Not everyone is the DIY type. If you're in the market for a prebuilt gaming PC, Dell is one of the best brands we'd recommend. Alienware desktops and laptops feature solid build quality, top-of-the-line gaming performance, excellent cooling (further improved on the newer models), aggressive styling, and pricing that is very competitive with other pre-built options. Best of all, there are plenty of sales that happen throughout the year, so it's not difficult to grab one of these computers at considerably less than their retail price.

Dell and Alienware Coupons

Alienware Area-51 Gaming PC Deals

If you're seeking the absolute best of the best in PC gaming performance, look no further. Dell unveiled the new Alienware Area-51 gaming PC at CES 2025. The product photos don't give it due justice; this is a big chassis that towers over the Aurora R16 model with superior build quality and a redesigned cooling system with even greater airflow. This is the only model that can be configured with the hot and power hungry GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card. The first wave of Area-51 systems featured Intel CPUs exclusively, with AMD X3D options only available since late November.

Alienware Aurora R16 Gaming PC Deals

The Aurora R16 is Alienware's bread and butter gaming PC. It can be equipped with an Nvidia RTX 5060 graphics card all the way up to an RTX 5080 and the prices for Cyber Monday are extremely competitive with other brands. For example, currently Alienware has the least expensive prebuilt RTX 5080 gaming PC that I've found anywhere. Most of these systems are customizable, however it's not difficult to upgrade your own RAM and storage yourself.

Alienware Aurora Gaming Laptop Deals

Alienware's newest mainstream gaming laptop is dubbed the "Alienware Aurora" and it replaces the previous generation's x16 and m16 series of laptops. It comes in two models: the 16 and 16X. The 16 is the more economical model, but gamers should definitely opt for the higher-end 16X model. If you're looking for build quality and performance on par with the previous generation m16, then the 16X is its spiritual successor. It features an anodized aluminum lid and base, a higher quality display, a more powerful CPU, and a GPU that isn't throttled for maximum gaming performance.

Alienware Area-51 Gaming Laptop Deals

Alienware 18 Area-51 (18")

Alienware 16 Area-51 (16")

The Area-51 is Alienware's new flagship gaming laptop for 2025. It features an anodized aluminum shell for both the lid and bottom chassis with a gorgeous iridescent finish. The frame is made of a durable and lightweight magnesium alloy. Cooling has been upgraded with generous amounts of copper and a new thermal interface material to better transfer heat away from your hottest components as well as more fans and bigger cutouts for greater airflow. Dell claims that the laptop can handle a higher power ceiling of up to 240W TDP without raising acoustics.

Design-wise, the Area 51 has a sleeker, more contoured shape compared to previous models, with rounded edges and soft corners replacing the traditional squared off design. The hinges are internally positioned so that they're near invisible. There's a transparent window on the undercarriage to show off the internal components. As befits an Alienware laptop, there's plenty of RGB illunimation, although most of it can be turned off if you want your laptop to be a bit more subtle.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

Violent weather is about to hit the Rust Belt, as developer Embark Studios has revealed a first look at the new Hurricane map condition coming to Arc Raiders.

The studio pulled back the curtain on Shrouded Sky, its next major content update, with a post on its website. It comes with a sneak peek at how hurricanes will tear through maps like Spaceport, promising what already looks like the most dangerous weather the southern Italy-set video game has faced yet.

Powerful Electromagnetic Storms and wintery Cold Snap conditions have had players seeking shelter before, but Embark says Arc Raiders hasn’t seen anything quite like this. Starting with the launch of Shrouded Sky February 24, Raiders may be subjected to strong winds that will have them rethinking how they approach PvP and PvE.

Searching for topside resources and blueprints during a hurricane will have players fighting both with and against the wind. Running with the storm could provide a small speed boost, for example, but running against it will result in slowed movement and drained stamina. Raiders can also expect everything from gas grenades to trailblazers and other throwables to behave differently when winds pick up.

One look at the trailer makes it clear visibility will be low during a hurricane, but Embark says Arc Raiders players will want to be wary of debris, too. However, like with most other map conditions, the increased threat level means more opportunities to find better loot, with today’s post teasing Raider Caches and relics of the First Wave for those who brave the storm.

Shrouded Sky is Embark’s major update for February and follows the January Headwinds update. While that relatively small content drop added a solo vs. squads queue option and the Bird City map condition, Shrouded Sky is said to come packed with a Raider Deck and map update, as well as a new Arc threat, which we may have gotten a small glimpse of toward the end of today's trailer. Players can also expect to reset their ranks once again with the launch of the next Expedition the following day.

The Arc Raiders roadmap also promised the Flashpoint update for March and Riven Tides for April. The former is said to come with yet another map condition, while the latter’s headlining feature is a brand-new map to raid. We interviewed Embark CEO Patrick Söderlund earlier this month to learn more about what the studio has in store for its popular extraction shooter and how its success has set it up for a bright future. Meanwhile, the team is still doing its best to crack down on cheaters by issuing suspensions for those who take advantage of in-game exploits.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Relive Marty McFly's time traveling adventures in glorious ultra high definition. For a limited time, Amazon is offering the Back to the Future: The Ultimate Trilogy in remastered 4K Ultra HD for just $31.99 after a 43% off instant discount. The last time I saw the price drop this low was back in April of 2025. If you already have the Blu-ray set, it's still worth the upgrade. The 4K remaster is widely accepted to be a noticeable upgrade in visual fidelity.

Back to the Future: The Ultimate Trilogy for $31.99

It's never a bad idea to keep a power station on hand to keep your mobile electronics charged up during emergencies. If you're of the same mind and plan to look on Amazon, then you might want to check out this better deal from AliExpress.

Right now, AliExpress is offering the Ecoflow River 3 230Wh LiFePO4 power station for just $130.84 after you apply the $10 off code "USSS10". (Compare this to a similar product $190 on Amazon currently.) It's sold through Ecoflow's official AliExpress storefront and it ships from a local US warehouse so your order delivers quickly and you don't need to worry about additional tariff fees.

Ecoflow River 3 Power Station for $129.22

Developer Mega Crit has published a new animated trailer for Slay the Spire 2, revealing four-player co-op and an early access release date of March 5, 2026.

The sequel to the studio’s beloved roguelike deckbuilder reappeared with a two-and-a-half-minute trailer today. Alongside the promise to bring a host of new features to Early Access players on Steam in just a few weeks, the footage comes mixed with a stylish animation that almost looks like it could stand alone as its own TV show.

As the trailer’s silent hero falls in battle, we see others come to their aid, revealing that players won’t have to fight through Slay the Spire 2’s dark fantasy world alone. Gameplay featured in the footage highlights combat encounters for up to four players, with Mega Crit explaining in a blog post on Steam that the multiplayer mode will feature its own specific cards and team synergies.

While Early Access is said to come with new cards, characters, events, relics, potions, abilities, alternate acts, and more, today’s trailer shows off how some of these new mechanics will offer chaotic twists on the original formula. The footage also teases an additional new character to look forward to.

“For 1,000 years, the Spire lay dormant, its secrets buried and its horrors forgotten,” an official description for Slay the Spire 2 says. “Now, it has reopened, hungrier and more dangerous than ever, devouring all who dare to ascend.

“New perils demand sharper strategies, relentless cunning, and unwavering resolve. Outwit the Spire’s brutal trials and uncover the truths hidden at its peak.”

Slay the Spire 2 is Mega Crit’s follow-up to its massively popular 2019 original and was announced in 2024. Although a delay saw its release date move from late 2025 to this March, fans will no doubt be excited to hear they’ll now only need to wait two weeks before going hands-on when it comes to PC via Steam March 5.

For more, you can see why we thought the original Slay the Spire is a 9/10. You can also check out how the world’s first human Neuralink patient used the technology to play Slay the Spire.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

The fire-breathing dragons of the Game of Thrones universe are heading to the sea as war breaks out in the first teaser trailer for House of the Dragon Season 3.

Regardless of the tense conversations had in the Season 2 finale, Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) are heading to war. Today’s trailer gives viewers just a glimpse of the battle ahead, showing fights filled with fire and blood as the factions in Dragonstone and the Red Keep fight for the Iron Throne.

Absolute power is within grasp. #HOTD Season 3 returns this June on HBO Max. pic.twitter.com/hFa3tRt58b

— House of the Dragon (@HouseofDragon) February 19, 2026

House of the Dragon Season 3 picks up where the show left off in 2024, and that means all of the story’s major players are back, too. Highlights from the footage (above) show Jacaerys (Harry Collett) warning against his mother’s decision to trust Alicent, while faces like Daemon (Matt Smith) and Corlys (Steve Toussaint) head to the front lines.

Meanwhile, as an injured Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) leaves the Red Keep, it seems his brother, Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), is starting to get quite comfy on the Iron Throne. As the trailer reaches its conclusion, audiences are warned that Rhaenyra’s true reign as Queen of Westeros is almost here.

HBO has yet to announce a release date for House of the Dragon Season 3. However, as revealed with teaser art yesterday, we do at least know that the Game of Thrones spinoff show’s latest batch of episodes is set to premiere sometime in June. It means we have a few more months of waiting to do, and maybe even a few more trailers, before we see how its adaptation of the events of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood will continue.

House of the Dragon originally launched in 2022 and has taken a two-year break between season premieres. Season 4 will be its last, and as revealed in a roadmap published by HBO last year, we can expect it to tie a bow on the story in 2028. For more, check out our 7/10 review of Season 2, and then learn about the behind-the-scenes tensions between Martin and the showrunners. You can also check out our review of episode 5 of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, another Game of Thrones spinoff currently airing on HBO.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

How important is a left click?

Your answer might determine whether you love the Keychron M3 Mini, a wireless lightweight gaming mouse with impressive specs for less than $70. Its pinpoint sensor, fast polling rate, low click latency and marathon battery life match those of more expensive devices, and make me feel like I'm using a pro-level lightweight FPS mouse. But that left click is, under certain conditions, jarring, hollow, tinny, and unpleasant.

I did eventually make it work for me – which I'll explain later – but it points to niggling build quality issues with an otherwise excellent mouse.

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way before focusing on the pile of good stuff.

The left and right mouse clicks are absolutely fine, provided you touch the buttons towards the front. They feel relatively clean and crisp, and spammable if needed. No complaints. But if your fingertips stray down the mouse towards the middle of the buttons – which they can easily do in fingertip or claw grips – the clicks are awful. They sound echoey, feel loose and sloppy, and vibrate against your fingers.

With most mice, when you click the bottom of the button, the whole button will move as one. When you press the bottom of the buttons on the M3 Mini, the top doesn't click in, only the bottom does. It feels almost like those buttons are on a see-saw, with a pivot in the middle, rather than moving as a solid piece.

It's not the only issue I had with the M3 Mini. The side buttons feel pretty solid but the casing around them doesn't. If you squeeze the sides of the mouse they'll start to flex, and if you really squeeze you can actually activate the side click without touching a button.

Both of these problems sound alarming but neither ruined the mouse for me. In reality, you're never going to squeeze the mouse hard enough to flex the sides, and it felt sturdy and safe in my hand.

The mouse button is the more serious issue, and I had to adapt to get around it, training my hand to stay forward. In claw grip, I just bent my fingers a little less than normal to ensure the tips stayed in the right position. And when I got used to it this mouse was pleasant to use, mostly because of its light weight and comfortable shape.

A Light, Comfortable Shell

At 55g, the M3 Mini is a genuinely lightweight mouse. Lighter doesn't mean better, of course: the most important thing is how it feels in the hand and how smoothly it glides across your mousepad. The feet on the M3 Mini aren't the slickest, and have more friction than higher-end mice, but because of the mouse's weight I never felt like I was having to drag it across my pad. The ride was effortless.

It certainly helps that its hourglass-style shape and curved base fills my hand surprisingly well for a smaller mouse, to the point where I could use it in a full palm grip – where your whole palm grabs the bottom of the mouse – with zero issues. Switching between fingertip, claw, and palm grips felt natural, and my fingers and hand always found a comfortable place to rest.

If you have particularly large hands (mine are slightly larger than average), you might struggle to find a stable position on its slim body, but it'll work well for everyone else.

The textured patterns on both sides of the mouse helped me grip it securely. If you run your thumb along them it feels scratchy, but when I was actually using the mouse I never felt any movement or irritation. The chalky plastic coating was easy to hold onto for hours at a time.

Fast Sensor and Long Battery Life

There are four variations of the M3 Mini, each with different combos of sensors and max polling rates, which is the number of times the mouse reports its position to your PC. They range in price from $40 to $70, although the top-of-the-range model that I tested is often available cheaper (it's close to $60 as I write this).

The ones you want to consider are the PixArt 3395 sensors (either 1000Hz or 4000Hz polling rate), or the 3950 sensor 8000Hz variant. Those two sensors are both widely used and will perform well no matter what you throw at them. I tested the 8K variant in a variety of genres– Arc Raiders, Fortnite, CS2, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 – and was very happy. Quick flick-shots hit their mark and slower tracking felt smooth, with no noticeable hitches or stuttering.

Whether it's worth paying more for 4K or 8K polling rate is personal preference. It should make tracking less jittery and more responsive, but to feel a difference above 1000Hz you'll need a decent CPU-GPU combo and a high refresh-rate monitor – even then, not everyone thinks it's worth it. I can feel a very slight benefit as I move from 1K to 4K, but I think 8K is overkill.

Base your choice on the price and your budget: personally, I think it's worth stumping up the extra $20 for the best sensor but if you don't want to, you'll still get solid performance.

I like how simple Keychron makes it to switch between polling rates and DPI. Both have a dedicated button on the bottom of the mouse, and both buttons have their own indicator LEDs so that you always know your current setting. As somebody who likes to switch regularly – I generally bump up my polling rate and lower my sensitivity as I move from work to gaming – I appreciated how streamlined it felt. There's also a switch to toggle between the fast 2.4Ghz wireless connection and Bluetooth.

If you opt for higher polling rates you'll sacrifice some battery life, but that's fine here because the M3 Mini lasts for ages. On the top two configurations, you should get 135+ hours at 1000Hz polling rate. Impressive. It runs out faster at higher polling rates, but I tested it on and off for a couple of weeks at various polling rates and only drained a third of the battery.

The battery life on the 1K mouse variant is less impressive: Keychron says it'll last roughly 70 hours. It's another reason to pick the meatier specs.

Keychron's launcher software is browser-based and there's no offline version, which will rule this mouse out for some people – although, again, you can change polling rate and sensitivity just by clicking the buttons on the bottom. I personally prefer web-based software to installing a new program on my PC for every mouse, and I found Keychron's intuitive. Tweaking the basics such as polling rate and DPI is simple, and you get the advanced settings you'd hope for, including ripple control, angle snapping, motion sync and adjustable lift-off distance.

Samuel is a freelance reporter and editor specializing in longform journalism and hardware reviews. You can read his work at his website.

If you haven't already, there's no better time to start monster huntin' than now. Starting today and running through Saturday, Best Buy is offering the PS5 version of Monster Hunter Wilds for just $19.99. This is by far the lowest price I've seen for the wildly popular PS5 game, the previous low being $30 during Black Friday.

Monster Hunter Wilds for PlayStation 5 for $19.99

Castlevania? Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. After years of making almost no video games at all, Konami has decided to get back into the fray with a handful of new game announcements in beloved franchises. Among the upcoming releases is Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, a new side-scrolling entry in the long-dormant action-horror series.

Belmont’s Curse is set to release sometime in 2026 for PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PC. It’s already available to preorder for $39.99 (see it on Amazon). Below, we dive into what this game is and where you can place your preorder. Let’s get to it.

Preorder Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

Preorder Bonus? (Nah)

As yet, no preorder bonuses have been announced. If any become available in the future (which does happen from time to time), this is where you’ll find them.

What Is Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse?

Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is the first brand-new side-scrolling Castlevania game since 2008’s Order of Ecclesia came out on the Nintendo DS. That’s 18 years! Dang! It’s published by Konami, but it’s being developed by Evil Empire, the company behind The Rogue Prince of Persia and several Dead Cells DLCs, including Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania. So they know their way around a side-scrolling action game. Motion Twin, the main developer of Dead Cells, is also on board in an advisory role.

Belmont’s Curse takes place in 1499 Paris, which is in the midst of a monster invasion. That puts it 23 years after the events of the NES game Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. It’s not 100% clear if this is a “metroidvania” or “search action” game in the vein of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and the GBA and Nintendo DS installments of the early 2000s.

In terms of gameplay, it looks like you do plenty of jumping on platforms, swinging from rings, and whipping on enemies. Bosses can tower over you. Environmental hazards like saw blades are strewn about. You have access to additional weapons and abilities like a flame spell and a cross you can throw like a boomerang. It looks like fun. Watch the trailer above to see for yourself.

More Preorder Guides

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.

This article contains spoilers for Paradise Season 1; Paradise Season 2 debuts on Hulu on February 23.

The first season of Hulu’s Paradise was extremely hard to talk about before it was released, particularly because the premiere episode’s big twist – that the show takes place entirely inside a suburban-style bunker under a mountain in Colorado after the apparent end of the world – was expressly forbidden from being mentioned in reviews. Well, the secret is out, and while there are plenty more twists and turns in Season 2 of the series – including a likely game changer in the finale (seven of the season’s eight episodes were provided to critics for review) – it’s a little easier to talk about this time around. With Season 2, Paradise continues to be one of the most propulsively binge-worthy dramas on TV.

To revisit Season 1 just a bit: After the murder of third term President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) went down a conspiracy rabbit hole, unraveling some of the truth behind the bunker community of Paradise and how Samantha "Sinatra" Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), the billionaire behind its construction, was maybe not being so truthful about what went down outside its walls.

Specifically, after a bit of the ol’ insurrection led by Xavier, he discovered that not only are there people alive outside Paradise, his wife – who he thought died the day a super-volcano exploded, causing a tsunami to wreck most of the world – is alive as well, and living in Atlanta. There’s a lot more that happened as the show jumped backwards in time to show how we got here, as well as moving the conspiracy plot forward in the present, but the most important bit of info to know is that the season ended with Sinatra on life support, Xavier exiting the bunker via a small airplane to go find his wife, and Cal (ostensibly the third lead of the show) still very much dead, though often popping up via flashback to give ghostly advice.

With the dual secrets of the premise and how the world ended out of the way, we’re in literal and figurative uncharted territory in Season 2. Granted, showrunner Dan Fogelman has a fair amount of post-apocalyptic TV shows and movies to pull from, as well as mystery box/flashback-heavy shows like Lost, which he picks and chooses from liberally as we explore more of the world outside as well as how life continues inside Paradise. But what characterizes the new season more than anything is that while Fogelman lays in new mysteries and new sci-fi concepts to replace the ones tied with a bow in Season 1, he also leans straight into his comfort zone: emotionally charged character studies.

The thing is that Paradise is an odd note on Fogelman’s resumé. He hasn’t shied away from more fantastical concepts in the past; he wrote Cars, Tangled, and even a draft of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Most of the time, however, he’s been known for more grounded human fare like: Crazy, Stupid, Love; the late, lamented TV show, Pitch; and most notably, This Is Us.

Paradise Season 2 – at least in its first half – might as well be called This Is The Last Of Us without the fungal zombies. Yes, they’re in a post-apocalypse that’s been devastated by climate change – though the show rarely says those words – but everybody is so nice. We’ve been trained time and again by shows like The Last of Us and particularly The Walking Dead to expect that every time you encounter a new community, they might seem good at first, but it will turn out that they’re eating people, or they’re fascists, or they’re just not prepared to survive the circumstances of their particular apocalypse.

While Fogelman plays with that, he seems far less interested in what makes a world fall apart than what helps build it back up again. To that end, the majority of the season also takes the form of the more focused flashback episodes from Season 1. There, we got the full-on flashback episode of “The Day,” which revealed how the world fell in pulse-pounding real time. Paradise Season 2 isn’t quite on par with that high watermark episode, but instead channels the feeling of an extended sequence in the finale, where we met a construction worker helping build the bunker and followed him as he befriended his crew, discovered things weren’t quite right, tried to stop the bunker from being built, and ultimately failed.

Season 2 takes the feeling of that extended sequence and runs with it, almost becoming a Paradise anthology-style series where each episode is done in one, only lightly connecting to the episode that came before, and often keeping our main characters off-screen for episodes at a time. Part of that is utility, given we’re now following multiple characters in multiple locations versus the more focused locale of “just” Paradise in the first season. But another part of it is that it allows Fogelman the space to spend time emotionally with the characters, particularly new cast members like Shailene Woodley’s lost Graceland tour guide, and Thomas Doherty’s mysterious Link (yes, named after the Legend of Zelda character). We don’t know those folks yet the same way we know Xavier, Sinatra, and Cal, so while there might be some audience frustration about our Season 1 stars being in absentia for large chunks of episodes, when you’ve got good actors digging into meaty speeches and one-on-one scenes, you won’t really miss the folks you already know.

But don’t worry: Paradise falls back on a more conventional TV structure eventually. The level of restraint shown in the early part of the season is laudable, and particularly with Hulu dropping three episodes on premiere day, it should be less frustrating for fans of the series than if, say, you had to wait three to four weeks to find out what happened to Xavier, or what’s going on back in Paradise.

On that note, Sterling K. Brown continues to be the most ridiculously charming man on TV. While most of his arc falls under the heading of “I just want my wife back!” action heroes, and Brown’s chiseled muscles certainly make him convincing in the show’s infrequent but well-staged blockbuster action scenes, it’s Brown’s smile that makes viewers melt. Early on, there’s a swoon-worthy flashback to Xavier’s past that lets the actor flex all his rom-com muscles, and you will grin a goofy smile the entire time as Brown provides more raw romance power in a single scene than most movies can manage in their entire runtime. Other episodes let Brown flex his dramatic muscles as his hard-earned steely demeanor begins to melt thanks to Paradise’s Nice-pocalypse. And then other times, he just flexes his muscles, and when he does – hubba-hubba.

Nicholson also gets some substantial dramatic work this season, and though we may run out of rope eventually with the plotline that she’s been traumatized and motivated by the death of her son well before the end of the world, we haven’t gotten there yet. Nicholson is a master of the locked-up microexpression performance, and her sympathetic bad guy persona lets her play that to the hilt.

As for other members of the cast, Nicole Brydon Bloom continues to be a delight as the Wii-obsessed psycho secret service agent, Jane Driscoll; she bubbled in the background in Season 1, but the show knows what they’ve got with her unhinged performance and lets her freak flag fly in Season 2. And while he has less to do now that we know how he was murdered as well as his role in ending/saving the world, Marsden’s Cal is still incredibly engrossing in every flashback appearance. His folksy “I’m just a dumb, young guy who happens to be President” attitude belies a sharp judge of character, and an episode late in the season gives Marsden a stellar monologue. Cal may be back essentially because the show likes working with Marsden, but we like watching Marsden, so they get a pass here.

If Paradise Season 2 excels when it’s working with dramatic, human scenes, it struggles a bit with the sci-fi elements, which become more outlandish and farther from reality in Season 2. While this was never an expressly political show despite opening with the murder of the President, the idea of billionaires abandoning Earth to a climate disaster they caused is very present in our reality. The second season moves further away from that with new sci-fi ideas that are far less based in reality and seem more focused on the longevity of the series than reflecting something happening outside our window. It’s unfortunate, because it moves the show from pressing sci-fi warning to something more akin to naive fantasy. Granted, naive fantasy is where Fogelman lives, even when his shows are ostensibly set in the real world versus some time in the near future. But depending on how the finale pans out – there are big secrets being held back – it’s possible we could get something very timely, or we could end up diving completely into something less relatable and more fantastical.

Even given that, and with some of the jankier decisions on the part of our characters later in the season – choosing niceness, all apologies to Fogelman, is not always the answer when the stakes are this high – Paradise remains engrossing pulp fun. There’s a lot resting on Brown’s prodigious muscles to keep this show going, but thanks to a game supporting cast and plenty of twists, turns, and flashbacks that will tug on your heartstrings, the Hulu hit may be almost paradise, but it’ll keep you knocking on Heaven’s door, begging for more episodes.