Just days before Paradise’s big season 1 finale, Hulu announced that the hit sci-fi thriller had officially been greenlighted for a second season. The news was a relief to writer John Hoberg, who spoke to Polygon shortly after the news broke, because he was dialing in from the show’s offices, where work was already underway on Paradise season 2.
“We felt it coming, but it’s not official until it’s official,” Hoberg said. “When you work on a show with James Marsden, who just did Jury Duty, you never believe the show is real until it’s picked up!”
The fact that the writers are steadily mapping out plans for the second season, unlike so many prestige dramas that take years to return, there are plenty of hints at what to expect from the next set of episodes. Here’s what we know so far about Paradise season 2.
When will Paradise season 2 premiere?
A green light is one thing, but in a world in which it takes a mystery-box show like Severance three years to come back to TV, it’s fair for fans to wonder how quickly the Paradise creative team can continue the story. Well, shortly after the finale, creator Dan Fogelman took to X to make perfectly clear that not only are the scripts in the works, enough are done that cameras are about to roll.
Who is in Paradise season 2?
The end of Paradise season 1 makes perfectly clear where secret service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) is headed: Having blown open the conspiracies surrounding the underground “Paradise” bunker, and discovered that his wife might still be alive on the decimated surface of Earth, Xavier is last seen in the cockpit of an airplane, preparing to take off into the unknown. In various post-finale interviews, Brown has confirmed he’s ready and raring to go for season 2.
Based on hints on what’s next in season 2, much of the bunker cast is confirmed to return, including Julianne Nicholson as the diabolical billionaire Sinatra. As for James Marsden, who is 100% definitely dead, Fogelman told Variety that “it’s definitely not going to be the last we’ve seen” President Cal and that flashbacks allow pretty much any deceased character to come back into the show in future episodes.
“The story will dictate where characters like Cal or like Billy Pace can come back and play in our world. But there is a big picture story we’re telling here that will allow more stuff to happen.”
The style of the show will evolve
In Polygon’s interview with Paradise finale writer Nadra Widatalla, who had lots to say about cracking season 1’s murder mystery, Widatalla also shared a few hints about where Paradise will go next — mainly, that the flavors may change.
“We’re going into season 2 posing new questions, but it’s bigger and it’s more exciting,” Widatalla said. “It’s not what people are expecting, but it will answer the questions that people have. What is out there? Is Terri alive, and what happened to her? What happened if she isn’t? All those questions people are asking now that he’s on a plane and he’s headed out will be answered. It just may or may not be what people are expecting.”
In various interviews, Fogelman has compared season 2 to The Empire Strikes Back, and that he sees the season as the middle of a trilogy. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Brown also said that we’ll meet a number of new characters in season 2 who will get flashbacks of their own. “If Lost and The Wire had a baby, it would be Paradise.”
Where will Xavier go in Paradise season 2?
Fogelman has put to rest any theories that our hero’s plane would stall and doom him for another season in the bunker — Xavier will venture out into the wild.
“Potentially, we’re out in a world that has experienced trauma for the first time, so there are elements of that kind of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road kind of storyline,” the creator told Variety, “but we also have a big science fiction-genre story to tell.”
What’s less clear is if Xavier’s wife, Teri, is actually alive. As season 1 demonstrated, it’s not always the best idea to take Sinatra at her word.
“I don’t want to give anything away, but I think we wanted to make sure that we weren’t definitively saying whether or not she’s alive or she isn’t [in season 1],” Widatalla told Polygon. “And so making sure that along with episode 7 […] if we said that she was in a place that was completely destroyed, like Denver when the nuke went off, we wanted to make sure that she was in a place that we could play around whether or not something happened to her or not.”
There’s still plenty happening in the bunker
Fogelman has hinted in his post-finale interviews that, in the way that Trent the librarian was positioned across various episodes to always be present but never forefronted, that there are plenty of Easter eggs in season 1 that will only be understood when season 2 rolls around. And a lot of that will take place in the bunker.
One thread that is dangling: What happens to Cal’s son Jeremy now that he’s stood up in opposition to Sinatra? Widatalla says there’s plenty left to explore there.
“I think, thematically, it’s like the young people in the world today. Do we do things the same? Do we do what our parents did or do we use this as a chance to do things differently? And I think it’s a beacon of hope for us. So I really love that we gave that arc for Jeremy and we leave room for these kids to really grow into who they want to be in this world.”
Fogelman also promises a twist in season 2 that will feel as upending as the pilot’s big reveal.
“The second season is going to turn what you thought the first season was —and what Paradise and the bunker was — a little bit on its head,” he told EW.
We will learn why Jane loves the Wii so much
Image: Hulu
Widatalla also indulged our most pressing question: Will we get more Jane, the chipper bunker assassin who loves to play Wii tennis, in season 2? The answer is a definitive yes — but word is out on how much time there will be for Wii.
“It’s an interesting character, and I think we intentionally leave her in a place that leaves a lot of room to play around in future seasons. When we meet her, and especially in that conversation with Billy when they’re being drilled by Sinatra, we think that she’s just this innocent, really ditzy girl. But then realize that maybe this woman is far more intelligent than what we think. Or, let’s flip that on its head — maybe she isn’t far more intelligent than we think. Maybe she just wants to play Wii. All of those things can be true at the same time. But also we haven’t seen Jane’s backstory. So all that stuff is left for us to play around with in the future if we want to.”
Content shared from www.polygon.com.