Paradise Season 1 Episode 4 Delivers Another Gut Punch as Sinatra Closes in on Xavier

Farewell, William “Billy” Pace. We hardly knew you.

Paradise Season 1 Episode 4 put Xavier’s flawed right-hand man under the microscope to fill in much-needed blanks for viewers.

The last thing I expected from this hour was that Billy would die by the end. There was so much more potential for the character.

But everyone has a purpose on Paradise, and Billy’s was to be the great disruptor in the narrative.

If you read my reviews for the first three episodes of Paradise Season 1, you know I’ve been skeptical of Billy because of his ice-cold exterior.

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Jon Beavers played those sides of Billy well, but he was on another level during the warmer parts of Billy’s personality that came out to play on the latest episode.

Billy Was One of the Best-Written Characters on Paradise

Billy is one of those characters we rarely get on TV. By that, I mean those that appear in a few episodes but have a profound impact that will shape the rest of the season.

Watching Billy’s past play out was both heartbreaking and eye-opening. He was fundamentally shaped into the killing machine he became by his uncle.

The man was so devoted to taking every bit of good out of Billy’s life that he could, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise that the teenager turned the gun on him when ordered to put down his dog.

While it’s easy to point out that the moment is what shaped the rest of Billy’s life, the emotional torture from his uncle is what started this terrifying chapter for him.

Where would Billy have wound up had he been unable to kill bad guys when he left prison?

My best guess is that he’d have ended up behind bars again, or worse, dead after a fight with someone who outsmarted him.

Billy’s motivations were sketchy at the end of Paradise Season 1 Episode 3, which made me question whether he was about to do something to Xavier or his family.

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But Billy looked up to Xavier, and their bond allowed him to become an uncle to Presley and James.

Billy took that role very seriously, and his life inside the mountain helped keep him on the straight and narrow. Sadly, his biggest undoing was threatening someone as well-connected as Sinatra.

I hate to admit it, but Billy got too big for his boots.

It’s heartbreaking that it was all in the name of keeping the Collins family safe, but did he really think that Sinatra wouldn’t have a contingency to take him down if he went off the rails?

Sinatra Is Thinking Multiple Steps Ahead

Sinatra is a force to be reckoned with, who will stop at nothing to get what she wants, so there was never a reality in which she would allow his behavior to go unchecked.

It’s fitting, though, that he told Sinatra to send her biggest and baddest mercenary after him, and it turned out to be Jane.

Like Billy, Jane has been an enigma because the show hasn’t been peeling back the layers on her as a character.

The writers successfully developed her a bit on Paradise Season 1 Episode 4 and lured viewers into a false sense of security that she desperately craved Billy’s affections.

She played the role of a young woman struggling to fit into the world very well, but now that we know she’s a killing machine, what will she do next?

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Xavier doesn’t see her as a villain in the narrative because, on the surface, she’s been good to him and was Billy’s girlfriend.

If anything, Xavier will want to protect her from whatever he thinks will happen to her if she crosses Sinatra.

Killing Billy makes Jane feel secure as a character because she can keep all eyes on Xavier and report whatever he plans to Sinatra.

As we advance, the question is how Xavier will navigate his next steps because now he knows Sinatra and Nicole have conspired against him.

Xavier Has a Big Decision to Make

Will he lump Gabriela in with them? Her little nugget of information about Cal’s message about Billy seems like a big misdirect for now, but that could be something Sinatra has orchestrated to test how loyal she is to her.

Xavier is facing an uphill battle to survive, and something tells me that Sinatra is already planning to have him take the fall for Cal’s death or has another devious plan up her sleeve.

The revelation about the breathable air in the outside world post-apocalypse was a stunner because it opens up many possibilities for the future.

Sinatra’s sentiments about the survivors fighting to the death for every last resource sound in line with what we’ve seen in other post-apocalyptic dramas, but what if there’s something more?

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She’s the producer of the simulation in this Hulu hit, and part of her job will have been to think of every scenario.

I hope she’s thinking about people wanting to leave or letting other people in, because there has to be some traversal as the series gathers steam.

Alright, Paradise Fanatics! That’s all I got. What are your thoughts on Billy’s death? Do you think that Jane is bigger and badder than him?

What’s your take on Sinatra going guns blazing for Xavier? And what do you think Xavier will do now that his closest ally is dead?

Hit the comments.

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