@joelkeller Published Feb. 23, 2026, 8:30 p.m. ET Where to Stream: Paradise Powered by Reelgood More On: sterling k. brown Who (Or What) Is Alex On ‘Paradise’? Unpacking ‘Paradise’ Season 2’s Big Mystery Who Plays Link On ‘Paradise’? Meet ‘Tell Me Lies’ Star Thomas Doherty ‘Paradise’ Season 2 Episode Guide: How Many Episodes Are In ‘Paradise’ Season 2? What Time Does ‘Paradise’ Season 2 Come Out On Hulu? At the end of the first season of Paradise, we knew what the situation was like in the bunker that gave the show its name: Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) had flown out of the mountain to go find his wife Teri (Enuka Okuma), whom Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) had told him was alive, along with millions of others on the outside. Then Sinatra got shot by Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom), who purposely didn’t kill her. Chaos is about to reign in Paradise, but for the entire first hour of Season 2, we spend time with someone we haven’t met before.
Opening Shot: A teenage girl sits on a shuttle bus as it enters the gates of Graceland.
The Gist: That girl would go on the Graceland tour just about every day, and then go and report the details back to her Elvis-obsessed mother, who seems to be either disabled or just very sedentary.
We cut to a hospital some years later; Annie (Shailene Woodley) is now a med student, but she gets wobbly when she sees a woman with deep vein thrombosis, the same condition that killed her mother. She decides to quit her job, and ends up crying in her car in front of the gates of Graceland. The security guard (Angel Laketa Moore) tells her that they’re looking for tour guides; given how many times she’s taken the tour, Annie knows this is a job she can do.
This is where she is when The Day happens, right in the middle of one of her tours. She and the security guard get supplies and Annie takes the silver gun that’s on display and go to the basement. However, most of the three years after the day is spent by herself after the guard dies. The ash cloud obscuring the sun has made even Memphis a frigid hellscape.
Then the sun comes out. A few months after that, a group of men come rolling in the gates, led by a young guy named Link (Thomas Doherty). Understandably, Annie is protective of what she’s built for herself at the mansion. But Link and his group eventually prove to her that they’re not there to rob her or anything else.
They tell her their theories about what happened during Thad Day, including the theory that a superpower disabled every electronic device with an EMF wave. Link, who was attending Caltech at the time of the Antarctic volcano eruption and massive tsunami also talks about his theory about a mountain bunker in Colorado; the bunker has all sorts of resources that can “jump start the world,” but it’s also dangerous in a way that he can sense but can’t exactly explain.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Because Paradise is created by Dan Fogelman and used a lot of time-jumping storytelling, we compared it to his previous series, This Is Us. But in season 2, it feels like he and his writers are combining This Is Us with The Walking Dead.
Our Take: Anyone who was a fan of This Is Us knows that Fogelman and his writers have no problem starting seasons completely away from where the previous season ended. To start Season 2 of Paradise, we get to know Annie instead of seeing the continuation of the finale.
That’s not such a bad thing, for a few reasons. Firstly, Woodley does such a great job of playing a woman whose life before The Day was so rough that she seemed perfectly OK spending the balance of her days surviving on her own. Secondly, we get to see through her a lot of what happened outside Paradise during those first three years after The Day, along with where things are now. It shows that there’s a lot of hope out there, even without the help of electricity, and that folks like Link and his group know enough about Colorado that they’re making their way there any way they can.
Also, the emotions that come out of both Annie and Link when they get past Annie’s initial distrust and, well, get together, were powerful to watch. Annie has been alone for so long that trusting herself with someone should be emotional for her. The results are surprising, but we also know that Annie’s a survivor, and can handle whatever circumstances are thrown at her. What we don’t quite know is why she didn’t go with Link when he and his crew left to continue their mission.
The episode was also an introduction to what Xavier is going to deal with on the outside. We can envision seeing how he got into the situation Annie finds him in at the end of the episode, and eventually seeing the two of them team up. What we’re wondering, though, is how the scenes on the outside are going to be integrated with the scenes on the inside, with an incapacitated Sinatra and a populace who is now clued in on how much they’ve been lied to. We’ve seen many years of the whole apocalyptic “people are the real evil” theme, and we hope that Fogelman and company have a different take on such a story.
Performance Worth Watching: Shailene Woodley gives one of her best performances in the first episode, with Annie not only being able to make it on her own, but showing all of the emotions that come with surviving the supposed end of the world.
Sex And Skin: There’s a scene with Annie and Link, but it’s treated as more of a beautiful event than something erotic.
Parting Shot: Annie takes the horse that came back to Graceland’s stables to the scene of an explosion and sees Xavier Collins lying in the wreckage of a plane crash.
Sleeper Star: We will definitely seeing more of Sarah Shahi, Aliyah Mastin, Krys Marshall, Charlie Evans and — yes — James Marsden in Season 2.
Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find, aside from Annie’s canned tour joke about Elvis impersonators getting in a bus accident..
Our Call: STREAM IT. The second season of Paradise will have a much different dynamic than the first, but it will also show that the “end of the world” wasn’t really the end, as we get introduced to new characters and stories on the outside of Paradise.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
