground… but she ordered Billy to murder that person, as well. Cold!
UPDATE: In Episode 7, we learn that Sinatra does not know who killed Cal — but she knows that the murderer is not someone from Paradise. She also knows where Presley is, and she’s holding onto that information until Xavier locates the killer.
IS JANE THE ONLY OTHER ASSASSIN IN TOWN?
In Episode 4, Samantha asks Billy, “You think you’re the only killer I brought down here, just in case?” We learn by the end of the episode that his girlfriend/coworker, Jane, is another secretly deadly weapon. Might there be more?
DID ANYONE SURVIVE THE CATASTROPHE?
For the first few Paradise episodes, we’re led to believe that the Earth as humanity knew it is gone, an uninhabitable wasteland that is hostile to human life. But in Episode 4, we learn that a team of scientists traveled to the surface and discovered that the air is breathable… only to be killed, on Samantha Redmond’s orders, by Billy Pace. While we didn’t see anyone else up there with them, is it too much of a leap to think that maybe not everyone left behind died?
UPDATE: In Episode 5, we learn the scientific mission did encounter a female survivor. But when they attempted to bring her back to Paradise, Sinatra ordered Billy to kill everyone! (Read a full recap.) Could there be others?
UPDATE: According to Sinatra at the end of Episode 6, Xavier’s wife, Teri, is alive! Do we believe her?!
UPDATE: Recordings from the surface, which Sinatra play for Xavier in Episode 7, indicate that Teri is, indeed, alive — and she’s not the only survivor of the global devastation.
UPDATE: In the Season 1 finale, Cal’s transcripts of the top-secret files indicate that rudimentary crops, water filtration and trade systems are going in several parts of the country — which is way more than the handful of people we were thinking.
WHY DOES PRESLEY HAVE THE PRESIDENT’S TABLET?
We certainly didn’t expect Xavier’s daughter to be the person in possession of President Bradford’s device, which contains national security secrets and which several people — including Sinatra — would very much like to have returned. How did the teen get the tablet? Was it during one of her Nintendo Wii nights at the White House? What might she want from the device? And has she shared her secret with anyone else?
UPDATE: In Episode 6, Presley tells Jeremy that she found the tablet in the bushes outside Cal’s room when she was at the presidential residence to play Wii with Billy, and that she thought she might get some intel about her mother from it. With Jeremy’s help, she has Kane unlock the device, which offers up some unsettling information about nuclear weapons in Atlanta.
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