Spoilers follow for Paradise through the end of Season 1. Paradise Season 2 will debut on February 23.
Paradise, the wildest post-apocalypse series on TV, is back on Hulu for a second season this week. Starring Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, and James Marsden, the Dan Fogelman-created series was a huge hit in Season 1, and it looks like it won’t let up in the second season either. But even with a short-for-streaming gap between seasons (a year instead of the now default two- to three-year hiatus), you might be a little confused about the timeline as you jump into Season 2…
…And that’s because the timeline is confusing. Like other flashback shows such as Lost – or more to the point of the whole Fogelman of it all, This Is Us – while there’s plenty of action happening in the “present,” there’s also a lot of jumping back into different points in the past. So with that in mind, particularly given some plot points coming up in Season 2 (no spoilers here), you’re probably going to want to check and recheck the timeline of Paradise to make sure you know who was where, when.
While we won’t hit every single plot point from the first season, we are going to break down major events – and some seemingly minor ones that may have ramifications as the series moves forward. So let’s get into it, starting back in… the ’90s?
The Paradise Timeline
1997
Actually, before we even explain why we’re in 1997, aka the year Titanic took over the box office, it’s also important to note that this timeline is gonna ditch the dates pretty soon. The reason for that? Most of Paradise takes place in the “present day,” all centered around the before and after of a future (for us, the viewers) event that’s referred to as “The Day.” Again, we’ll get there in a second, but for the moment we’re starting with a real year, when Bill Clinton started his second term as President.
We got this specific year in Season 1, Episode 5, "In the Palaces of Crowned Kings," when future President Cal Bradford (Marsden) told his dad that he wants to be a teacher. Instead, the overpowering father Kane (Gerald McRaney) forces him into politics, kicking off a series of events that leads to Cal’s murder at the beginning of Season 1.
19 BTD
At this point, given the TV show doesn’t provide years, we’ve got to establish a time scale of our own. So we’re going to use Before The Day (BTD) and After The Day (ATD). For example, 19 years BTD, the billionaire Samantha Redmond, later known by her codename “Sinatra,” met her husband, Tim (Tuc Watkins), in a bar after selling her tech startup.
(We’ll also note that a lot of these dates are approximate, and some of it doesn’t quite add up. We’re flying slightly by the seat of our pants here, though ultimately it does lead to the correct order of events, even if things might be off by a year or so.)
16 BTD
For example! Sinatra’s daughter Hadley (Kate Godfrey) is born in about 16 BTD. We know this because she’s about 16 years old when we meet her on the show in – you guessed it – the present day. However, she seems to be much younger than this when we see her in flashbacks during Season 1, Episode 2, “Sinatra.” She also has an older brother, Dylan (Peter Gorbis) who was born before her, but we don’t know when. Gotta love it!
13 BTD
While outside a store riding a horse (not a real one), Dylan collapses and is diagnosed with some sort of unspecified Child Sickness. They proceed to get him treatment over the next year and a half, but…
11 BTD
Dylan dies. Before he does, he tells his mom he wants to see heaven and he wants it to be full of horses, which sets her off on a journey to, as Belinda Carlisle might say, make heaven a place on Earth. Though she doesn’t quite get there with the whole “full of horses” thing.
Just before this, Sinatra meets Dr. Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi), a therapist who helps Sinatra with her grief and becomes a good friend, assisting Sinatra as she builds her plan to save the world. There’s not much you need to worry about with this in terms of the overarching plot, though Torabi and Sinatra’s friendship timeline does get brought up a lot on the show.
10 BTD
Sinatra attends an international finance summit where she sneaks into a lecture by Dr. Louge (Geoffrey Arend), who is less concerned about finance and more concerned about the end of the world. Basically, he thinks the world has 10 years until there’s a global catastrophe caused by a super volcano, and he is weirdly spot-on as it turns out. Sinatra, still distraught about the death of Dylan, hooks right into this and begins to put all her time and resources into constructing a plan to weather the end of the world.
Also at this finance summit? Cal Bradford, who is now a US Senator and well on his way to his destiny as President.
Dr. Louge thinks the world has 10 years until there’s a global catastrophe caused by a super volcano, and he is weirdly spot-on as it turns out.9 BTD
Moving quickly on her plan, Sinatra recruits Anders (Erik Svedberg-Zelman), a brilliant architect who she wants to design an underground bunker in the mountains in Colorado, where she plans to build Dylan’s heaven on Earth – and save as many people as she can, of course. By this point, she’s already begun hollowing out the mountain, and Anders agrees to help.
Then, in a good chunk of the Season 1 finale, "The Man Who Kept the Secrets,” we see them building and hollowing out the mountain more, under the partial direction of Trent (Ian Merrigan), a construction project manager. Trent discovers his workers are getting sick thanks to arsenopyrite residue, but given the accelerated construction schedule instead of waiting until it becomes non-toxic, Trent is fired. More on him later.
7 BTD
Cal is elected President for the first time. Yay, Cal!
3 BTD
Cal is elected the second time, and meets his new Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Brown). While the free-wheeling President and locked-up Collins seem at odds at first, in December of this year Cal is almost assassinated by a man posing as a cameraman who brought a 3D-printed gun to the lawn of the White House. That man? Trent, who shoots Xavier instead accidentally. Trent knows about the bunker, of course, and wants to expose it to the world. Instead, Cal survives, Xavier survives, Trent is sent to jail, and the world is none the wiser.
On the other hand, due to saving his life, Cal tells Xavier all about the Colorado project, bringing him into the loop and promising to save his wife and kids when the time comes.
THE DAY
The time comes. As detailed in the devastating seventh episode of Season 1, a super-volcano erupts, sending a massive tsunami around the world and destroying nearly all of human civilization. A lot goes down this episode, but the short version is the tsunami is just the beginning of the destruction that includes an ash cloud covering the Earth. And Cal ends up activating an EMP to stop nukes that have been launched worldwide from adding “nuclear armageddon” to the list of horrors.
Also worth noting, while Xavier’s daughter Presley (Aliyah Mastin) and son James (Percy Daggs IV) – as well as Xavier – make it onto a plane headed to Colorado, Xavier’s wife Teri Rogers-Collins (Enuka Okuma) is stuck outside Atlanta as the bombs drop and the tsunami hits. Xavier believes she’s dead, but as we find out in the Season 1 finale, she, along with other people on the outside, have somehow survived.
Meanwhile, everyone else is locked in Sinatra’s suburban bunker, known as – get this – Paradise. And in the process, Cal’s presidency is extended to a third term.
6 MONTHS ATD
As detailed in Season 1, Episode 4, “Agent Billy Pace,” six months into their new life in Paradise, Cal authorized an exploratory mission to the outside. And that four-person mission discovered that life had indeed survived, thanks in part to Cal successfully stopping the nukes with his EMP. However, Sinatra had other plans and sent a mercenary, who was posing as a secret service agent, Billy Pace (Jon Beavers), out to kill them. The folks in Paradise thought they died from outside exposure; they did not.
Some time after that, Cal discovers the truth about the exploratory mission and that the outside is safe(ish), confronts Sinatra… and is shut down. However, he begins constructing an elaborate plan to reveal the truth that involves a mixtape to his son and other weird little clues and stuff.
3 ATD
Trent – remember him? – managed to break out of jail and sneak into Paradise posing as the community’s librarian. While he actually lived (and enjoyed) his new life, three years in Cal walks into the library and Trent gets pissed all over again. He gets in his old construction uniform, sneaks into Cal’s house, and conks him on the head with construction equipment, killing him (he actually has to hit him twice, but that’s neither here nor there).
This kicks off the events of Season 1, which all take place over a series of a few days, ending with, in no particular order: Xavier leaving the bunker via plane to go find his wife, Sinatra shot but alive, and Paradise in chaos as many of the residents – thanks to a rebellion led by Xavier – know things are not what they seem.
Got it all? Good. Now you’re ready for even more timeline wackiness on Paradise Season 2. Strap in, because it’s gonna be a wild ride.
Connexion
