Paradise Season 2

Streaming on: Disney+

Episodes viewed:  7 of 8

Warning: this review contains spoilers for Paradise: Season 1.

Paradise’s debut season on Disney+ was an unexpected treat. The wild reveal at the end of its first episode — that our characters in fact live in a sheltered bunker, built deep beneath a mountain in Colorado, and that the rest of the world has been uninhabitable for years due to an apocalyptic event — was a bravura hook that, along with a compelling murder mystery, powered the series. With its sophomore season, creator and showrunner Dan Fogelman retains the show’s sincere core, while deftly piling on a fresh set of mysteries and exploring how people outside the bunker have been faring in the years since humanity almost went extinct.

To that end, the first episode of Season 2 is ballsy in a different kind of way. It dedicates the entirety of its runtime introducing us to Annie (Shailene Woodley, on great form), a med-school dropout turned Graceland tour guide who sheltered in Elvis’ former residence when the shit hit the fan. It’s a subplot that neatly dovetails with the established story and characters, as Annie crosses paths with Xavier (Sterling K. Brown). The scenes between them are when Paradise feels the most like This Is Us — conversations about everything from the joys of parenting to holding onto belief in people staying just the right side of sappy while being fully human. And Brown remains an engaging lead, exuding both determination and desperation as he strives to be reunited with his wife.

Back in Colorado, Fogelman introduces some intriguing new riddles — including a potentially game-changing sci-fi reveal that the season wisely keeps close to the vest — while adding new layers to some select characters. The biggest beneficiary is Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), a killer who gets her own episode filling in backstory that carefully unpacks her history without absolving her behaviour, and Bloom impresses as the unpredictable yet scary sociopath who nimbly switches personas when it suits her.

Sadly, other characters aren’t as well utilised, with Krys Marshall’s Agent Nicole Robinson, who was a pivotal component of Season 1, getting especially short shrift. And though Julianne Nicholson remains a master of subtleties as the always guarded Samantha ‘Sinatra’ Redmond, the intermingling-of-timelines approach is less effective now that we’re familiar with what set her down her current path. Still, the twists and turns of various storylines — some of which only come into focus after we rewind to who our characters were pre-bunker — is one of Paradise’s best attributes. Along with some good performances, carefully doled out mysteries, and a bevy of musical covers (the track that closes out the seventh episode is particularly superb), it makes the return to Paradise more than worthwhile.