Back to the bunker, everyone!
“Paradise”has returned for Season 2, and lest you think the Hulu series is planning to move forward in a totally linear, nothing-to-hide-here manner, we have one question:What show wereyou watching last season?
The freshman run of Dan Fogelman’s twisty drama got underway with a major mystery — who murdered the president of the United States? — and immediately chased it with a jaw-dropping reveal: After a climate catastrophe/nuclear war, the commander-in-chief and a large group of hand-picked citizens had taken shelter in an underground city built for surviving the apocalypse. By the Season 1 finale, Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins (played by Sterling K.Brown) had solved the murder mystery but unearthed another:Were there survivors — including his presumed-dead wife, Teri — topside?
The Season 2 premiere, which began streaming Monday, proved there were. Among them were Annie (played by Shailene Woodley), a Graceland tour guide who holed up at the historic home when things went south; and Link (Thomas Doherty), a secretive traveler headed to Colorado on a deadly mission. (Read a premiere recap here.)
Much like we did last season, we’re keeping track of the show’s big mysteries and all the hints that might help solve them. But before we get going, a couple of ground rules. First off, Spoiler Alert!: Please make sure your viewing is up to date, because we wouldn’t want the list below to ruin the fun. And second, we’ll update our roster every week to make sure you have all of the pertinent information.
TVLine readers excel at figuring out TV-related riddles. So if you see or hear something that we don’t during an episode, make sure to shout it out in the comments or hit me up on social media @kimroots: If your tip is a good one, it’ll be included (with credit!) in our updates.
Now have at it, “Paradise” faithful: Scroll down and start sleuthing!
Who is Alex?
Toward the end of the Season 2 premiere, Annie overhears Link and his friend, Geiger, talking about how they have to “get to the bunker, we’ve got to get inside, and we’ve got to kill Alex.” The men wind up leaving before she (or we) can glean any more information about their target.
Then, in Episode 3,a pre-bunker flashback introduces us to Henry Miller (Patrick Fischler) and his wife — whose name is Alex. Alex is suffering from Huntington’s disease, and she dies of a lethal injection shortly before Billy Pace kills Henry, on Sinatra’s orders. When Henry’s young assistant later shows up, we realize he’s Link! (More on that later.)
There’s more on this front later in Episode 3. In the present storyline, Sinatra surreptitiously asks her housekeeper, Carmen — whom we quickly glean isn’tjust her housekeeper — “How is Alex?” Carmen responds, “Alex is well.” Is Alex a person? A project? A project named for a person? And along those lines…
What is Sinatra’s ‘project’?
… what specifically, is the nature of the secretive project that Sinatra has hatched? In Episode 3, we learn that this mysterious initiative is siphoning a significant amount of energy from the bunker’s electrical grid. We also see a flashback from when Sinatra tracked down Dr. Louge (Geoffrey Arend) at the conference and asked him for a specific breakdown of what would happen when the climate catastrophe he predicted actually took place. After he lays out a hellish future in which “pressure crushes anything still standing” years after the event, he says only one thing can fix it, “and it’s the one thing even you can’t buy… Time.”
This interaction, as well as the fact that Sinatra was very interested in the work of quantum scientist Henry Miller, has led some fans to think that the sneaky presidential adviser might be trying to bend time to her will. (And can you blame her? The woman’s been pretty damn effective in making other seemingly impossible things happen!)
And if so, Might Alex be a project instead of a person, then? That would jive with the other part of Sinatra’s conversation with Carmen, in which the housekeeper mentions that “the power problem has been resolved” and that “they” don’t have an estimate, “but she is getting closer.”
“She” as in the way you talk about ships? “She” as in a person?Log your guesses in the comments!
What’s the deal with Link?
In Episode 2, an ailing Xavier has visions (memories?) of following Link down a dark hallway. Then, in an Episode 3 flashback, Henry Miller tells Billy Pace not to kill Link, because “it’s not hyperbole to say the fate of the world may depend on him.” Though Billy easily could off the young man when he shows up at Henry’s house, he doesn’t.
Does the fact that Xavier already has memories of Link lend credence to the time-travel theory? Is Link the person who eventually makes such a quantum leap happen? And can you believe that we’re talking about all of this for a show that we originally thought was just a murder mystery?!
We want to hear all your thoughts/theories/wild flights of fancy, so hit the comments, and have at it!
