Is Jane alive? 'Paradise' Season 2 episode 7 turns her fate into a much bigger mystery
'Paradise' Season 2 featured a few shocking deaths, including Samantha 'Sinatra' Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) and Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom), before the survivors stepped out of the imploding bunker. While Sinatra got an epic send-off in the finale, her personal assassin's death was more anti-climactic and happened in the season's penultimate episode, titled 'The Final Countdown.' Driscoll acted on Sinatra's orders to murder Dr. Gabriela Torabi, a therapist and grief specialist, but was not prepared for a counterattack from her. Torabi delivered a deadly stab to Driscoll's back, causing her to fall down in the shower and die. Fans suspected that it might not be the end of Driscoll, and they were right. 'Paradise' has something more interesting in store for its most complex character.
Episode 8, which aired on Monday, opens with Torabi's shocked face as she stands over Driscoll's dead body. However, when the episode revisits the same setting later, her body is gone. If this were any other show, then the disappearing act could be chalked down to Torabi simply dumping her body offscreen. However, given that 'Paradise' deals with multiverses and merging timelines, the explanation has to be more complex and mind-boggling than a simple continuity error. The mystery of Alex, teased throughout Season 2, plays a major role in what happened to Driscoll.
The finale revealed that Alex is an AI-driven quantum computer. It can predict future events and even manipulate time. Sinatra tells Xavier Collins that Alex has created two different timelines that have significantly overlapped. When 'Paradise' delved into Driscoll's backstory in Episode 6, it was revealed that Alex predicted Driscoll's birth in 1997 with the chilling message, 'A killer will be born on June 6 at 12:01 AM. She can be stopped when it matters, if you deliver a message.' Don, the man tasked with delivering this message to the mother, fails to do so. Driscoll grows up with an abusive mother and develops severe mental health issues that turn her into the stone-cold killer we see in the series. Alex calculated the trajectory of Driscoll’s life even before her birth and knew the threat she would pose later in life.
The second part of the message points to the right time to stop her. Clearly, Driscoll’s death at the hands of Torabi was not the right moment, or else she would have stayed dead. If we go by Alex’s predictions, Driscoll has survived Torabi’s attack, as the right moment for her to be ‘stopped’ has not arrived yet. Driscoll was Sinatra's weapon, who aimed her at her adversaries. But with Sinatra now gone, Driscoll has no obligations or loyalties to follow, making her far more dangerous. The trained killer has the means to carry out her worst impulses with no moral or standing in her way. Where Season 2 was about facing the dangers of Alex, Season 3 may well be about Collins confronting Driscoll. It also ties into what Sinatra told Collins, that he has the means to 'go save the world.' And maybe with Alex's guidance, he can save humanity from the threat of Driscoll. Viewers can watch both seasons of 'Paradise' on Hulu.
