History tells us that all great civilizations are built upon lies, deaths, and deceit. And Samantha Redmond’s Paradise is no different. The season 1 finale introduced the man responsible for Cal Bradford’s death, who killed the president for things he never did. Or wasn’t even aware of, to be precise. [Spoiler Alert] The ending of season 1 finally revealed the killer’s identity, it was none other than Trent, who was living in disguise as Eli Davis, the librarian officially listed as a resident of the underground city. But it wasn’t the first time Trent had tried to kill the president. He had made an assassination attempt soon after Cal had won the elections. It seemed like he had made it his life’s mission to enact his vengeance upon the perpetrator whom he blamed for his lover’s death, and he wouldn’t have stopped until he had finished the job. So, without further ado, let’s take a brief look at Trent’s motivations and his death in the Paradise season 1 finale.
Trent Was A Project Manager At The Rocky Mountain Facility
Some 12 years ago, Sinatra laid the foundation of her ambitious Colorado project, backed by none other than Kane Bradford Industries. Kane’s company hired a whole bunch of workers to excavate the Rocky Mountains to make space for an underground bunker that in the near future would become home to more than 25,000 people. One of these employees was Trent, who worked as a project manager at the facility and managed the shifts of the workers. During his time, Trent discovered that many of his workers were falling ill. He looked into the matter and found traces of arsenopyrite residue that was making people sick, which he also tried to tell the higher-ups about, but they just assured him that the project would be closed soon enough.
The thing was, Trent didn’t want his men to die digging caves for the rich. He had fallen in love, or developed a fondness for a man named Abdul Rahman, aka Adam, and didn’t want to lose him. However, before Trent could blow the whistle, he was removed from the project and sent home. He tried to tell Adam and the others the truth about the end of the world, but no one really listened, as these men were in dire need of money, and they needed jobs to support their families.
Trent Connected the Dots
After his termination, Trent locked himself in his room and started investigating the project, only to find out that it all leads to industrialist Kane Bradford, whose son, Cal Bradford, was running for president. The irony is, to an outsider, it would seem like Cal really wanted to become the president. He was the one who sanctioned the Colorado project. And he should be held responsible for all those deaths in the Rocky Mountains. But the truth was, Cal never had any idea what was happening at his father’s company. He didn’t even want to be a part of it. He wanted to teach English in a school, and his only fault was he didn’t have the courage to stand up against his father, and he paid for his cowardice with his life.
Trent, like everyone else, held Cal responsible for poisoning his colleagues and holding back the truth, and therefore tried to inform all the legacy news media about his involvement in such a diabolical project. Alas, no one really listened to Trent, the whistleblower, and those who dared post the truth; Bradford Industries shut them down and filed defamation suits against them. This was when Trent realized that, to make people listen, he had to make some noise, and therefore printed a 3D gun to shoot the president outside the White House. This was the exact same assassination attempt that we saw in the first episode of Paradise season 1.
Trent was put in ADX Florence
Trent was soon arrested and thrown into the worst prison in the country, where he would have likely spent the rest of his life, but the catastrophe gave him a second chance. As chaos ensued inside the prison, Trent stole a dead officer’s uniform and went straight to the road leading to the bunker, where he killed a couple named Eli and Margaret Davis and stole their identity to reach Paradise with a woman he found outside the gas station. Trent had spent more than 7-8 years in prison burning with the fire of vengeance against those who put him behind bars for exposing their crimes. He was devastated when Abdul told him that he was dying, likely due to arsenic poisoning. Trent felt helpless, as he’d always known the truth yet wasn’t able to save the lives of those he cherished the most. He wanted the rich to pay for what they had done to the common folk, but once he entered Paradise, he decided to give the privileged class another chance, as they had built something wonderful to save humanity. But as he spent his days in the library, he realized that the underground structure was no different than the rich man’s mansion. It came inbuilt with all the same evils of capitalist society, it was just better at hiding the social divide and class discrimination. When he saw Cal again on the night of his murder, he was reminded of everything he had lost in the past and therefore decided to finish what he had started.
Trent killed Cal to get Justice for Abdul
Trent stole the uniform with the flower symbol on it from the museum and broke into Cal’s mansion at around 11 PM. Coincidentally, this was the same time when Billy Pace and Jane Driscoll turned off the camera to use the president’s video console. I don’t think Trent really thought about the CCTV cameras inside the mansion, and he just waited till 11 at night, believing the president would be asleep by that time and his security personnel, especially Agent Collins, had left the house. So he entered Cal’s room from the main door, and while Cal was smoking on the balcony, digging through secrets on his tablet, Trent hit him with a rock drilling bit, the very tool that was once used to make space for his paradise, only it was never Cal’s paradise to begin with. And this time around, he didn’t leave the room until he had confirmed the kill. He wanted to make sure that Abdul and the rest of the workers who died building the rich man’s paradise finally got the justice they deserved. Trent was wearing the uniform that Kane’s company had designed for the Colorado Project, and as he was leaving the president’s mansion, Collins’ daughter, Presley, saw him sneaking out from behind. She didn’t see the man’s face, or she would have revealed the killer’s identity a lot earlier. Additionally, Trent was not among the list of 25,000 who were given safe haven in the bunker, meaning he was never meant to be there, which was the reason why the DNA procured from the crime scene didn’t match with any of the residents.
Trent Jumped To His Death
Before his death, Cal had hidden what he’d learned about the outside world inside Peter Lawford’s biography, titled “The Man Who Kept Secrets.” Well, back in the day, Lawford and Frank Sinatra were quite close friends, and were part of an entertainer group called the Rat Pack. But they had a falling out, soon after which Sinatra kicked him out of his group. A similar feud had emerged between Cal and Samantha, though it wasn’t as dramatic as the one mentioned above. And yes, it doesn’t really have anything to do with Cal’s murder or Trent, just an interesting insight, which I thought was worth a mention.
As soon as Collins cracked the code left by the president, he went straight to the library to find out the secrets, but before he could make sense of it, Trent hit him hard on the head and tied him up. He stole the book and raced towards the exit to escape Paradise, but before he could do so, Collins and Robinson cornered him. He couldn’t run away, and therefore decided to jump to his death, as he had already exacted his revenge. He did want to tell the world about the underground city and all those lies the rich had been telling them all along, but it seemed like someone else would do this job for him. By killing the president, Trent had kicked off a chain of events from which Sinatra’s paradise would never recover. Jeremy wouldn’t let his father’s death go in vain, and would help Collins to relocate the residents to the outside world so that they could lead a normal life again, as Cal had wished for.
