‘Paradise’ Season 2 finale: Creator Dan Fogelman on Sinatra and what’s in store for Season 3

This article contains many spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Paradise.”

The second season of “Paradise” ended with a literal bang. In Monday’s chaotic finale, the bunker protecting most of the U.S. elites imploded, seemingly taking its creator, Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), along with it. It’s a startling development that leaves its population homeless and reframes the entire series.

“In my initial pitch, I told people, ‘The second season is going to end with the bunker failing and the collapse of the whole infrastructure,’” creator Dan Fogelman says. “That was a lot to figure out: How are we going to pull that off? How is that going to send us forward into the third season? It was big and daunting.”

For Fogelman, the destruction of the bunker is just one of Season 2’s “big swings.” Instead of opening the season with Xavier Collins’ (Sterling K. Brown) search for his wife, he introduced a new character, Annie Clay (Shailene Woodley), who has been holed up in Graceland since apocalyptic events transformed Earth. Then, the writers killed Annie in Episode 4 — leaving Xavier to care for her newborn baby. Later in the season, they dedicated an entire episode to the backstory of Teri Rogers-Collins (Enuka Okuma).

“One of the coolest parts of the show is to be able to have big ideas and to actually be able to execute them when they’re the right big idea,” Fogelman says. “I’m writing the third season as we speak, and it’s the first time I’ve ever turned to my writers and said, ‘Are we allowed to do this? Are we breaking some rule of television?’ But it’s been really exciting in that way.”

Fogelman and his team of writers are already at work on Season 3 of the Hulu series, which will officially conclude the narrative arc of “Paradise.” The show resumes filming in early April, and Fogelman hopes it will air “even quicker” than Season 2. “My instinct with this show, and all these types of shows, is the sooner you can get them back on air in a regular rhythm, the better it is for the show and for the viewer,” he says.

Here, in an edited interview, Fogelman answers questions lingering after Season 2 and its finale, titled “Exodus,” including whether Sinatra is really dead, how an AI quantum computer will factor into the storytelling and what’s going on with the Denver airport.

What did you want viewers to understand about the state of the world by the time we arrive at the end of Season 2?

We tried to state what it’s like in the outside world in the first episode of the season when the guys come to Graceland. We say the amount of the population that has died and what parts of the country and world are habitable. We said, “Yes, there’s conflict in the world and there are bad men with guns.” But our focus has always been more on the parts of us that come together in a crisis, versus the parts of us that fall apart. It’s not all utopian out there. It’s hard and the climate is hard and growing food is hard. But people are coming together.

Did you do research on how people could survive an event like this?

We did a lot of research. Obviously, the richest people in the world right now are building bunkers. They’re not just wasting their money on a whim. Things can work if you prepare properly. It’s about the stockpiling, surviving the temperature changes. What do you do when the batteries run out? There are a substantial amount of post offices in this country that were built, I believe, during World War II and were initially set up to be localized shelters in the event of war. So some of it is based in reality, or at least our expansion of reality.

It is important to us to show that trillionaires, with all the time, research, planning and money at their disposal, built the bunker. That’s the main location for our show. But others have survived, had their own version of a bunker. For some, it was Graceland. For others, it was a post office. There are countless other stories to tell about the people who [survived], and not all of them lived in bunkers that looked like the Grove and had 10 years of planning and trillions of dollars behind them.

As the season ends we learn that ALEX is a quantum AI computer. What is a quantum AI computer?

Oh God, please don’t make me explain it. You need to talk to my smarter writers. They went to [visit] CalTech and have done an inordinate amount of research. We started writing this two years ago, before AI was at the tip of everyone’s tongues. The basic idea is these computers are now advancing technology and processing time and speed at an arc that is not commensurate with the arc of technological advancement over the past 100 years. There are computers that are starting to utilize artificial intelligence that will soon be moving so fast that they will only be able to guide themselves. In our science fiction world, Sinatra said, “Build me a fast computer.” But what happens when the only way for the computer to keep getting faster and better is for the computer to be doing it to itself?

Does the introduction of ALEX have major ramifications for Season 3?

It’s at the core of what we’re doing. The exciting and the scary part of artificial intelligence is there are things the human brain will not be able to comprehend. The best explanation I got was: Imagine there’s an escalator that takes you up, but when you get to the top of the escalator you’re down. Your brain cannot process that, right? I say that as an example of talking about time, of talking about multiverses, of all these complicated things that are part of our science fiction lore and part of our show. These are things that are beyond our mortal comprehension, but that are maybe coming in the near-future. It’s not just science fiction anymore.

Did you come up with different versions of destroying the bunker?

We always thought it would be a nuclear meltdown held from within. The bunker was strong enough to withstand that, so it can hold it within and collapse upon itself. I always wanted to collapse the mountain, and I always wanted Sinatra to sacrifice herself for the greater good to get everybody else out. That was one of our very strong stakes in the ground, to have a nuclear meltdown where the mountain collapses and Sinatra sacrifices herself.

Should we assume that Sinatra is dead?

It’s very hard to survive a mountain collapsing on top of you. I think that it’s very fair to say: Yes, Sinatra is done.

And is Jane dead?

It sure seems like it. But there is that shot at the end that is meant to make you wonder.

Is Link/Dylan (Thomas Doherty) actually Sinatra’s son?

She certainly thinks so. That is what we’re intending the audience to feel. Even if you don’t trust her motivations when she’s saying something or completely comprehend it, it seems true. Is he her son is a tricky question because of where we’re going on a science fiction level. But, yes, we’re meant to believe that he is her son. Or a version thereof.

Are Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) and Link/Dylan (Thomas Doherty) related? “She certainly thinks so,” says “Paradise” creator Dan Fogelman.

(Ser Baffo / Disney)

Based on what happens to Sinatra, will Julianne Nicholson be returning for Season 3?

It’s definitely a possibility. On my last batch of shows I’ve tried to never firmly say goodbye to a character because of the way we play in time. That’s not even about ALEX — it’s simply about the way we tell stories. It would not be surprising to me to see Julianne more.

Will Annie and Link’s child have a significance in Season 3?

The baby plays a huge part in Season 3. Or, I should say, the child plays a huge part in Season 3.

Does that mean there’s a time jump?

There could be that element. The show will definitely play with time in Season 3.

The people living in the bunker have been living a very easy life. Will they have the means to survive out in the real world?

I think it will be a challenge for a lot of them. Even Xavier, who’s obviously the most badass guy in the world, is not totally equipped. Those little kids are much more equipped than Xavier. He has not lived in that outside world for five years. So you can imagine there will be growing pains.

At the end of the finale we see the Denver International Airport, including the famous Blue Mustang statue. Did you want to play into any of the conspiracy theories about the airport?

It’s not necessarily playing into any specific conspiracy theories, but we were certainly aware of them. We always had planned that Sinatra had this secret other area that was part of her secret other project that had bigger ramifications for the world. My writers room, collectively, decided it should be under the airport. We’ve allowed some things to play into it. It was a cool detail that we thought could be fun for Reddit threads. Putting the second bunker under the Denver airport made sense. It’s a very prominent part of the third season.

Is Xavier at all hesitant to accept Sinatra’s mission to find ALEX?

That’s a big part of what we explore in Season 3. He just got his nuclear family back, plus two white kids. He got back everything he’s wanted and then a lunatic billionaire is telling you that 100 miles away under the Denver Airport there’s this thing that sounds crazy. It’s not necessarily a scenario where you run off and do it tomorrow. Part of the journey of the third season is: What is he doing with that information? And does he resist it?

Is the plan still to end the series after three seasons?

Yes. I’ve been telling Sterling the final scene in the show for years now. It can sound really cool to say that I had the whole thing mapped out. But that’s never the case. You evolve as you go. But there was always a three-season plan where I had stakes in the grass. By the end of the pilot, we reveal they are underground. By the seventh or eighth episode, you’ll learn what happened on the day [the world collapsed]. Season 2 will be Xavier’s journey to find his wife. By the end of the season, he’ll return and Sinatra will give him a mission. Season 3 is: Will he accept the mission? If he does, how do they get there? What happens? The details always evolve and shift, but the plan remains.

Is there any pressure to carry on with more seasons?

There is always pressure. But I try to resist the pressure because I think it’s the right way to tell the story. Sterling feels similarly. I was very clear from the beginning that I had a three-season plan. I don’t imagine a world where I would shift that plan. And, frankly, what we do in Season 3 doesn’t leave room for it.

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