TL;DR – The more I think about this season, the more it feels like it suffered from “Part-two-itus”, taking on the needed plot swerve so it can be the bridge between the opening and finale.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Paradise Review Introduction

Well, we have gotten to the end of Paradise’s second season, and I can say that it did feel like a very odd season for me. Moments of profound interest, wasted plot points, and a perplexing ending. This gives it an interesting feel, and I feel like I am still wrapping my head around it days later.

So, to set the scene, as Season Two progressed, Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) finally reunited with his wife, Teri Rogers-Collins (Enuka Okuma). Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) has been slowly moving back into the position of main power, thanks to Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom) killing all those who opposed her. Link (Thomas Doherty) and his group have made it to the outside of Paradise and have started making demands. All while everyone is trying to work out who is Alex? Now, from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

When it Works

While this was a very messy season for me, one of the things that you can always take for granted is that when Paradise clicks into place, it can be fantastic. Getting to see everything about Annie’s (Shailene Woodley) life brought a new perspective to what went down on that bad day and what followed. While I don’t like most of the story with The Mailman (Cameron Britton), how they ended it by exploring the trauma at the heart of his actions, while Xavier looked down the sights of his rifle, was electric. I also profoundly respect the wild swing they took at the start of the season with Graceland, Mayday & Another Day in Paradise, having almost three different opening episodes for a season.  

At its core, when Paradise works the best is when the characters are acting intelligently, or understandably for someone with a limited amount of information. A good example of this is Link (Thomas Doherty) asking for an apple pie as part of the negotiations. On the first level, it looks like a nostalgia request, asking for a food now lost in the world. However, it was a tactical request; he was gauging everything he needed to know about the bunker and its capabilities by how a pie turned out. That was fascinating to watch play out. There are still moments like this as the season progresses, but fewer than I would like.    

When it Doesn’t

Unfortunately, at numerous times throughout this season, supposedly intelligent characters have been engaging in bafflingly stupid choices. Two of the main cases revolve around Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), who was one of the most interesting characters from the first season, given her villain swerve. Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall) exploring and discovering who the psychopath down in the bunker was fascinating until she walked into a situation that might as well have a giant ‘this is a trap’ sign blaring over it. Wile E. Coyote would not have fallen for it. Then, knowing everything Jane just did, and how she took out Robinson, Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi) tells Jane she is going to take her down, openly. Announcing to a monster your plan to take her down, and you are meant to be a renowned psychiatrist who understands how trauma affects people. It is just these moments throughout the season that just kept ripping you out of the show. (Oh and you better believed that I eye-rolled when the final episode showed she survived bleeding out from a gut wound in that shower).  

Let’s Do the Time Warp Again

Now we need to talk about that ending, and no, not about the logistics of building Alex under the Denver Airport and then adding a tramway to Paradise. I have sat here for a week, trying to think what I would write in this part of the review and how I feel about ‘hey, now there is time travel-ish-something’. Well, at its core, I never bought the ‘we are about to do a Venus’ because the production levels outside the city with Earth rebuilding were too high. A grieving mother building a time machine to save her son would be a more plausible reason.

So, the science never lined up for me in a science fiction show. But more than that, I came away feeling like it was a hat-on-a-hat. This is a post-apocalyptic show, but now it is a time-travelling post-apocalyptic show, where the time travel was never baked into the premise. At this point, I can see how that could be the starting point for a fascinating final act for the show. But for me, that setup was at the expense of having a solid second act. It also undermined a lot of what was set up in Season One for me, but it undercut the consequences and impact. Finding a reset button that is a time reset, or a timeline merge, or a time usurp, or whatever we land on, it just rarely is a narratively satisfying outcome.   

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Paradise? I don’t know. It had a strong opening season, and this season also started strong. However, the more time went on, and the more the ending revealed itself to me, the more this season felt insignificant in the grand scale of things. The sort of season on a rewatch, that you might watch the bookends and then power through, and that was a bit disappointing. Have you seen Paradise yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Paradise
Directed by – Hanelle M. Culpepper, Liza Johnson, Ken Olin, Glenn Ficarra & John Requa
Written by – Katie French, John Hoberg, Seena Haddad, Melissa Glenn, Nadra Widatalla, Stephen Markley, Scott Weinger, Dan Fogelman, Eric Wen & Jason Wilborn
Created by – Dan Fogelman
Production/Distribution Companies – 20^th Century Television, Hulu, Star & Disney+
Starring – Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Krys Marshall, Enuka Okuma, Aliyah Mastin, Percy Daggs IV, & Charlie Evans
With – James Marsden, Jon Beavers, Shailene Woodley, Thomas Doherty, Cameron Britton, Michael McGrady, Patrick Fischler, Ramon Cham Jr., Tuc Watkins, Simon Templeman, Erik Svedberg-Zelman, Kate Godfrey, Rya Kihlstedt, Patrick Cavanaugh, Ryan Michelle Bathé, Francois Battiste, Andy McQueen, Mike Greenberg, Geoffrey Arend, Jojo T. Gibbs, Connie Shi, Celeste Oliva, Jessica Marie Garcia, Matt Malloy, Amy Pietz, Gerald McRaney, John Charles Meyer, Alexander Gumpert, Britney Young, A.J. Tannen, Kila Packett, Angel Laketa Moore, Betsy Moore, Jerry Hauck, & Alora Brooke Johnson
And – Timothy Omundson, Sal Vance, Sylvestre Maldonado, Gwen Holloway, Christopher Sanders, Benjamin Mackey, Verlon Roberts, Darin Toonder, Eddie Diaz, Jonathan Tanigaki, Bridget Marshall, Jill Alexander, Paul Syre, Peter Gorbis, Karley Rothenberg, Miguel Najera, Anthony Nanakornpanom, Adam William Zastrow, Kayla Njeri, Roberta Hanlen, Konstantin Melikhov, Laura Campbell, Kayla Anjali, Alejandro Patiño, Steven M. Gagnon, Anthony LaVigne, Greta Sesheta, Scott Peat, Abdul Alvi, Keegan Perez, Maria-Elena Laas, Abigail London, Elijah Maximus, Limi Oniyide, & Sabastian Akerman Zincone
Episodes Covered – Graceland, Mayday, Another Day in Paradise, A Holy Charge, The Mailman, Jane, The Final Countdown & Exodus