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Stars Shailene Woodley, Thomas Doherty & Sterling K. Brown reflect on the thrills — and the humanity — of this apocalyptic drama’s second season
Apocalyptic dramas are common across the TV landscape. That said, Paradise did not, at first glance, seem to fit the genre. Opening on a luxury planned community for the rich and powerful, it wasn’t till the end of episode one back in 2025 that viewers were clued in to the fact that “Paradise” was actually an underground bunker, built by billionaires and politicians to weather the storm of an environmental apocalypse they secretly knew was on the horizon.
A few lucky non-One Percenters were brought along with them, including Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) — who spent last season digging into the murder of President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) — a man he’d been charged with protecting, but whom he also blamed for the death of his wife Teri (Enuka Okuma). But, savvy script-flipper that he is, creator Dan Fogelman (who previously worked with Brown to Emmy-winning success on This Is Us) ended season one with the reveal that Teri and countless others were still alive up on the surface, setting Xavier off on a mission to track down his lost love and bring her back to the bunker, where their two kids await . . . even as Paradise itself descended into chaos, corruption and insurrection.
It opened up a whole new world for the show, and a whole new take on the post-apocalypse — one that was less defined by Mad Max-imalist carnage than bittersweet humanity.
Chatting with TV Week about this second season, star and exec producer Brown explains: “There’s gonna be things that are evocative of [other] post-apocalyptic things, whether it’s The Road or The Last of Us. You wanna make sure that you’re telling your version of that. Will there be overlap inevitably? Of course. There should also be key differences. You just wanna make sure you’re not doing what somebody else has done — that you have your own very strong stamp and perspective on how it gets done.”
A part of that stamp was, undeniably, the addition of a true movie star to the cast in the form of Shailene Woodley (late of Big Little Lies). In fact, the first episode of this new season boldly ditched the rest of the ensemble, centring on Woodley’s character — grizzled (and very pregnant) survivor Annie — as the audience sees just what life has been like on the surface. Woodley tells
TV Week: “What stood out to me about this show is it’s obviously a post-apocalyptic world that has a lot of massive trials and challenges — but the story really revolved around human connection, and human relationships and dynamics. I felt like it was incredibly relatable texturally, even if the context was far out of reach.”
Annie is one of the first people Xavier meets in his odyssey to the uncertain world above — the two of them forming a crucial bond that, like much of Fogelman and Brown’s work together, evokes more than a few tears. “I think Xavier pushes Annie to consider the idea of trusting, and Annie pushes Xavier to soften and to round his edges a little bit,” Woodley muses. “In a way, they’re both actually softening one another’s edges . . . even if their edges look different.”
Another key player introduced in season two is Link (Thomas Doherty), who fatefully crosses paths with Annie in that first episode, as the leader of a mysterious gang of fellow survivors on a mission to storm the gates of Paradise. Speaking on the appeal of exploring characters in a wasteland largely devoid of technology and other creature comforts, the Scottish actor reflects: “You’re completely stripped of all these pacifiers of social media, phones . . . The way that society kinda is now, we’re constantly escaping through different means. When all that’s taken away, you’re just left with yourself, and I get weirdly excited about even that prospect — to just be so alone with who you are.”
As fans well know by now, a crucial episode at the midway point of season two leads to a passing of the baton in terms of Xavier’s partner in this post-apocalypse — as he’s forced to leave Annie behind and forges ahead to reunite with his wife. For Brown, it was these partnerships that informed and unlocked key parts of a character accustomed to keeping his own counsel.
“I think we see in episode two, with the kids [he meets after the crash], that Xavier will do whatever is necessary to survive, and to make sure that the people he considers to be in his care will survive . . . There’s a certain hardening that can happen to Xavier. ‘If anybody stands in the way of me and my wife getting back to my children, they have to go.’
“And it was interesting to see Teri step in and be like, ‘Listen, I know you have your way of doing things, but please trust me. I can de-escalate the situation.’ Seeing him trust his wife and seeing the two of them work together was a really interesting colour — because he’d been a lone wolf. He had a partnership with Annie, then a lone wolf, and then now a partnership with Teri. I like seeing how he listens and responds to the people that he’s with, because he doesn’t just override them.”
As to the secrets that still lurk in this post-apocalyptic land, for anyone yet to watch the recently debuted finale, Doherty teases some shocks for even the savviest viewer . . . not to mention his own character: “You think you know, but I swear to God you don’t — he doesn’t even know.”
And expect the unexpected to keep on comin’, as the show has just been renewed for a third season.
Paradise, now streaming on Disney+