Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Season 2 finale of Paradise
The creators of Paradise love a big twist—or several. “One of the great joys of this show is surprising the audience,” says John Hoberg, a writer and executive producer on the Hulu thriller. Season 2, which ended on Monday with a finale titled “Exodus,” has plenty of surprises. Everything we’ve come to expect has gone up in smoke, literally, as the bunker where most of our characters have lived over the past two seasons crumbles after nuclear reactors explode. And the science-fiction elements of Paradise have gotten a major boost, with time travel potentially entering the plot.
With just one season to go (Paradise has been planned to last three seasons from the very beginning), there are several questions left open by the time “Exodus” ends. Here, Hoberg breaks down the twists and turns in the Paradise Season 2 finale and reflects on what it means for the future of Xavier (Sterling K. Brown), Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), and the rest of the Paradise cast.
Who is Alex?
One of the biggest mysteries of Season 2 has been the identity of Alex. “How’s Alex?” is a common question posed in the series and Link (Thomas Doherty), the leader of the rebel forces outside the bunker, has been determined the whole season to get his hands on Alex, whoever—or whatever—that may be.
The finale reveals that Alex is not a person, but an ultra-advanced quantum computer with extraordinary capabilities. It’s left vague precisely what Alex can do, though it’s implied that it may have created alternate universes and/or time travel.
For those left confused by the Alex of it all, Hoberg puts it in the simplest possible terms—though it’s still pretty complicated. “Alex is an A.I.-controlled quantum computer built with nearly unlimited resources—a computer so fast it can solve in seconds problems that would take traditional supercomputers the age of the universe to solve,” he says. “This computational speed was given the task of solving an impending climate disaster, but it approached it in a way a human wouldn’t consider, by attempting to manipulate time.”
Sinatra’s tragic end
Another stunner? Sinatra, the architect of the bunker and a main character in Paradise, is dead. She knows that the only way to stop a major nuclear reaction when the bunker goes down (it’s powered by several nuclear reactors) is to head to the tower, where the controls exist to close the bunker doors to trap the explosion within, obliterating the bunker while protecting those who leave before the meltdown. But to do that, Sinatra has to stay in the bunker to initiate the process, and dies in the process. Before she goes down with the bunker, she is able to tell Link that he’s actually her son Dylan, who died when he was a child. That big revelation is a lot to take in, but there’s no time for him to process the news.
Though it’s surprising that Paradise would kill off one of its most prominent characters, it’s actually part of the show’s philosophy, explains Hoberg. “When you work on a Dan Fogelman show, the one thing you can be certain of is that you will always stay true to a character’s honest motivations. There are never cheats to try to get the story to go where you might want it to go. If the character wouldn’t genuinely make a move you might want, it’s not going to happen.”
“For Sinatra, her overarching goal, her prime directive, is to save humankind from the impending disaster we saw in Episode 7 of Season 1. The first line of defense against the apocalypse was the bunker we saw in Seasons 1 & 2—this was how they could hide, survive, and hopefully ride out the disaster above.” This season added a new layer to Sinatra’s efforts, in which she helped fund a number of groups capable of super-fast computing in an attempt to stop the overwhelming climate crisis. And when she discovers that Link is actually her son, Dylan, it changes the way she sees everything.
“When she comes to believe that she’s seen her son — which she says is one of the ‘anomalies’ that could be signs that Alex has been successful at time manipulation — she has decided her second attempt at saving humanity through Alex must have worked. In her mind, her life’s goal is complete. And when faced with the need for somebody to stay behind in the bunker and seal the bunker doors to contain the nuclear explosion, she knows she’s completed her purpose,” says Hoberg.
But Hoberg suggests that while Link actually being Dylan is a major revelation, all may not be as it seems when it comes to Link being Sinatra’s son. “It’s possible she’s finally dealing with the grief of Dylan dying. So a question I would ask is: Do you believe what Sinatra believes, or is she believing Alex has done something it hasn’t? If you remember, the professor whom Billy killed in Season 2 Episode 3—his student was Dylan. And this professor asks Billy at one point if he believes things happen for a reason, or if it’s just a coincidence. I’m paraphrasing, but it’s a great question to ask yourself,” Hoberg teases.
If it is true, though, it means that Alex has successfully created an opportunity for time travel, and that Link is another version of Dylan, as Sinatra’s son died when he was a child, but Link/Dylan is no child.
While “Exodus” cheekily suggests that time travel will play a role in the next season, Hoberg won’t confirm or deny. But when it comes to Sinatra, he says, “It was genuinely painful for the writers when they realized she had to die,” but also that “you will see her next season—even when a character dies, they can always live on in flashbacks. But the big thing with Sinatra is that her character arc is pretty complete.”
How Paradise Season 2 ends
“Exodus” ends with a twist major enough to rival the initial reveal in the very first episode of Paradise. In the final minutes, we discover that there’s a second bunker 100 miles away from the first bunker, underneath the Denver Airport. “We always knew we wanted Sinatra—a woman who kept the secrets—to have an even bigger one, and we thought it was cool that the secret was actually another place,” says Hoberg.
In a flashback to Sinatra and Xavier’s final moment together, we see that Sinatra gave Xavier a mysterious key card relating to Alex. Not only that, but her parting words to Xavier are actually a mission: she wants him to infiltrate the other bunker. Inside that bunker, Sinatra explains, is a computer capable of stopping “all of this—in fact, it already has stopped all of this. You just need to get there.”
“Go save the world, Agent Collins,” she says to Xavier.
“What makes you think I’ll do any of this?” he asks.
“I believe you already have,” Sinatra responds.
It’s a line that once again suggests the existence of time travel and alternate realities, as the Xavier in front of our eyes has clearly not followed Sinatra’s instructions. He didn’t even know there was a second bunker until this moment. But Sinatra is hinting at the idea that another Xavier is roaming the Earth, who’s already found Alex.
What lies ahead for Xavier?
The final shot mirrors the very first episode of Paradise. A massive zoom out takes us away to the new bunker under the Denver Airport, just like the first episode revealed Xavier and company were all living inside a bunker. It feels like an equally major moment, and the show knows it, as it is accompanied by the same cover of Phil Collins “Another Day In Paradise” that was heard in the Season 1 premiere. “Seena Haddad and I had talked about putting it somewhere else,” Hoberg recalls, “like when Xavier was running out of the bunker. Then, during the edit, Dan had the idea to try it in the last moments—it was so perfect that it seems obvious now.”
Xavier has so much to process in these moments. His major arc in Season 2 was leaving the bunker to find his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), in Atlanta. He succeeded, and now that he’s saved his family from the collapsing bunker, he’s got a lot on his mind. “In the moment, he’s thinking, ‘What the hell comes next?’ He’s spent the last half-decade desperate to have his family whole again. And now they’re finally together, but is it safe? Will they be okay? Can’t the guy just get a chance to relax?” Hoberg asks. Knowing how relentless Paradise is, we can likely count on Xavier not getting a second to do any relaxing.
The finale leaves a lot in the balance for literally everyone we’ve come to know in Paradise, as the bunker is just a memory, and thousands of people are left wondering what’s next. Hoberg won’t give away much, but he does give us a sense of what’s to come, including hinting at a new foe after the likely death of Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom): “Jane sure seemed dead to me,” says Hoberg, “but as in real life, new villains always seem to pop up to fill the void.”
“The fact that Sinatra has tasked Xavier with going to the bunker to do something with Alex will definitely come into play in some form next season,” says Hoberg. “But will Xavier take up the quest? Does he trust anything that Sinatra says? And even if Sinatra thinks what she’s doing is good, is it? Was she so blinded by her drive to save the world that she might be putting it on a course for destruction? Is the second bunker even what she says it is? Or is Season 3 just a bunch of our characters running from zombies in a Paradise–The Last of Us crossover?”
Ok, so Hoberg has confirmed that the third and final season of Paradise will not, in fact, be a Last of Us crossover. But he does note that the possibilities are near endless. And since the writing for Season 3 is complete, Hoberg can promise one thing: “The audience will not be disappointed.”
Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Season 2 finale of Paradise
The creators of Paradise love a big twist—or several. “One of the great joys of this show is surprising the audience,” says John Hoberg, a writer and executive producer on the Hulu thriller. Season 2, which ended on Monday with a finale titled “Exodus,” has plenty of surprises. Everything we’ve come to expect has gone up in smoke, literally, as the bunker where most of our characters have lived over the past two seasons crumbles after nuclear reactors explode. And the science-fiction elements of Paradise have gotten a major boost, with time travel potentially entering the plot.
With just one season to go (Paradise has been planned to last three seasons from the very beginning), there are several questions left open by the time “Exodus” ends. Here, Hoberg breaks down the twists and turns in the Paradise Season 2 finale and reflects on what it means for the future of Xavier (Sterling K. Brown), Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), and the rest of the Paradise cast.
Who is Alex?
One of the biggest mysteries of Season 2 has been the identity of Alex. “How’s Alex?” is a common question posed in the series and Link (Thomas Doherty), the leader of the rebel forces outside the bunker, has been determined the whole season to get his hands on Alex, whoever—or whatever—that may be.
The finale reveals that Alex is not a person, but an ultra-advanced quantum computer with extraordinary capabilities. It’s left vague precisely what Alex can do, though it’s implied that it may have created alternate universes and/or time travel.
For those left confused by the Alex of it all, Hoberg puts it in the simplest possible terms—though it’s still pretty complicated. “Alex is an A.I.-controlled quantum computer built with nearly unlimited resources—a computer so fast it can solve in seconds problems that would take traditional supercomputers the age of the universe to solve,” he says. “This computational speed was given the task of solving an impending climate disaster, but it approached it in a way a human wouldn’t consider, by attempting to manipulate time.”
Sinatra’s tragic end
Another stunner? Sinatra, the architect of the bunker and a main character in Paradise, is dead. She knows that the only way to stop a major nuclear reaction when the bunker goes down (it’s powered by several nuclear reactors) is to head to the tower, where the controls exist to close the bunker doors to trap the explosion within, obliterating the bunker while protecting those who leave before the meltdown. But to do that, Sinatra has to stay in the bunker to initiate the process, and dies in the process. Before she goes down with the bunker, she is able to tell Link that he’s actually her son Dylan, who died when he was a child. That big revelation is a lot to take in, but there’s no time for him to process the news.
Though it’s surprising that Paradise would kill off one of its most prominent characters, it’s actually part of the show’s philosophy, explains Hoberg. “When you work on a Dan Fogelman show, the one thing you can be certain of is that you will always stay true to a character’s honest motivations. There are never cheats to try to get the story to go where you might want it to go. If the character wouldn’t genuinely make a move you might want, it’s not going to happen.”
“For Sinatra, her overarching goal, her prime directive, is to save humankind from the impending disaster we saw in Episode 7 of Season 1. The first line of defense against the apocalypse was the bunker we saw in Seasons 1 & 2—this was how they could hide, survive, and hopefully ride out the disaster above.” This season added a new layer to Sinatra’s efforts, in which she helped fund a number of groups capable of super-fast computing in an attempt to stop the overwhelming climate crisis. And when she discovers that Link is actually her son, Dylan, it changes the way she sees everything.
“When she comes to believe that she’s seen her son — which she says is one of the ‘anomalies’ that could be signs that Alex has been successful at time manipulation — she has decided her second attempt at saving humanity through Alex must have worked. In her mind, her life’s goal is complete. And when faced with the need for somebody to stay behind in the bunker and seal the bunker doors to contain the nuclear explosion, she knows she’s completed her purpose,” says Hoberg.
But Hoberg suggests that while Link actually being Dylan is a major revelation, all may not be as it seems when it comes to Link being Sinatra’s son. “It’s possible she’s finally dealing with the grief of Dylan dying. So a question I would ask is: Do you believe what Sinatra believes, or is she believing Alex has done something it hasn’t? If you remember, the professor whom Billy killed in Season 2 Episode 3—his student was Dylan. And this professor asks Billy at one point if he believes things happen for a reason, or if it’s just a coincidence. I’m paraphrasing, but it’s a great question to ask yourself,” Hoberg teases.
If it is true, though, it means that Alex has successfully created an opportunity for time travel, and that Link is another version of Dylan, as Sinatra’s son died when he was a child, but Link/Dylan is no child.
While “Exodus” cheekily suggests that time travel will play a role in the next season, Hoberg won’t confirm or deny. But when it comes to Sinatra, he says, “It was genuinely painful for the writers when they realized she had to die,” but also that “you will see her next season—even when a character dies, they can always live on in flashbacks. But the big thing with Sinatra is that her character arc is pretty complete.”
How Paradise Season 2 ends
“Exodus” ends with a twist major enough to rival the initial reveal in the very first episode of Paradise. In the final minutes, we discover that there’s a second bunker 100 miles away from the first bunker, underneath the Denver Airport. “We always knew we wanted Sinatra—a woman who kept the secrets—to have an even bigger one, and we thought it was cool that the secret was actually another place,” says Hoberg.
In a flashback to Sinatra and Xavier’s final moment together, we see that Sinatra gave Xavier a mysterious key card relating to Alex. Not only that, but her parting words to Xavier are actually a mission: she wants him to infiltrate the other bunker. Inside that bunker, Sinatra explains, is a computer capable of stopping “all of this—in fact, it already has stopped all of this. You just need to get there.”
“Go save the world, Agent Collins,” she says to Xavier.
“What makes you think I’ll do any of this?” he asks.
“I believe you already have,” Sinatra responds.
It’s a line that once again suggests the existence of time travel and alternate realities, as the Xavier in front of our eyes has clearly not followed Sinatra’s instructions. He didn’t even know there was a second bunker until this moment. But Sinatra is hinting at the idea that another Xavier is roaming the Earth, who’s already found Alex.
What lies ahead for Xavier?
The final shot mirrors the very first episode of Paradise. A massive zoom out takes us away to the new bunker under the Denver Airport, just like the first episode revealed Xavier and company were all living inside a bunker. It feels like an equally major moment, and the show knows it, as it is accompanied by the same cover of Phil Collins “Another Day In Paradise” that was heard in the Season 1 premiere. “Seena Haddad and I had talked about putting it somewhere else,” Hoberg recalls, “like when Xavier was running out of the bunker. Then, during the edit, Dan had the idea to try it in the last moments—it was so perfect that it seems obvious now.”
Xavier has so much to process in these moments. His major arc in Season 2 was leaving the bunker to find his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), in Atlanta. He succeeded, and now that he’s saved his family from the collapsing bunker, he’s got a lot on his mind. “In the moment, he’s thinking, ‘What the hell comes next?’ He’s spent the last half-decade desperate to have his family whole again. And now they’re finally together, but is it safe? Will they be okay? Can’t the guy just get a chance to relax?” Hoberg asks. Knowing how relentless Paradise is, we can likely count on Xavier not getting a second to do any relaxing.
The finale leaves a lot in the balance for literally everyone we’ve come to know in Paradise, as the bunker is just a memory, and thousands of people are left wondering what’s next. Hoberg won’t give away much, but he does give us a sense of what’s to come, including hinting at a new foe after the likely death of Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom): “Jane sure seemed dead to me,” says Hoberg, “but as in real life, new villains always seem to pop up to fill the void.”
“The fact that Sinatra has tasked Xavier with going to the bunker to do something with Alex will definitely come into play in some form next season,” says Hoberg. “But will Xavier take up the quest? Does he trust anything that Sinatra says? And even if Sinatra thinks what she’s doing is good, is it? Was she so blinded by her drive to save the world that she might be putting it on a course for destruction? Is the second bunker even what she says it is? Or is Season 3 just a bunch of our characters running from zombies in a Paradise–The Last of Us crossover?”
Ok, so Hoberg has confirmed that the third and final season of Paradise will not, in fact, be a Last of Us crossover. But he does note that the possibilities are near endless. And since the writing for Season 3 is complete, Hoberg can promise one thing: “The audience will not be disappointed.”
Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Season 2 finale of Paradise
The creators of Paradise love a big twist—or several. “One of the great joys of this show is surprising the audience,” says John Hoberg, a writer and executive producer on the Hulu thriller. Season 2, which ended on Monday with a finale titled “Exodus,” has plenty of surprises. Everything we’ve come to expect has gone up in smoke, literally, as the bunker where most of our characters have lived over the past two seasons crumbles after nuclear reactors explode. And the science-fiction elements of Paradise have gotten a major boost, with time travel potentially entering the plot.
With just one season to go (Paradise has been planned to last three seasons from the very beginning), there are several questions left open by the time “Exodus” ends. Here, Hoberg breaks down the twists and turns in the Paradise Season 2 finale and reflects on what it means for the future of Xavier (Sterling K. Brown), Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), and the rest of the Paradise cast.
Who is Alex?
One of the biggest mysteries of Season 2 has been the identity of Alex. “How’s Alex?” is a common question posed in the series and Link (Thomas Doherty), the leader of the rebel forces outside the bunker, has been determined the whole season to get his hands on Alex, whoever—or whatever—that may be.
The finale reveals that Alex is not a person, but an ultra-advanced quantum computer with extraordinary capabilities. It’s left vague precisely what Alex can do, though it’s implied that it may have created alternate universes and/or time travel.
For those left confused by the Alex of it all, Hoberg puts it in the simplest possible terms—though it’s still pretty complicated. “Alex is an A.I.-controlled quantum computer built with nearly unlimited resources—a computer so fast it can solve in seconds problems that would take traditional supercomputers the age of the universe to solve,” he says. “This computational speed was given the task of solving an impending climate disaster, but it approached it in a way a human wouldn’t consider, by attempting to manipulate time.”
Sinatra’s tragic end
Another stunner? Sinatra, the architect of the bunker and a main character in Paradise, is dead. She knows that the only way to stop a major nuclear reaction when the bunker goes down (it’s powered by several nuclear reactors) is to head to the tower, where the controls exist to close the bunker doors to trap the explosion within, obliterating the bunker while protecting those who leave before the meltdown. But to do that, Sinatra has to stay in the bunker to initiate the process, and dies in the process. Before she goes down with the bunker, she is able to tell Link that he’s actually her son Dylan, who died when he was a child. That big revelation is a lot to take in, but there’s no time for him to process the news.
Though it’s surprising that Paradise would kill off one of its most prominent characters, it’s actually part of the show’s philosophy, explains Hoberg. “When you work on a Dan Fogelman show, the one thing you can be certain of is that you will always stay true to a character’s honest motivations. There are never cheats to try to get the story to go where you might want it to go. If the character wouldn’t genuinely make a move you might want, it’s not going to happen.”
“For Sinatra, her overarching goal, her prime directive, is to save humankind from the impending disaster we saw in Episode 7 of Season 1. The first line of defense against the apocalypse was the bunker we saw in Seasons 1 & 2—this was how they could hide, survive, and hopefully ride out the disaster above.” This season added a new layer to Sinatra’s efforts, in which she helped fund a number of groups capable of super-fast computing in an attempt to stop the overwhelming climate crisis. And when she discovers that Link is actually her son, Dylan, it changes the way she sees everything.
“When she comes to believe that she’s seen her son — which she says is one of the ‘anomalies’ that could be signs that Alex has been successful at time manipulation — she has decided her second attempt at saving humanity through Alex must have worked. In her mind, her life’s goal is complete. And when faced with the need for somebody to stay behind in the bunker and seal the bunker doors to contain the nuclear explosion, she knows she’s completed her purpose,” says Hoberg.
But Hoberg suggests that while Link actually being Dylan is a major revelation, all may not be as it seems when it comes to Link being Sinatra’s son. “It’s possible she’s finally dealing with the grief of Dylan dying. So a question I would ask is: Do you believe what Sinatra believes, or is she believing Alex has done something it hasn’t? If you remember, the professor whom Billy killed in Season 2 Episode 3—his student was Dylan. And this professor asks Billy at one point if he believes things happen for a reason, or if it’s just a coincidence. I’m paraphrasing, but it’s a great question to ask yourself,” Hoberg teases.
If it is true, though, it means that Alex has successfully created an opportunity for time travel, and that Link is another version of Dylan, as Sinatra’s son died when he was a child, but Link/Dylan is no child.
While “Exodus” cheekily suggests that time travel will play a role in the next season, Hoberg won’t confirm or deny. But when it comes to Sinatra, he says, “It was genuinely painful for the writers when they realized she had to die,” but also that “you will see her next season—even when a character dies, they can always live on in flashbacks. But the big thing with Sinatra is that her character arc is pretty complete.”
How Paradise Season 2 ends
“Exodus” ends with a twist major enough to rival the initial reveal in the very first episode of Paradise. In the final minutes, we discover that there’s a second bunker 100 miles away from the first bunker, underneath the Denver Airport. “We always knew we wanted Sinatra—a woman who kept the secrets—to have an even bigger one, and we thought it was cool that the secret was actually another place,” says Hoberg.
In a flashback to Sinatra and Xavier’s final moment together, we see that Sinatra gave Xavier a mysterious key card relating to Alex. Not only that, but her parting words to Xavier are actually a mission: she wants him to infiltrate the other bunker. Inside that bunker, Sinatra explains, is a computer capable of stopping “all of this—in fact, it already has stopped all of this. You just need to get there.”
“Go save the world, Agent Collins,” she says to Xavier.
“What makes you think I’ll do any of this?” he asks.
“I believe you already have,” Sinatra responds.
It’s a line that once again suggests the existence of time travel and alternate realities, as the Xavier in front of our eyes has clearly not followed Sinatra’s instructions. He didn’t even know there was a second bunker until this moment. But Sinatra is hinting at the idea that another Xavier is roaming the Earth, who’s already found Alex.
What lies ahead for Xavier?
The final shot mirrors the very first episode of Paradise. A massive zoom out takes us away to the new bunker under the Denver Airport, just like the first episode revealed Xavier and company were all living inside a bunker. It feels like an equally major moment, and the show knows it, as it is accompanied by the same cover of Phil Collins “Another Day In Paradise” that was heard in the Season 1 premiere. “Seena Haddad and I had talked about putting it somewhere else,” Hoberg recalls, “like when Xavier was running out of the bunker. Then, during the edit, Dan had the idea to try it in the last moments—it was so perfect that it seems obvious now.”
Xavier has so much to process in these moments. His major arc in Season 2 was leaving the bunker to find his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), in Atlanta. He succeeded, and now that he’s saved his family from the collapsing bunker, he’s got a lot on his mind. “In the moment, he’s thinking, ‘What the hell comes next?’ He’s spent the last half-decade desperate to have his family whole again. And now they’re finally together, but is it safe? Will they be okay? Can’t the guy just get a chance to relax?” Hoberg asks. Knowing how relentless Paradise is, we can likely count on Xavier not getting a second to do any relaxing.
The finale leaves a lot in the balance for literally everyone we’ve come to know in Paradise, as the bunker is just a memory, and thousands of people are left wondering what’s next. Hoberg won’t give away much, but he does give us a sense of what’s to come, including hinting at a new foe after the likely death of Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom): “Jane sure seemed dead to me,” says Hoberg, “but as in real life, new villains always seem to pop up to fill the void.”
“The fact that Sinatra has tasked Xavier with going to the bunker to do something with Alex will definitely come into play in some form next season,” says Hoberg. “But will Xavier take up the quest? Does he trust anything that Sinatra says? And even if Sinatra thinks what she’s doing is good, is it? Was she so blinded by her drive to save the world that she might be putting it on a course for destruction? Is the second bunker even what she says it is? Or is Season 3 just a bunch of our characters running from zombies in a Paradise–The Last of Us crossover?”
Ok, so Hoberg has confirmed that the third and final season of Paradise will not, in fact, be a Last of Us crossover. But he does note that the possibilities are near endless. And since the writing for Season 3 is complete, Hoberg can promise one thing: “The audience will not be disappointed.”
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