The Thing That Scares Me Most About What's Coming In Paradise Season 2 Definitely Isn't The Global Catastrophe

Warning! There Are Spoilers Ahead For Season 1 Of Paradise

Season 1 of Paradise, which you can watch in full with a Hulu subscription, didn’t end quite how I thought it would. The season's penultimate episode seemed to set up a showdown between our hero Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown), and the show’s ruthless villain, Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), known by her codename “Sinatra." As the finale played out, that wasn't where the cliffhanger left us. Still, it left me scared for Season 2 and what is in store for the residents of the Paradise bunker, and just what our seeming new villain, Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom) is up to.

The Twists In Paradise Keep Coming Until The Very End

In a show that had twist after twist, true to showrunner Dan Fogelman’s style, it was the final one that surprised me. Xavier, who we last saw in Episode 7, which CinemaBlend's Sean O'Connell called "one of the greatest episodes of television I have ever seen," confronting Sinatra over the truth about the fate of his wife after the global catastrophe.

Sinatra shows her true colors and admits that she has kidnapped his daughter, and demands Xavier and his cohorts stand down. Faced with the possibility of impeding doom for his daughter, and after learning that Sinatra is not responsible for President Cal Bradford's (James Marsden) death, Xavier relents and gets his crew to back down.

That’s when things go off the rails. After complying with all of Sinatra’s demands, he returns to learn that she has lost control of her assassin, Jane, who has, Sinatra believes, murdered Xavier’s daughter. Consumed with rage, Xavier holds a gun to Sinatra’s head, but before he can exact his revenge, Sinatra is shot in the chest by an unseen Jane, who then tells Xavier that his daughter is alive and tells Sinatra that she needs her alive.

Okay, so this is not how I expected things to play out. I should have known to be on my toes with Fogelman’s style of twisting things when you least expect it, but in my brain, I penciled in a Season 2 plotline making Sinatra one of the darkest villains in TV history, where no one on the show is safe. That might have scared me the most for the heroes, but that’s not what scares me now.

The Real Fear Here

I’m not scared for Xavier as he is on his way out of the bunker and presumably to Atlanta to find his wife Teri (Enuka Okuma). We’ve only had small glimpses into life outside the bunker, but we know people are surviving and it doesn’t appear to be a nuclear winter. I’m skeptical that Teri is actually still alive, but that’s another story, and Xavier will be fine, I hope. He's too capable and driven not to be.

What scares me the most about what is coming in Season 2 is what kind of chaos will come down on the ordinary citizens of the Paradise bunker. Sinatra ruled the “town” with an iron fist and showed over and over again just how brutal she could be to maintain a kind of peace. Sure, it was more or less a prison, and Sinatra was lying about what was happening outside of the bunker, including the potential fates of thousands of bunker residents’ loved ones, but it was peaceful. She knew how to keep it that way until the president was murdered.

People Are Dealing With The World Ending Outside The Bunker

Outside the bunker has clearly been anarchy since the volcano erupted and the nukes started flying, but the people that have lived are surviving. In the years since the catastrophe, it seems (from what limited information we have) that some are building communities and searching for lost loved ones. Meanwhile, inside everything has been, at least on the surface, idyllic.

That illusion was shattered by Bradford’s murder and cascaded quickly from there, but now it’s out there. Xavier has no doubt inspired a resistance movement with his messaging and that could lead to all out civil war, with no escape for the innocent bystanders, and that is a scarier prospect than anything on the show.

The one person keeping it altogether as a somewhat benevolent dictator (until lately) is in a hospital bed. The two characters who we might expect to take charge are sidelined for one reason or another: Sinatra is in the hospital and Xavier is off to rescue Teri.

We know how incompetent the vice president is, and the billionaires are going to keep arguing and never agree on a leader. In real terms, the bunker is in a state of anarchy, and there are a lot of armed soldiers. We can find some hope in the abilities of Xavier's former boss, Agent Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall) and Dr. Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi). They've made some questionable choices in the past, but they were the ones who identified Bradford's killer and his accomplice.

Jane Discroll Is The Wildcard

Amongst all the chaos, there is Jane. She was last seen enjoying a nice game of tennis on her newly acquired Wii. That last shot is disturbing. She's just shot the leader of the bunker, and her boss, but she's got time to sneak in a nice bit of video game tennis? She's either a complete agent of chaos or she has a plan she's so confident in, she can sneak in some rest and relaxation as the bunker teeters on the brink. It's hard to believe she has good intentions, either way.

We know Jane needs Sinatra alive, but what are her plans for the founder of Paradise and for the town itself? No one except Sinatra knows just how ruthless Jane can be. Is her plan to replace Sinatra? Does Jane just want to see the world burn? Does she want to expose the secret to the survivors on the outside?

It all spells doom for the residents of Paradise. The bunker is on the verge of a dystopian hell, instead of the utopian heaven that Sinatra first envisioned. No amount of fake cheese fries is going to keep the citizens distracted in Season 2 of one of Hulu's best shows. Let's just hope we don't have to wait too long to see what happens next.