It’s No Paradise Above Ground

Paradise Season 1 left us in shock with the news that Xavier’s (Sterling K. Brown) wife Teri (Enuka Okuma) might still be alive. As the plot shifts in Season 2, he’s above ground, and the show is leaning into a more traditional post-apocalyptic realm. Thankfully, it works. Season 2 expands the universe we know, brings in new characters, and adds new personalities and perspectives, not to mention a much more vulnerable (yet still badass) version of Xavier.

We know Xavier set off for Atlanta to find Teri. Now we know that it was anything but smooth sailing, as Season 2’s three-episode kickoff reveals. Xavier’s journey, however, is just an aside for now. Before we get to him, Annie (Shailene Woodley) sets the stage for Paradise‘s completely new tone, though the context her story provides eventually comes into focus.

With the lovely backdrop of Graceland (not a bad place to be stuck in the apocalypse), Annie’s survival story is pivotal for a few reasons. On the surface, it shows the catastrophic events that Dr. Louge (Geoffrey Arend) predicted: tsunami, extreme cold, lingering ash clouds, and years of calm. But on a deeper level, Annie is representative of every strong, resourceful, resilient person who found a way to survive through the unimaginable. It’s an interesting parallel to Samantha (Julianne Nicholson), with Annie putting an actual face to the name of someone the billionaire was willing to let die. Given the reveal that Annie is pregnant at the end, she also represents hope.

Annie sitting on a bed, looking pensive in Paradise Season 2.

Link’s (Thomas Doherty) entrance plays nicely into Annie’s story and will likely intersect with the larger plot of Season 2 — especially when it’s shockingly revealed that he was working with the professor that Samantha had Billy (Jon Beavers) kill for his research. Link is not just a self-professed nerd, he’s a brilliant scientific mind. There’s no way that doesn’t play into the story in a big way. Knowing that Link is headed to what he believes to be the location of the rumored bunker, and that he’s a leader of the resistance, makes him this group’s proverbial Rick Grimes.

It’s nice that so much time is dedicated to these other characters, giving the story room to breathe. But it also means we only get snippets of what’s going on with Xavier. When we finally get to see where he is, things aren’t going well. He survived the crash, but he’s passed out on the ground when Annie finds him. A later flashback reveals a mess of events leading to this moment, including a severe knee injury, meeting a resourceful group of kids led by an impressive young boy named Daniel, the killing of an attacker, and a look back at the sweet story of how he and Teri met.

That story is told in part to explain why Xavier knows how to pop his knee back into place (they met in a hospital, both in for surgery), but also to reinforce his love for Teri: it’s these memories that help Xavier pull through and keep going. Their origin is a storybook “love at first sight” moment, and it’s wonderful to see how it all started.

Xavier standing outside with a stick in Paradise.

It’s also a welcome development that Paradise, a show that’s redefining the political thriller genre, is now going back and forth between the bunker and above ground. Too much time spent down there might have made viewers feel stir-crazy after a while. Shows like Silo and Fallout have done the same, of course, so the approach to exploring what’s outside makes sense.

Because of this, the new episodes have a familiar post-apocalyptic feel to them, closer in style to shows like The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, and Fallout. The series is now exploring the concept of survival of the fittest and a “kill or be killed” mentality in the face of dire circumstances. No one in the bunker has had to fight for their food or seek shelter or clean water. This is a whole other world, and I like seeing the traditional post-apocalyptic story instead of the utopian underground bubble.

The bunker isn’t entirely ignored in the first three episodes, though. Everyone has been busy since Samantha fell into a coma. In present day, we learn that she is siphoning power from the bunker, but no one knows why. In a flashback, we see Billy as a hardened killer, and Samantha as a softer soul — an interesting swap considering Billy became far more honorable in his final days while Samantha transformed into someone ruthless. I can’t help but think that she has bigger plans she isn’t sharing, and she might view the survivors above as necessary sacrifices to achieve them. But I really do think she wants to save the world, or at least that she has gone too far and sacrificed too much to stop now.

Jane standing outside in the dark in Paradise.

We can’t forget about Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), of course, who continues to quietly meander around town, sucking up to the bumbling new president while no one suspects that she’s a cold-blooded killer. I’m glad that Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall) is the one who starts to sense something is off, follows a hunch, and learns she’s right. Sadly, Jane is always one step ahead. She killed President Henry Baines (Matt Malloy) and the stars align perfectly for her to frame Nicole for the murder. I suspect that this is setting up Jane’s eventual downfall.

As for the kids, they’re trying their best to revolt, but don’t seem to know how. Ever the rebellious one, Jeremy Bradford (Charlie Evans) is sent to jail where he meets the scientist who oversaw the building of the bunker, sent there because of an earlier outburst. Jeremy wants his help to “blow the f**king doors open” on the place. It’s a smart move to find the one man who knows exactly how to shut the entire bunker down, and one that would have made Cal (James Marsden) proud.

The biggest set-up for the core plot of the season from these first three episodes is in a subtle flashback scene between Samantha and Dr. Louge. He was the unwitting catalyst for Samantha’s plan to build a bunker in the first place. In their conversation a decade ago, he not only predicted everything that would happen, but also informed us that a few years later, greenhouse gases will cause the heat to ratchet up to unbearable levels. Pressure will build and anyone left alive on the surface will die a horrifying, painful death. Those few years later are here now.

Samantha being interrogated by Gabriela, hooked up to machines, in Paradise.

Given this, it’s possible Samantha has been siphoning power away from the bunker for reasons that pertain to this supposed second act from Mother Nature. One of the big questions after Season 1 is if Dr. Louge even survived. Knowing about this conversation, it’s possible that he’s not only still alive, but also somewhere in the bunker.

As for the journey above ground, while we still have no idea what Annie has done with Xavier since finding him near death, chances are she’s using her medical background to help him heal. Where they go from there in Paradise remains to be seen, but the pieces are slowly coming together. With compelling new characters and the plot going in exciting directions, this season is already so distinct from the first.