'Paradise' Season 2 review: Great things lie beyond the bunker

In its first season, Paradise established a winning formula that combined earnest storytelling just bordering on full cheese with absolutely ridiculous twists.

To see this formula at its finest, look no further than "The Day," Paradise's apocalyptic flashback episode. I lost my mind upon learning that the world ended because of an unholy volcano-tsunami combination (with some earthquakes and the threat of nuclear war on the side). But I also spent the entire episode in an anxious ball, fretting over Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins' (Sterling K. Brown) futile attempts to get his wife, Dr. Teri Rogers-Collins (Enuka Okuma), to safety.

"The Day," like the rest of Paradise, is a perfect emotional rollercoaster that zips and zooms between total investment and bewildered disbelief. That duality is also present in Paradise Season 2, which widens its world and takes much bigger genre swings, even if it's lacking as cohesive a mystery as "Who killed Cal Bradford (James Marsden)?"

Paradise Season 2 goes beyond the bunker.

Shailene Woodley in "Paradise." Credit: Disney / Ser Baffo

Paradise Season 2's first big swing is opening with an episode with almost zero connections to Season 1. Instead of immediately joining Xavier on his quest to find Teri in Atlanta, we pick up with Annie (Shailene Woodley), a medical student-turned-tour guide at Graceland. When the apocalypse hits during a shift, she rides out the calamity amid Elvis Presley's belongings.

Her loneliness is broken up when a group of survivors, including charming leader Link (Thomas Doherty), arrives at the mansion. The ensuing encounter, albeit distrustful at first, morphs into something tender and sweet. The episode's hopefulness is a far cry from the bleakness of other post-apocalyptic media. Creator Dan Fogelman subverts audience expectations of the genre time and again throughout the season. Yes, there is the occasional human threat. But more often than not, the humans who have survived outside the bunker are willing to help each other. Like Annie, their isolation and paranoia often keeps them from taking the first step.

Soon, Annie and Link's episode 1 vignette begins to fit into Paradise's bigger puzzle. Link and his crew are on their way to the Paradise bunker, where, unbeknownst to them, chaos reigns. Cal's death has left a power vacuum, Xavier's rebellion has sparked underground acts of resistance, and Samantha "Sinatra" Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) has another mysterious project up her sleeve.

I don't know where Paradise is headed, but I am loving the ride.

Julianne Nicholson and Sarah Shahi in "Paradise." Credit: Disney / Ser Baffo

Sinatra's new project is the mystery at the core of Paradise Season 2, and with all the intentional vagueness surrounding it, it lacks a lot of the human heft and political intrigue of Cal's murder.

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However, if Fogelman is heading where I think he's heading, then Paradise is setting itself up for a sci-fi twist that could be even wilder than the show's episode 1 bunker reveal. That reveal sprung almost out of nowhere in Paradise's first installment, whereas Season 2 is spending many episodes teasing out its big revelation, sometimes to the point of infuriation. Jury's still out on whether Season 2 will stick the landing on that front. After all, Season 1's best twist was almost entirely due to the surprise factor.

But even if the twist ends up not hitting, so much of Paradise Season 2 still does. Brown remains astounding, whether he's struggling in his new surroundings or flirting with Teri in a flashback episode. Xavier's compassion becomes a kind of superpower in the new world outside the bunker, furthering Fogelman's more optimistic vision of life after society's collapse. At times, Xavier can feel cartoonishly good, and some of the episodic flashbacks feel just a bit too emotionally on the nose, but then again, that almost-corny earnestness is part of Paradise's appeal. Combine that with whatever bananas twists Fogelman and his team have cooking, and you're looking at a heavenly good time.

The first three episodes of Paradise Season 2 premiere Feb. 23 on Hulu.