Paradise Season 2 Takes The Post-Apocalyptic Thriller To Bold New Territory

In the fall of 2004, ABC aired a new, experimental thriller series loosely inspired by the success of the reality show Survivor. Simply titled Lost, what began as just the tale of a group of people trying to recover after a plane crash slowly morphed into a story of investigating the strange rules of their new home, even if that means putting themselves in danger.

While Season 1 was a great story, it ended with one big question: what’s in the hatch? What cemented Lost in television history is how Season 2 answered this question — with a cold open serenely showing the routine of Desmond, the man in the hatch, all set to a cheery Cass Elliot jingle.

Almost 22 years later, history is repeating itself. In 2025, Paradise slowly amassed a cult following with a story that began as a political whodunit, but completely changed when it was revealed the entire pilot took place in a massive underground city serving as a fallout shelter. And just like Lost before it, Season 2 of Paradise, streaming on Hulu on February 23, goes from good to great by shifting its focus. But this time, it’s not someone inside the hatch — it’s someone outside of it.

Season 1 of Paradise followed Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) as he investigated the murder of longtime President Cal Bradford (James Marsden). Through a series of new events and flashbacks, we slowly pieced together why the survivors fled to a bunker in Colorado: a massive weather event in Antartica threatened nuclear destruction, so President Bradford instead decided to deploy a series of EMPs, blowing every electrical panel across the globe. While that set society back centuries, it also meant that survivors — like Xavier’s wife, Teri — could feasibly survive. In the final moments of Season 1, Xavier set off in a plane determined to find his wife wherever she may be.

But that’s not where Season 2 starts. Instead, this new season focuses on Annie (Shailene Woodley), a former medical student who was working as a tour guide in Graceland when everything happened. Like the King before her, she holed up in the estate and lived a quiet life until a group of raiders visits and slowly wins her over, especially the dreamy-eyed “Link” (Thomas Doherty.)

There’s almost a Basil E. Frankweiler quality of this episode, with Annie defending herself with Elvis’ gold-plated pistol, playing dress-up in Priscilla’s closet, and venturing out on the horses in the stables, but eventually, her path crosses with Xavier’s and their two missions slowly merge into one.

Annie is by far the best part of Season 2 just because her story answers so many questions, but things inside the bunker are far from safe. “Sinatra” (Julianne Nicholson), the billionaire founder of Paradise, is now ruling with an iron fist while rebels like Cal’s son Jeremy (Charlie Evans) and Xavier’s daughter Presley (Aliyah Mastin) are trying to find ways of spreading the truth. Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom) becomes one of the major players of Season 2, and we even get a glimpse at her backstory that almost makes you feel sorry for her. Almost.

But whether the story is focused on Paradise or what’s happening above ground, everything is building to a central mystery that may be bigger than anything you can imagine. The eighth and final episode of Season 2 was not provided to critics for review, but the cliffhanger leading up to it is one of the most ambitious episodes of television I’ve seen in years. I think I know where it’s going, but I know this show is definitely going to surprise and set up something even bigger.

It may have been more than 20 years since Lost completely redefined what a sci-fi show could be, but Paradise may do the very same thing with a post-apocalyptic bent. In the era of Fallout and The Last of Us, that’s exactly what we need.

Paradise Season 2 premieres on February 23 on Hulu.