‘Paradise’ Season 2 premiere review: Sterling K. Brown, Shailene Woodley chart new journeys in dystopian America

There are several different ways to approach the post-apocalypse. In its first season, Paradise took the more futuristic route – an underground bunker in Colorado, complete with a false sky and a fake sun, housing the 25,000 “chosen” survivors of the volcanic disaster that engulfed the planet. In an ambitious outing, creator Dan Fogelman chooses to expand the scope of this experiment in the second season. Looking to explore dystopian fiction through multiple lenses, Fogelman takes on several different narrative tracks. They hold for now, for the first three episodes, but it would take a sustained effort to continue the momentum this season.

Paradise’s second season kicks things off at Elvis Presley’s paradise – his Memphis estate ‘Graceland’. Fogelman turns back the clock from the first season to introduce Annie (Shailene Woodley), a Graceland tour guide who finds herself stuck in the basement as the world collapses under a volcanic ash cloud. Years later, as the sun re-emerges, Graceland welcomes new, unwanted visitors. Link (Thomas Doherty), and his group of survivors find themselves at the Presley estate, on their journey across the ruins of America in hopes of “restarting the world.”

Fogelman takes a pause here, and reintroduces Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) in the second episode. Collins, who had left the safety of the bunker in the previous season to look for his wife Teri, ends up crash landing his plane. Paradise’s creative team rely on Fogelman’s classic narrative tools here. As Collins attempts to make his way through the crash site, the episode flashes back to the first time when Collins met his wife. Its sweet, saccharine and can only work without being nauseatingly sentimental in a Fogelman show. Sterling K. Brown and Shailene Woodley successfully manage to set the stage for some great performances over the season.

We are back in the Colorado bunker for the third episode. Now effectively a police state under President Henry Baines, the bunker draws from fresh socio-political scenarios. Meanwhile, a wounded Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), reluctant to give up her control, is quick to insert herself back into the bunker politics. Elsewhere, a quasi-rebellion launched by the late President’s son Jeremy takes shape.

In Paradise’s second season, Fogelman launches three distinct plotlines in as many episodes. There is some semblance of narrative convergence in these episodes, yet it appears to be an ambitious task to wrap up these plotlines in the next five episodes.

The first three episodes of Paradise Season 2 are available for streaming on JioHotsar, with new episodes every Monday