This story contains heavy spoilers for Paradise season 2, episode 4, “A Holy Charge.” When Hulu's Paradise returned for its highly anticipated season 2 on February 23, instead of checking in with the lead character, Xavier (Sterling K. Brown), it opens with a departure episode about a woman named Annie Clay. Primarily set after the super volcano eruption that upends society in the series, the premiere titled “Graceland” follows the med school dropout turned Graceland tour guide (played by Shailene Woodley) as she finds the will to survive. It’s arguably the show’s best installment yet.
Thanks to Woodley's exquisite performance and the telling glimpses of her life before the apocalypse—her mother’s death, the panic attack that brings her career to an end, and the comfort she finds in teaching strangers about her mother’s favorite singer—we quickly come to care for her. It's all the more heartbreaking—and frustrating—then, when it's clear three episodes later that the character was introduced only to die.
