@nicolemichele5 Published March 2, 2026, 12:00 p.m. ET Where to Stream: Paradise Powered by Reelgood More On: Paradise What Time Does ‘Paradise’ Season 2, Episode 4 Come Out? ‘Paraside’s Season 2 Graceland Sex Scene With Shailene Woodley Is the Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love the Show Needs Kelly Ripa Is Convinced ‘Paradise’ Creator Dan Fogelman “Watched Soaps As A Kid” Because He “Will Kill Off The Lead Actor” And Still “Bring Them Back For Every Episode” ‘Paradise’ Season 2 Episode 3 Recap: Back to the Bunker If you’re a diehard Dan Fogelman fan like myself, you know that no one is ever truly dead on one of his shows, thanks to his handy love of flashbacks.
Milo Ventimiglia starred in more than 100 episodes of This Is Us despite his character Jack Pearson being dead the whole time! And two characters who met their maker in Paradise Season 1 have already returned via flashbacks in Season 2. That said, the knowledge that characters can return in some creative capacity doesn’t make their deaths any less painful, as evidenced by the downright excruciating loss in Paradise Season 2, Episode 4, “A Holy Charge.”
Below, Decider breaks down the heartbreaking death and shares our interview with the departing Paradise star about those emotional final scenes and hopes of returning down the line.
Spoilers for Paradise Season 2, Episode 4 ahead.
The eventful, incredibly emotional installment briefly checks in with Link (Thomas Doherty) and his team, who are still en route to the bunker. We also see Xavier rebuild his strength with the help of a very pregnant Annie, who agrees to accompany him to Atlanta to find his wife if he takes her to Colorado afterwards. Once Xavier’s wounds heal, Annie mounts her horse and the two bravely leave Graceland behind.
As the new companions slowly make their way to Atlanta, Paradise flashes back in time to tell the story of the first baby born in the bunker. As a seasoned Fogelman fan who knows flashbacks often parallel present day, the blast from the past was immediately concerning to me, considering it wasn’t time for Annie to give birth yet. When Annie and Xavier sought shelter in an abandoned Waffle Barn Xavier taught her to swaddle using a bag of flour, however, I thought that maybe, just maybe, the Paradise creator was simply toggling between the bunker birth and the present day to draw parallels between pregnancy and parenthood. Sadly, I was right the first time.
Throughout the episode, Annie opens up to Xavier about the distrust she’s had in others — even before the world ended. In the Waffle Barn together, among words of wisdom and parenting advice, Xavier encourages Annie to believe in people, saying, “You can guard against the worst of people while still believing in the best. It’s remembering that we’re all capable of great change. Great love. Great promise. It’s a holy charge.”
Following the meaningful moment, Annie’s water prematurely breaks and she goes into labor dangerously early. She also reveals she has sky high blood pressure, swollen ankles, and blurred vision from preeclampsia — a potentially fatal hypertensive disorder that affects 3% to 8% of women who give birth globally. In a frenzied panic, Xavier races to find supplies to deliver the baby in the Waffle Barn and realizes he has to track down the strangers they passed earlier to ask for help.
Annie begs him not to trust anyone, but Xavier’s unwavering faith in others proves beneficial once again. To Annie’s surprise, he and the family return with supplies and help her deliver her baby girl. Following the birth, however, Annie experiences uncontrollable bleeding, her placenta won’t come out, and she tells Xavier the agonizing truth she’s known all along: there’s nothing they can do to save her. Woodley and Brown deliver incredibly heartfelt, powerhouse performances throughout the episode, but as Annie hands Xavier a note she wrote the baby, asks him to find the father, and teach her child not to be afraid of people, it’s impossible not to break down in tears. As the Paradise stars continue their Emmy-worthy performances, Annie tells Xavier that caring for her baby is his Holy Charge and embraces him. One of the strongest scenes in the entire series ends with her passing away in his arms, and Woodley says she and Brown were so present in that moment that she barely remembers filming.
“I remember leaving utterly exhausted. That’s honestly my biggest memory from the day. We gave all of ourselves, and our director really allowed us to have the space. We spent some time choreographing and rehearsing the scene, so we knew physically where our bodies would be in space. But other than that, Sterling and I kind of looked one another in the eye and had this unspoken agreement that we were going to really hold space for each other,” Woodley told DECIDER over Zoom when reflecting on the heartbreaking scenes. “It was just a very physical day. I remember physically squeezing his arm and him physically holding me and pushing with one another and against one another, and we were just very present. My memories feel a little disparate, because we were so present that there wasn’t a lot of internalizing or a storage space for the future of a memory. It was all about the there and the now, and being as honest and real as we possibly could.”
“Sterling and I kind of looked one another in the eye and had this unspoken agreement that we were going to really hold space for each other.”
We only just met and fell in love with Annie in Season 2’s exceptional premiere, so to say goodbye at all — let alone this soon in the season — is utterly heartbreaking. Doherty told Decider he was “devastated” to learn of Annie’s death. But at least there’s one silver lining. This is a Dan Fogelman show! And it’s also a season of television that’s possibly toying with time travel of some sort. So I’m praying we haven’t seen the last of Annie on Paradise, and so is Woodley.
“I would love that. I would really, really love that,” Woodley told DECIDER. “The joke I would always say was, ‘Thank god it’s a Dan Fogelman show,’ because he does tend to bring people back over and over again.”
Fingers crossed that Xavier finds Link, and that Annie can return to Paradise in some capacity down the line — be it traditional Fogelman flashbacks or whatever timetravely/multiverse madness/causality loop-style plan Paradise Season 2’s teased with “Alex” and that Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) appears to reference in a flashback before the end of Episode 4.
Until then, we’ll be over here rooting for a Shailene Woodley Paradise Emmy and sobbing over another outrageously affecting TV episode from the Fogelverse.
New episodes of Paradise premiere Mondays on Hulu.
