'Paradise' Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: Jane's Dark Past Is Revealed Before a Shocking Betrayal

Editor's note: The below recap contains spoilers for Paradise Season 2 Episode 6.

It's wild to realize how close Paradise's second season is wrapping up already, not to mention a little sad, since the Hulu drama has yet to receive renewal word for the third and final season creator Dan Fogelman has up his sleeve. Until then, Season 2 continues to be a masterclass with its third-to-last episode. Helmed by director Liza Johnson and writer Nadra Widatalla, Episode 6, "Jane," is simply titled yet anything but simple. With Xavier Collins' (Sterling K. Brown) search for Teri (Enuka Okuma) mostly offscreen this week, Paradise catches up with the bunker's residents this week, and it's an hour that belongs to the women.

It's May 29, 1997, and an electronics worker named Don receives the oddest email from a stranger going by Alex Q. "A killer will be born on June 5 at 12:01 AM," it reads. "She can be stopped when it matters, if you deliver a message to her." Not content to leave that oddity be, Alex Q spams Don with instant message chats and even a pager notice ordering him to "deliver the message." As soon as it strikes 12:01 AM on that very day, Jane Driscoll's (Nicole Brydon Bloom) mother gives birth to a healthy, screaming baby girl. It's a difficult process, with the first moment of quiet — leaving the hospital — interrupted by Don in the parking lot. Stunned and frightened, he never gets a chance to issue the message before security drags him away from mother and child, both of whom are crying.

As Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) stares at Link's (Thomas Doherty) messages through her camera feed of the bunker's exterior, Jane arrives to escort Samantha to the day's advisory committee meeting. Jane beams upon receiving a compliment from the older woman, then grows unusually pensive and distracted as she watches Samantha lovingly hug her daughter, Hadley (Kate Godfrey). Memories arise, specifically of a pre-teen-era Jane acting out tea time with her dolls to her heart's content only for her mother to berate her childishness.

Once the seething Jane spies her mom and her boyfriend venture into the nearby sauna, all smiles and intimate touches, Jane locks them inside. Her stubbornness gives way once her mom's yelling increases into tones that strike a familiar surrender in Jane, and her mother immediately locks Jane inside the sauna. No apologies, excuses, or pleas about "Climby," a voice in her head, making her do the act, matter to the woman. Instead, Jane's only parental influence, rages, "That lunatic in the parking lot was right about you. You’re the worst goddamn thing to ever happen to me." Jane snaps back to the present day when Hadley, worried about the recent chaos and two murdered Presidents, makes Jane promise to keep Samantha safe.

Both Sides of the Bunker Prepare for a Fight in ‘Paradise’ Season 2 Episode 6

On the other side of Paradise, Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi) is also finishing up some research before the committee meets by searching through her therapy voice recordings for the name "Alex." One snippet is a good memory of the two women's lost friendship; the other marks Samantha confessing how "Alex is our only choice," even though it means Samantha fears the person she's becoming "in order to save them." Samantha wastes zero of the committee's time before she introduces the "militia" gathered outside the bunker and maneuvers them back into accepting her trust and judgment, asserting that while she won't go rogue again, especially given the ongoing instability of the bunker, all their upcoming decisions must be unanimous. Gabriela storms out without a word while the group falls in line, Jane beaming with pride at Sinatra.

Another side effect of Jane and Samantha's misdeeds, Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall), is escorted into the same lower-level custody housing teenage dissident Jeremy Bradford (Charlie Evans) and Anders, the man responsible for helping construct the bunker. After some displays of verbal self-hatred, Anders explains to Jeremy how he can help the younger man literally bust open all the bunker's doors: every entrance automatically opens if one shuts off the system's oxygen supply, located in the emergency control room and accessible from their location via a maintenance tunnel and one nearby utility hole.

Not long after, Gabriela meets with Robinson to tell her she believes in her innocence and needs her help to expose Samantha and find the mysterious Alex. To call Robinson deservedly unimpressed is understating things. There's no way to hold Samantha and her enablers — underlings like Jane — accountable, "because that is how the system works." All Robinson intends to do with the rest of her life is "mourn the loss of my people and then wash my hands of all of it." Yet that night, once Robinson sees a guard tailing Jeremy and Anders toward the sewer covering, she can't help but intervene for the son of the man she'd loved (James Marsden), punching out the guard and lowering them into the maintenance tunnel.

Elsewhere, before night falls, Samantha summons Jane so they can lay all their cards on the table. For Samantha, she's terrified of Jane's capacity for violence, but this woman is her last support. In Jane's case, she's always been a weapon directed by those she respects to kill on their behalf. Without someone ordering her to do that, she has no purpose — hence a dead Samantha being no use to Jane. With that, Samantha instructs Jane to go outside and "negotiate the terms" of Samantha's future conversation with Link's crew.

‘Paradise’ Season 2 Episode 6 Reveals Jane’s Backstory

Another series of flashbacks rewinds to a decade earlier, as Jane finds herself overpowered by her sexist brute of a teacher, Radner, during a training scenario. Another instructor, Officer Stacy Thomas, sees Jane's value and finds it unfortunate — if not surprising, given how they're both women — that so few people have told Jane that before now. Moved almost to tears, Jane accepts Stacy's invitation to teach Jane meditation as a way to quiet the internal noise; once she's skilled enough at it, Jane can notice details that evade others' notice: "mannerisms, patterns, behaviors." Jane uses that advantage to finally disarm Radner in one move. Jane celebrates that win with Stacy over takeout and thanks her for her guidance, only for Stacy to share her frustration at losing out on a promotion to Radner. It doesn't matter how vastly superior Stacy is, in skills and mentorship, to her colleague — he "has a dick," so he receives preferential treatment. (Stacy also introduces Jane to the wonders of the Wii.)

Sometime later, Jane appears on Radner's porch and asks him to consider rejecting the promotion. Following his vile refusal, Radner receives a severe physical assault and winds up in the hospital. Jane shows up to her and Stacy's next dinner night with Radner's penis in a bag, having severed it as punishment; the act's violence and Stacy's dawning horror contrast with Jane's tentative hope that such intervention means she's returned all of Stacy's favors.

Current-day Jane soaks up the surface world's sunshine, listens to birdsong, and studies Link's group from a distance before stepping into the armed fray, all innocence and nice girl act. She easily disarms one of the men and takes him hostage. Link emerges, and their negotiations settle on him bringing five unarmed men with him and getting a free slice of the bunker's delicious pie. Samantha rewards Jane's success with a Nintendo Switch, which prompts Jane to enthuse at Hadley over the girl's amazing mother.

In a different switch, Hadley asks her mother what's truly going on; Presley Collins (Aliyah Mastin) confronted Hadley earlier that day and sewed the first seeds of distrust within the Redmond daughter. From her bedroom that night, Hadley secretly texts Presley the information Samantha lets slip as a way to comfort her daughter's fears: that people are being held in the lower levels. And as Hadley's loyalties start crumbling, Jane's further cement; when Gabriela calmly confronts Jane over her culpability in the bunker's chaos, Jane makes it clear that she will do anything to protect Samantha.

Gary Betrays Xavier in ‘Paradise’ Season 2 Episode 6, but Hope Isn’t Lost

Checking in with Xavier and Gary Jones (Cameron Britton), Xavier explains his rescue plan. Positioning the explosives inside his chosen radius means it poses a threat without unnecessarily harming anyone, but Xavier won't hesitate to "break a few necks" if it means retrieving his wife. Xavier sneaks past the guards, assembles the bomb's wires, and takes out the photo of Teri and Gary's group.

Over the radio, he tells Gary to tell Teri where to find their children, that Xavier tried to save her, and that Gary ensures Teri's safety. "That's all I ever wanted to do," Gary states, and Xavier realizes the extent of Gary's fixation on Teri just in time, jumping away as Gary detonates the bomb. He's thrown by the explosion, however, and left stunned. He drags himself half-upright as all the armed guards race toward him in slow motion — only for Teri to part through their forming bodies, husband and wife's eyes locking for the first time in over three years.