Paradise is the type of show in which bravery is essential, and being a badass is survival. The remarkable Hulu series is set in a world where rich and powerful people designed a utopian city called Paradise inside of a Colorado mountain in order to survive an extinction-level event that has ravaged Earth. The illusion of safety is shattered when President of the United States Cal Bradford (James Marsden) is mysteriously murdered in a place where crime isn’t supposed to exist, and it’s up to his Secret Service bodyguard Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) to find out who did it. Samantha “Sinatra” Redmon (Julianne Nicholson), the brains behind the entire Paradise project, turns out to be a worthy adversary who’s trying to do the right thing in the absolute worst possible ways.
Paradise does a lot of things well, but its shining achievement is showing how much of a badass Sterling K. Brown can be.
Known for his portrayals of stern but loving parents on his breakout show This Is Us and in the severely underrated film Waves, the Emmy-winning actor finds himself in some of the most intense situations of his illustrious career thanks to the Hulu series. Without shooting that many bullets or killing that many people, Brown channels the same emotional control that made his earlier characters feel three-dimensional to perform a role at the intersection of grief and anger. He isn’t a badass just for the sake of being one. He’s a badass because it’s the right thing to do. And these are his most badass moments from the first season of Paradise.