‘Paradise’ returns for Season 2: Here’s where the Sterling K. Brown apocalyptic drama left off

Kaitlin ReillyMon, February 23, 2026 at 8:07 PM UTC

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Get ready for another day — or, rather, season — in paradise. The first three episodes of Season 2 of the Sterling K. Brown drama Paradise are now streaming on Hulu, and if you’re a fan of the series, you already know that they are packed with flashbacks, jaw-dropping twists, and rich character explorations.

But while that structure remains the same (thanks to This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman at the helm), Season 2 of Paradise breaks Brown’s character Xavier out of his suburban enclave and into a much more complicated world. But with Season 1 of Paradise wrapping up in March 2025, you may be wondering … how, exactly, did Xavier get here? And, oh yeah, who killed the president, played by James Marsden?

Ahead of your next Paradise binge-watch, here’s everything you .

‘Paradise’ opens on a murder mystery — and reveals a major twist

The first episode of Paradise sets the scene for what could have been a pretty cut-and-dry political drama. Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent serving under President Cal Bradford, comes into work to find the President bludgeoned to death. The show flashes back and forth through time, revealing that Xavier has unknown beef with the president. With security footage from the night of Bradford’s death missing, and several people in the president’s orbit looking extra suspicious, Xavier must figure out the truth, if only to stop himself from becoming a major suspect in the case.

Yet, by the end of the first episode, it’s clear that Xavier and the rest of the world have much bigger problems than finding out who murdered Bradford. Earlier in the episode, we hear, via flashbacks, about an extinction-level event that could potentially threaten the world. But in present-day, it’s revealed that the extinction-level event actually happened. Xavier, and everyone else we met in the present-day timeline, are actually living in an underground bunker in the Colorado mountains.

James Marsden and Sterling K. Brown in Season 1 of Paradise. (Brian Roedel/Disney)

The truth starts to piece together after that. The reason why Xavier is so mad at Bradford is simple: Xavier blames the president for not saving his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), from the world-ending event. But Xavier didn’t kill him, which means someone else did. Could it be Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), the morally questionable billionaire who helped fund and create this underground paradise? What about special agent Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), whose sweet, naive persona conceals a ruthless killer secretly working for Sinatra?

As Xavier searches for the truth, however, the clues stop adding up. Eventually, Sinatra reveals to Xavier that the fingerprints of Bradford’s killer isn’t a match for anyone in the bunker. Which means someone from the outside either snuck in — which everyone doubts, given the state of the world beyond their underground paradise — orsomeone lied about their identity upon arrival.

How ‘Paradise’ shows the end of the world

Though Paradise tells us that the world outside of the bunker is gone, we only find out what happened in the harrowing penultimate episode of Season 1.

In flashbacks, we see Sinatra learning that a “super volcano” beneath the Earth's surface has been threatening eruption, which would lead to massive tsunamis capable of knocking out virtually every coastal city. It’s this promise of disaster that leads Sinatra to build her underground paradise in hopes of avoiding a scramble for resources and nuclear war.

The penultimate episode follows Xavier on that horrible, chaotic day when the volcano does erupt. While Xavier knows that he and his kids will make it to a bunker with the president — whom he previously took a bullet for and who definitely owes him — Xavier’s wife is in Atlanta on a work trip. Bradford tells Xavier he’ll send a plane for her, if she can manage to get to it on time. She doesn’t, and she and Xavier have an emotional phone call just as a nuclear bomb is about to launch towards Atlanta.

What Xavier doesn’t know is that Bradford made a major decision while en route to the bunker. One of the secrets that Bradford learned during his swearing in was that there is a fail-safe should a nuclear war start: He has a button that can turn off all the power in the world and ground the nukes — and he wants to use it

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Sinatra insists he’s making a bad decision. She’s concerned about how the lack of power will impact everyone in the silo, and reminds him that he is dooming any remaining survivors to starve or freeze to death. But Bradford insists on giving humanity a shot at survival, so he presses it. The bomb in Atlanta never goes off. With Bradford now dead, Sinatra has proof that Xavier’s wife is alive. In present day, she uses that information as a bargaining chip with Xavier, who is hellbent on taking her down. She didn’t kill Bradford, she claims, but she wants to protect their bunker and will do so at any cost.

Who actually killed the president?

In a very surprising twist, the person who killed the president was the librarian, Eli (Ian Merrigan), who we met briefly over a few episodes in Season 1. And he was not who he said he was — he was actually Trent, a former project manager who worked on the bunker’s construction.

We see Trent’s story via flashback. While working on the construction site, Trent discovered that building the bunker was exposing him and his co-workers to hazardous materials. When his close friend died as a direct result of the project, a brokenhearted Trent wanted someone to pay. So, fueled by conspiracy theories — that, to be fair, turned out to be true — he posed as a journalist in order to take a shot at Bradford, and ended up shooting Xavier, the president’s Secret Service agent, who stepped in the way.

Darin Toonder, James Marsden and Tyler Jacob Moore in Season 1 of Paradise. (Disney)

Trent went to prison, but amid the chaos of a pending nuclear war, he was able to escape. His prison was close to the bunker, and he was one of the few people who knew the exact location. So, he came up with a plan: He saw a couple waiting to get into the bunker, killed them and then posed as the new librarian eager to get into paradise. He gives the ID of the librarian’s wife to a woman he meets, who ultimately becomes Maggie (Michelle Meredith), the waitress at the diner in the bunker. Trent’s plan wasn’t just to save himself: it was to kill Bradford, eventually, for his perceived crimes.

Trent had no idea about Bradford’s secrets, including that he cut power to Earth in order to give the people above a fighting chance at survival. But Bradford did want someone to know: He left Xavier a clue, written in blood, pointing to a library book that contained the truth about the survivors. Xavier finds the book and realizes he must leave paradise and see what is left of the world.

How does Season 1 end? What will happen in Season 2?

With Xavier now aware of all the secrets Sinatra and her billionaire friends attempted to keep from those living in the bunker, he and Secret Service agent Nicole (Krys Marshall) go on the attack. But it’s special agent Jane, who has secretly been working for Sinatra the whole time, that ultimately shoots Sinatra as part of a power play. (And also, because she’s still pissed that Sinatra wouldn’t let her have a Nintendo Wii. Yes, really.)

Season 1 ends with Xavier, a trained pilot, leaving the bunker in a plane, hoping to find his wife and any remaining survivors. Can Xavier help rebuild the world, or is it too far gone? And what will happen to the people living in “paradise” now that Xavier knows the truth about the outside?

Season 2 of Paradise will follow Xavier’s journey. As creator DanFogelman told the Hollywood Reporter after the Season 1 finale, the second season of the series will live in “both worlds” — outside the bunker and within it.

“There is going to be a little bit of a start where we go on a journey with Xavier,” he said. “A very exciting, emotional, big journey, and then we will also be living in our downstairs world of the bunker, and forces will eventually be colliding. That’s basically the plan.”

Speaking to The Wrap at the red carpet premiere of Season 2, Fogelman said, “We’ve had this planned for a while. When I first pitched the show to Sterling, I was like, ‘The second season is going to be different and it’s going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.’ It’s been exciting to figure out how to execute it.”

Shailene Woodley in Season 2 of Paradise. (Ser Baffo/Disney)

The cast list is also getting bigger. Newcomers to the season include Shailene Woodley, Thomas Doherty, Michael McGrady, Timothy Omundson, Ryan Michelle Bathe and Patrick Fischler.

Stream the first three episodes of Paradise now on Hulu.

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”