‘Paradise’ Season 2 Review – An Expanded Scope Plays to Dan Fogelman’s Strengths

‘The first season of Paradise was one of 2025’s best shows, mostly without any warning. Its premiere revealed a gotcha premise that was kept well under wraps, and towards the end, it was firing on all cylinders, producing one of the finest episodes of the year by miles and building to a high-stakes conclusion that threatened to radically reshape everything just in time for Season 2. And, well, mission accomplished. If nothing else, in this follow-up, Dan Fogelman makes good on his promise to substantially expand the scope of the show.

Abandoning the isolated setting of the first season – not totally, but considerably – was always going to be a ballsy move. The city-sized bunker beneath Colorado was a great location to hide away from the end of the world, and the core mystery of figuring out who killed the president allowed that setting to be intensely interrogated. Season 2 does away with most of the setting and all of the mystery, instead replacing it with the fervent quest of protagonist Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown, Invincible) to find his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma, The Pitt), while various new friends and foes crop up in and around the wasteland.

That creates a totally different vibe, one that could risk feeling as if it has jumped the shark a little. But Fogelman’s sometimes extraordinary facility for stirring emotions keeps the whole thing consistent, dotting each capsule story with profound insight and tenderness. Even in episodes that seem to have nothing to do with the core plot – the premiere, for instance, is a standalone short film right up until it isn’t – you can always rely on being engaged by the characters and their plights. And given the recursive Lost-like storytelling, everything that seems siloed and separate initially eventually ends up mattering in unexpected and exciting ways (a small handful of red herring notwithstanding).

For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I’ll only refer plot-wise to the first three episodes, which all debuted together. But to get a general idea of the season’s shape, they are three useful hours to consider. In the first, a new character named Annie (Shailene Woodley) rides out the apocalypse in Graceland, only to find her solitude punctured by Link (Thomas Doherty, Tell Me Lies), the charming leader of a roving band of survivors who shut down nuclear power plants to prevent any further environmental disasters. By the end of the premiere, Annie has discovered Xavier, who set out in a tiny plane to search for his wife in Atlanta.

The second episode explores how Xavier got to the point at which Annie finds him, while also digging into the origins of his marriage and introducing him to a group of children whose innocence has been planed away by the harsh reality of the outside world. Fogelman loves a flashback, and there are a considerable number here, but this episode is a great example of how well they can work when they’re considered and properly implemented.

And then, finally, the third episode returns us to Paradise itself, catching up on most of the core cast from Season 1, including despicable string-puller Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson), her pet assassin Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), and therapist Dr. Tarabi (Sarah Shahi, Red, White & Royal Blue). This episode also loops back to the first by establishing a connection between the bunker and a character we met earlier, which is a nice reminder that all of this, even the stuff that doesn’t necessarily seem relevant at first blush, is knitting together into a much larger picture.

For the most part, Fogelman handles the scope of Paradise Season 2 – which, if you include the flashbacks, spans across the entirety of the U.S., multiple viewpoints, and tens of years – very well. It isn’t always plain sailing, since a natural consequence of the format is certain characters being sidelined, subplots being neglected, and the focus ever-shifting. But virtually every episode has at least one moment – sometimes several – of such real profundity that it’s difficult to mind. There’s a bit in the premiere where Annie and Link feel a sudden surge of relief at physical intimacy after years of difficulty and solitude that really moved me, and that’s two characters we’d literally just met. This show is so good at crafting compelling characters and backstories really quickly that when they start being folded into the main arc – which remains, as ever, “What is Sinatra really up to?” and “Can Xavier find Teri?” – the effect is immensely satisfying.

I’m sure if you think about the plot of this season too much, it won’t hold up to a great deal of scrutiny. But that was true about the first season, too, and I quickly stopped caring about the logistics of the high-concept premise because they were clearly of less concern than the personal stories that premise existed to excuse, and that’s much truer now than it was before. For some, the changes will be off-putting, the lack of a central mystery too lamentable to overlook. But if what you liked about the first season was how it made you feel, not necessarily to what extent it made you think, then you’ll be exceedingly well served by a follow-up that widens its scope to play to all of its biggest strengths.