The post-apocalypse adds a new setting (the outside world!) and new intrigue (billionaires are always up to something) when Paradise, Hulu’s dystopian thriller, returns. Season two brings back the show’s flashes of melodrama and frequent pop culture references, emphasizing its complicated characters while also reminding the viewer that this is taking place in a version of our world that’s gone very, very sideways.
Season one, which unfolded almost entirely in an underground city created to withstand a global environmental disaster, closed the case on its presidential assassination whodunit—but left plenty of bunker-bound intrigue in its wake.
The main timeline of season two picks up just a few weeks after season one, but once again Paradise—created by This Is Us’ Dan Fogelman—relies on frequent flashbacks to bring fresh context and perspective to what we only think we know. A big reason Paradise is so entertaining is the way it constantly subverts expectations, springing surprise twists that in retrospect feel logical rather than random—and revealing over and over that first impressions aren’t always what they seem.
It is very carefully plotted, with breadcrumbs of various significance sprinkled across the early episodes, then highlighted in the “previously on” segments that become essential parts of the Paradise viewing experience.
Paradise season two once again runs eight episodes, with the first three arriving together; it’s a smart choice since each episode focuses on a different character and entry point into the drama. (io9 was provided with the first seven episodes for the purposes of this spoiler-free review.)
We don’t have to wait very long to see how Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown, who brings plenty of gravitas but also looks convincingly like a guy who could kill you with his hands) fared after escaping the bunker. In the course of discovering who killed President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), Xavier uncovered hidden truths about the bunker and its most powerful resident, billionaire Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson). He also found out his presumed-dead wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), had survived the disaster and was still somewhere near Atlanta, her last known location—which is exactly where Xavier points the small plane he appropriates from the bunker’s stash.
All three of those storylines—Xavier’s journey to find Teri, Sinatra’s desire to conceal just how deep her well of secrets goes, and Teri’s survival struggles after what Paradise calls “the Day”—propel season two. After barely getting any time with Teri in season one, we finally get a chance to see why Xavier thinks she hung the moon, and the show is better for it.
Season two also digs into the turmoil left behind in Liberty Grove, the underground community that even Paradise itself has started calling “Paradise.” After season one’s upheavals, the facade of normalcy is poised to crumble anew with every new confrontation.
This includes the tension between Sinatra, recovering from a bullet wound sustained in the season one finale, and her former confidante, Dr. Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi). There’s also the increasing distrust that Agent Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall) feels about Agent Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom), who viewers well know is a vicious killer only pretending to be, as Robinson once pegged her, “Holly Hobbie with a gun.”
As Paradise switches between these separate—yet interlinked, all part of the show’s precise design—plotlines, it also makes room for brand-new characters. While fans might be eager to see what happened to Xavier and Sinatra immediately, season two instead spends its entire premiere with a fresh face: Annie (Shailene Woodley), a med school dropout who’s just starting to find happiness working as a tour guide at Graceland (another example of interlinking: as we know, Teri’s such a big Elvis fan, her daughter with Xavier is named “Presley”) when disaster strikes.
Annie’s experiences give us a whole new point of view on the Day as well as the first three years of its devastating aftermath. Since season one was so bunker-focused, the audience was shielded from witnessing the environmental nightmares, including the deep freeze caused by the supervolcano’s giant ash cloud. There are also considerable challenges associated with living in a world where an EMP, set off by Bradford to prevent nuclear war, has knocked out all power sources beyond the most primitive.
We immediately care about Annie. She’s all alone and would prefer to keep it that way, so we feel her terror when a group of rough-looking men suddenly appears at Graceland’s gate. That said, like many of the characters on Paradise, they’re not what they seem at first. It’s in this way we meet another significant new character: Link, played by Thomas Doherty.
Paradise manages to successfully juggle all these threads because each character has a very clear destination, a very clear motivation, or often both. We don’t always know what’s driving them at first, but they do, and that helps the pieces of the narrative slot into place. Even the most slippery characters have an inner code—which is not always a moral code, mind you—that they remain loyal to above everything else.
That includes Jane, whose tendencies toward evil are further explored across season two—very necessary, after sort of materializing out of nowhere in season one—and the deeply complex Sinatra, who remains Paradise’s most enigmatic character even as we learn more about her.
If you watched the trailer, you heard her say, “It was never just about the bunker,” and that tantalizing statement becomes the rabbit hole that season two plunges into. Strap in, and cringe at some of the music choices if you must—but know you’re in for a hell of a ride, as Paradise spins another gripping story about how the end of the world can inspire some of the very best and very worst choices among what’s left of humanity.
Paradise returns to Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ on February 23 with a three-episode drop and a weekly rollout thereafter.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Read the full article here
