Paradise Episode 7 recap: The day civilization collapsed

Fans have been enjoying a high-stakes world of secrets, power struggles, and survival in Hulu's Paradise TV series, with Sterling K. Brown playing the most important character. It debuted in January 2025, introducing viewers to Secret Service agent Xavier Collins, who's now determined to hunt down the culprit behind the death of President Cal Bradford.

The story kicks off with the shocking demise of President Cal Bradford, and being a part of the Secret Service security team, Collins decides to investigate the case. As soon as the quest begins, Collins makes an unsettling discovery—Paradise is far from a peaceful community.

It's actually a massive underground bunker with only 25,000 human survivors of an extinction-level disaster. The world above is barely adaptable, and the government officials inside Paradise are keeping major secrets. Collins learns about the advanced technology and also discovers gaps in official records.

The world's destruction has been a mystery, but the penultimate episode has finally revealed the truth. Through flashback scenes, Episode 7 follows the destruction and what happened in the immediate aftermath.

Continue reading for a detailed recap and learn about the biggest event in the political thriller.

Paradise Episode 7 recap: The world starts to crumble

The government officials (Image Source: Hulu)

Paradise Episode 7, "The Day," begins with a flashback from October 28, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A U.S. Air Force colonel is listening to the latest news about the nation and later tells his wife how close the world came to nuclear war.

This moment highlights fragile global stability and how one wrong person at the controls could end everything. Meanwhile, in the present, Collins learns another major piece of news about his wife from Samantha. He believed that Teri died in Atlanta, but now there's a possibility of her being alive.

The episode then shifts to the main event—a massive Antarctic supervolcano eruption that caused tsunamis and global devastation. Meanwhile, government officials are more focused on claiming land and resources and preparing for a nuclear war.

The catastrophic event resulted in tons of volcanic ash with the rapid increase in the sea levels. Considering the situation, President Cal Bradford feels helpless and activates the Versailles Protocol. This resulted in large-scale evacuations and urgent, life-or-death choices.

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Desperation at the White House and Xavier’s struggle in Paradise Episode 7

Xavier Collins remained loyal to the president (Image Source: Hulu)

Being the one with the most power, President Cal Bradford had to decide how to handle the crisis. His advisors suggested he keep the public calm and sugarcoat the disaster, but the president refused to lie and addressed the nation truthfully in Paradise Episode 7.

While Bradford delivered a broadcast about the real scale of the disaster, Xavier Collins was shocked to witness his fellow agents gunning down desperate staffers. They chose violence to board the last evacuation helicopters.

The EMP failsafe in Paradise Episode 7

The president opened up to the public (Image Source: Hulu)

Soon after government planes flee to Colorado, the nuclear war begins. During the chaotic event, two of the evacuation planes are blown up in midair, and Bradford is left with just two options: launch a nuclear counterattack to doom civilization or use a Cold War-era EMP failsafe.

This EMP failsafe is a secret weapon designed years ago to disable all electronics on Earth. However, it has its own effects: using this failsafe means sending humanity back centuries.

As a result, the president chose the EMP failsafe and prevented a full-scale nuclear apocalypse. However, he couldn't save the civilization from collapsing into darkness.

Xavier Collins' heartbreaking loss and a staling revelation

Before Paradise Episode 7 ends, we also see Xavier Collins' desperate attempts to protect his wife Teri and take her out of Atlanta. Since he had huge responsibilities, time ran out, and Collins believed Teri died in the nuclear blast.

As mentioned above, Samantha later tells him that she knows about the president's secret contingency plan, which might have kept her alive. Not only this, the penultimate episode of Paradise also reveals that the DNA found at Bradford’s murder scene doesn’t match anyone inside the bunker.

This suggests that the killer is someone from the outside and the above surface isn’t as lifeless as they believed. Now, the key mysteries revolve around who killed the president. Did Teri survive the blast? And most importantly, who else survived on the surface?

Don't forget to watch the Paradise finale "The Man Who Kept the Secrets," arriving March 4, 2025, only on Hulu.