5 Questions We Need Answered in the ‘Paradise’ Season 2 Finale

Paradise season two you could have only one episode left to go after this week’s “The Final Countdown.” The collection—set earlier than and after an environmental apocalypse wrecks the planet and following survivors each on the floor and dwelling deep beneath in an opulent bunker—might be returning for a 3rd and doubtless closing season, in retaining with the story plotted out from the begin by collection creator Dan Fogelman.

So we in all probability will not get each burning query answered in subsequent week’s season finale; there’s an entire different season to get by means of after this. But we’re hoping most of season two’s greatest enigmas will discover some readability.

In case you are not caught up by means of episode seven, “The Final Countdown,” spoilers forward.

Who or what’s Alex?

The mysterious “Alex” has been a thread all season. At Graceland, we realized the folks led by Link (Thomas Doherty) had been planning to search out the bunker and “kill Alex” as a part of their plan to “restart the world.” It quickly turned clear that this might be the driving thriller of season two, in the identical method that “Who killed President Cal Bradford?” propelled season one.

In episode three, we obtained a flashback to the pre-apocalypse days, when the bunker was nonetheless being constructed. Billy Pace (Jon Beavers) was employed by Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) to kill Henry Miller (Patrick Fischler), an inventor who refused to promote or in any other case peacefully hand over his very mysterious expertise.

In the flashback, we noticed Henry tenderly caring for his ailing spouse—whose title is Alex—and euthanizing her simply earlier than Billy shoots him lifeless. We see that Henry’s protégé, an excellent child who helped create his expertise, is Link, nonetheless in his fresh-faced, college-kid period.

Throughout the remainder of the season, we obtained a number of nuggets of “Alex” right here and there, however nothing so concerned as what occurred in that flashback. We’re additionally made aware of an extended dialog between Sinatra and the doomsday-predicting scientist first glimpsed in season one, in which he warns her about “Venus syndrome.” Basically, after the supervolcano eruptions, the tsunami waters will recede and the ash cloud will dissipate. It will seem that nature is therapeutic. But the injury to the ambiance might be lasting, and the greenhouse impact will ultimately intensify to irreversible, uninhabitable ranges.

We additionally all heard him scoff at Sinatra’s willingness to throw her cash round to unravel the drawback—as a result of the one factor she actually wants is extra time. And you possibly can’t purchase time.

Or are you able to?

Based totally on episode three, together with Henry’s very loaded remarks to Billy (“Do you think that things happen for a reason, or are they just random?”), it appears probably that Sinatra’s “Alex” has one thing to do with time journey or probably a multiverse.

The indisputable fact that in episode seven, we hear Sinatra name Alex “her” and the final shot sees her touring to some undisclosed, hidden space of ​​the bunker and greeting whoever/no matter’s being stored there with a cheerful “Hi, Alex”—effectively, it simply makes all of it the extra intriguing.

Is Link actually Sinatra’s son, Dylan?

A key a part of Sinatra’s character is that years earlier than the apocalypse (what Paradise calls “the Day”), her younger son Dylan died of a uncommon however unspecified sickness. In “The Final Countdown,” we be taught that Link—who’s a tech genius and natural-born chief, identical to Sinatra—is admittedly named Dylan.

He’s additionally 26 (the identical age Dylan would have been if he’d lived), and he has the very same birthday, May 16, as Sinatra’s son.

This revelation causes one thing to shift in Sinatra—she’s all of a sudden a lot happier and lighter than earlier than—and she or he tells her husband, “I think it worked,” after her assembly with Link. A gathering, it have to be famous, that noticed Link examine himself and Sinatra to Luke and Vader—a fraught parent-child relationship, if there ever was one.

Is Sinatra by some means Link’s mother, though her Dylan died years earlier? How is that doable?

What is Xavier’s connection to Link—and why all the nosebleeds?

Xavier (Sterling Ok. Brown) has had unusual visions of Link, whom he is by no means met however acknowledges when he spots his photograph on an outdated scholar ID. Xavier describes these visions as being like reminiscences of issues that have not occurred but.

Then, there are the nosebleeds. Xavier will get one when he is flying the aircraft away from the bunker, then Link will get one when he is making an attempt to get Annie (Shailene Woodley) to come back with him to the bunker—proper after his survivalist buddy mentions “Alex.” We additionally see that Henry fingers Billy a tissue in anticipation of Billy’s nosebleed. The nosebleed occurs after Billy has shot Henry—simply as he is encountering Link on his method out.

In “The Final Countdown,” Link and Sinatra each wipe their noses when it will get heated after their summit. (At the assembly, Link had introduced up Alex and was swiftly dismissed by Sinatra.) Is this some form of Stranger Things-style shorthand for “freaky psychic stuff is happening,” or what?

What will occur with the bunker’s system collapse?

We have a sense Xavier’s daughter Presley (Aliyah Mastin) and Sinatra’s daughter Hadley (Kate Godfrey), newly minted teenage journey buddies, will make it out of that caught elevator. As tangential as they have been to the plot to this point, they’re too vital to the present’s principal characters.

But we’re a bit involved about the different 25,000-odd folks (and one canine) who known as the bunker house. Thanks to the occasions of “The Final Countdown,” they’re now going through a complete system failure because of the coincidentally launched choices to sabotage the oxygen provide (thereby forcing the exterior bunker doorways to open) and enact a complete lockdown (as a option to forestall Link and firm from invading).

That concern excludes the bratty Jeremy Bradford (Charlie Evans), who—to cite a really right Agent Robinson (Krys Marshall)—is nothing like his father. He can rot down there. But everybody else who’s deep underground with, presumably, a dwindling air provide, a doable radiation leak, and who is aware of what else… yikes.

Is Jane actually lifeless?

At the finish of “The Final Countdown,” Agent Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom) is in dangerous form, bleeding out in Gabi’s bathe. But can we belief that Paradise‘s petite but terrifying resident psychopath is definitely gone for good?

Speaking of Jane, we might additionally love to know extra about “AlexQ” (ahem), who despatched these “a killer will be born” warning messages relating to Jane’s arrival in the world to that random pc restore man again in 1997. Was that AI or one thing much more bizarre and complex?

The Paradise season two finale arrives March 30 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

Want extra io9 information? Check out when to count on the newest Marvel, Star Warsand Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TVand every little thing it’s good to learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.