How ‘Paradise’ Season 1 ended — and when to expect Season 2
The following contains spoilers about the Paradise Season 1 finale, “The Man Who Kept the Secrets.”
Who killed President Cal Bradford (James Marsden)?
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Paradise answered that question during the show’s season finale, “The Man Who Kept the Secrets,” with a perpetrator few likely saw coming. The killer was Trent, the mild-mannered librarian played by Ian Milligan, a character revealed to be neither mild-mannered nor a librarian. For much of the show's first season, Trent has been hiding in plain sight; he’s the failed assassin who attempted to kill Cal in the flashback in the show’s pilot episode.
However, as shown through other flashbacks in the finale, Trent was previously a construction foreman working on the Paradise excavation and build in Colorado, organized by Sam, aka Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson). As Trent develops seemingly romantic feelings for one of the construction workers, a tragedy occurs: the mountain where Paradise will exist is filled with an arsenic compound that will likely kill all the workers, including the object of Trent’s unrequited affection. (Fortunately, it will clear and become hospitable before the country’s elites relocate to Paradise after the end of the world.) Trent is fired from the job for even bringing up the arsenic, and he then slowly loses his mind, eventually attempting to kill Cal. He’s sent to federal prison in Colorado (convenient!), where he stays until the world is coming to an end. Amid an end-of-days prison riot, Trent escapes and heads toward Paradise, his former place of employment. Posing as a police officer, he kills two future Paradise residents and sneaks into the compound alongside Maggie, the waitress (Michelle Meredith).
And then, nothing. Trent and Maggie assimilate into their surroundings and become fixtures in the community for several years… until an inebriated Cal enters the library to record a message for his son, stirring up murderous feelings in Trent. A short time later, Trent sneaks into the president’s home and bludgeons him to death with a rusty drill bit, a tribute to the men who died building Paradise.
What happens to Trent on Paradise?
Trent tells his backstory to Xavier (Sterling K. Brown) before the phony librarian runs off in an attempt to escape Paradise and see what happened to the outside world. However, it isn’t long before Xavier and Robinson (Krys Marshall) corner Trent high above the city. Rather than be taken in as a prisoner, Trent jumps and dies by suicide.
“We've told his backstory and he ends up splattered on the ground, so I don't think we have a lot more story to tell there,” creator Dan Fogelman told Entertainment Weekly about the Trent reveal and whether there is more to his story going forward. “We always set out to have somebody hiding in plain sight, who ties back not just to Cal, but to the entire idea of this show — the construction of the bunker and the upstairs and downstairs nature of some people getting selected and a much larger swath of people not getting selected. But yeah, that's the completion of his story. Are we done talking about the construction of the bunker and how the bunker was formed and what the bunker's secrets really are? No, not necessarily, but pretty much his story has been told.”
How does Paradise Season 1 end?
Trent’s reveal and subsequent death answers one of the key questions posed by Paradise Season 1. However, the finale ends on a cliffhanger that tees up Season 2. Xavier uses the information collected by Cal to show that there are survivors outside Paradise and leaves the compound via plane to search for his wife.
“It's a really big deal,” Fogelman told Entertainment Weekly about Xavier’s choice. “I think of this coming season as the middle episode in our trilogy. So it's The Empire Strikes Back. The first season had two mysteries — who killed the President? And what happened in the outside world, why was this bunker built? We've answered those mysteries now, and now there's two new big mysteries looming, which is what happened to Teri [Xavier’s wife]? Is she out there? What is her story? And two, what are the effects of all the happenings of episode 8 on the bunker and somebody having publicly left the bunker and opened the doors and gone out there? Those are two stories we're telling in a much bigger story.”
Does Sinatra die in the Paradise finale?
Before Xavier leaves Paradise, he has a final confrontation with Sinatra, who mistakenly thinks she has ordered the death of Xavier’s daughter at the hands of Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), a psychotic agent. However, just as Xavier is about to kill Sinatra himself, Jane arrives and shoots her in the throat. Jane explains that Xavier’s daughter is still alive, and she cryptically tells Sinatra that she kept her alive so she could use her later. The season ends with Sinatra in a coma, lying in a hospital bed.
“I’m bringing Julianne Nicholson back into the show,” Fogelman told Entertainment Weekly. “So, she’s not dying and she’s not going to be in a vegetative state. But she is gravely wounded. It’s the first time in the show since her early backstory that you're going to see Sinatra vulnerable and out of a position of power. … Here's the first situation she's come up against where her position down below is going to be challenged. That's part of what we'll be waiting to see next season — how she regains control or tries to.”
When will Paradise Season 2 premiere?
Paradise was renewed for Season 2 by Hulu last month. Fortunately for the show’s fans, Fogelman said the next batch of episodes will debut sooner rather than later. “Scripts are written. We go into production in four weeks,” the showrunner revealed to Deadline. “I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with shows that are off the air for a very long time in which people get invested in and then it takes a long time to get it back on television. We’re ready to go right now and hoping to get this show back on TV in a normal span of time, hopefully the same time as it came out this past year as opposed to waiting multiple years. So if we came out in early 2025, hopefully the next season’s out by early 2026.”
All episodes of Paradise are streaming on Hulu.
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