Episode 8 of Paradise has aired on Hulu, and people want to know how it ends. The sci-fi political thriller predominantly revolves around Sterling K. Brown’s Xavier Collins, the lead Secret Service agent assigned to protect James Marsden’s President Cal Bradford in a post-apocalyptic world. Episode 7 unveiled what happened to the world beyond Paradise, revealing that the catastrophe was caused by the Antarctic supervolcanic eruption, the resulting megatsunamis, and global powers launching nuclear weapons at each other. Episode 8 focuses on revealing the second core mystery of the show: Who killed Cal?
Here’s the ending explained.
Here’s who killed President Cal in Paradise Episode 8 and why
Julianne Nicholson’s Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond revealed to Xavier in the previous episode that someone who wasn’t supposed to be in Paradise killed Cal. The season finale begins with a prologue depicting events from 12 years earlier. A group of construction workers built Paradise City under an overseer named Trent. One of the workers, an immigrant named Abdour Rahman or Adam, grew close to Trent. It is implied that they were romantically involved. It is revealed that Trent was the one who killed Cal while masquerading as the librarian of Paradise City.
During the construction, Trent realized that an arsenic compound was present in the ground, poisoning his workers. He was fired when he tried to speak to the architect about it, but not before he was told that the end of days was coming. Trent spent the next few months trying to figure out the truth. Meanwhile, his workers, including Adam, got sick. This prompted a frustrated and vengeful Trent to attempt to shoot Cal in public. We see the incident in flashback in one of the previous episodes.
Trent was placed in prison but eventually escaped. He arrived in Colorado, killed a librarian and his wife, and convinced a woman to pretend to be those murdered individuals along with him. He still wanted to kill Cal when he entered Paradise City, blaming the president for everything that happened to his friends. However, Trent became accustomed to his life in Paradise City and almost forgot why he came there in the first place. That changed when Cal walked into the library. His desire for vengeance reignited, Trent sneaked into the presidential mansion and murdered Cal.
Originally reported by Tamal Kundu on ComingSoon.
