Paradise Episode 1 came out on Hulu and Disney+ on January 26, and one of the prevalent components of the episode is the plot thread involving James and the Giant Peach. Viewers are likely familiar with the 1961 children’s book in question, written by British author Roald Dahl. However, its importance in the narrative isn’t made clear until toward the end of the episode. Here is everything you need to know about it.
What is the significance of James and the Giant Peach in Paradise?
James and the Giant Peach is mentioned quite early in Paradise Episode 1. After returning from a run, Sterling K. Brown’s Xavier Collins gets ready for work and comes to the kitchen to discover that his children, Presley and James, have already started eating breakfast without him. A back-and-forth banter ensues, but it stops when Xavier learns that James is reading James and the Giant Peach and that Presley was the one who gave him the book.
It is heavily implied that there is something about the book that impacts Xavier. However, it isn’t until the end of the episode that we learn exactly what that is. The show’s narrative ricochets between the past and the present, and Xavier’s wife died before the current events. As Xavier tells Cal, his wife named their son after the character from James and the Giant Peach. She read from the book to her belly for the rest of her pregnancy and became obsessed with the book. After her passing, Xavier found himself becoming obsessed with the book as well. He mentions that Dahl initially wanted to name the book James and the Giant Cherry before deciding on peach. Xavier says to Cal that he wonders whether his wife would have still named their son after the book it was called James and the Giant Peach.
The undercurrent of this conversation is the fact that Xavier blames Cal for his wife’s death. Not much about it has been revealed yet, though, in Episode 3, James reveals that his wife was in a different city when the cataclysmic event that wiped out most of humanity happened, and Cal failed to get her to a plane to be transported to Paradise City. As the series goes forward, we are likely to learn more about her death.
