Paradise (2025) is a smart thriller that can’t stop showing off

Dan Fogelman’s Paradise dropped on Hulu on January 26, 2025. You have the creator of This Is Us teaming up with Sterling K. Brown again, so right away, viewers expected a standard political thriller.

But this is Dan Fogelman we are talking about. If there’s one thing he loves, it’s catching viewers off guard and pulling at their feelings. Paradise is a showcase for that: sometimes brilliantly, and sometimes to a fault. He keeps you guessing so much that it almost feels like he is daring you to trust what you are seeing.

The show is set in a sprawling underground bunker somewhere in Colorado. It’s three years after doomsday, and Secret Service agent Xavier Collins is investigating the President’s murder. But you don’t actually find any of that out until the very end of the first episode. Up until then, it just feels like a twisty but familiar murder mystery. Then, the curtain drops, and you realize you are watching a post-apocalyptic sci-fi show hiding inside a political drama.

I have to be honest, that first twist got me. The “normal” town of Paradise was an illusion. As the camera pulls back and the truth hits, you feel the setup collapse in one perfect moment. It’s exactly the kind of trick Fogelman’s known for, and you get why he kept the plot so tightly under wraps.

---

Paradise knows it’s smart, and it never lets you forget it

Paradise uses all the tricks of the prestige television playbook: parallel timelines, perspective shifts, slow-burn revelations, trauma-laden backstories, and many red herrings. You are constantly jumping between murder mystery present and flashbacks about everybody’s tragic baggage, plus the end-of-the-world thing. If you zone out for two minutes, you will have a hard time figuring out what’s going on later.

However, paying attention isn’t the same as actually enjoying yourself. Paradise is like a puzzle that keeps hiding the corner pieces just to mess with you. They want you to think you are watching something super smart, but sometimes it feels more like they are flexing for the sake of it. It’s ambitious, I will give them that, but sometimes you just want the show to chill for a second.

Every time they answer something, they dangle even more questions in front of you, like a cat with a laser pointer. There’s this idea that the more complicated things get, the fancier and more “grown-up” the story must be.

CBR pointed out that the whole shifting-perspective thing is done really well and Fogelman knows his stuff, but at a certain point, it stops being clever and starts feeling like he is showing off. The line between really using a technique and using it to show off and sell your skill is obvious. Paradise feels to me often at this border.

So when Paradise finally stops showing off with its twists and actually sits down to be a show, it gets good. Sterling K. Brown could stand in the middle of a tornado made of plot holes, and you would still believe every second of it. Xavier Collins’s character is stoic and broken, but he has a moral compass that doesn’t budge. That’s what you need when the world is run by bunker-hoarding billionaires and the President is playing make-believe.

And then there’s James Marsden, who walks in as President Cal Bradford and flips the script on what you expect. Critics loved him, and I get why. He is as complicated as required. The ex-besties-turned-enemies thing between him and Brown’s character is the real gravity, especially when the plot starts floating off into La-La Land.

Now, Julianne Nicholson as Sinatra Redmond, as a tech-billionaire pulling the strings, could have been one-dimensional. She is ice-cold, but there’s more going on under the surface.

Paradise doesn’t put big ideas on top for decoration. It is built on them. It digs into wealth gaps, billionaire shenanigans in politics, climate doom, and who gets a seat on the lifeboat dilemma. It’s not just drama for drama’s sake. Paradise is a metaphor for society’s ugly side. The questions it throws at you about who holds the cards, who gets saved, and moral compromise in desperate times aren’t comfortable.

What used to sound like sci-fi nightmare fuel is starting to feel a little too close for comfort, with wildfires and hurricanes. That’s what makes Paradise hit different. It’s a thriller, but you can’t help thinking whether this is really that far-fetched.

For me, for all its brains and big ideas, Paradise can’t quit its obsession with plot twists. It’s like the showrunners have a twist quota they are desperate to hit. Every time you start to get your bearings, another rug is pulled out from under you. The mysteries are cool at first, but after a while, the ‘wait, what?’ moments pile up, and you start wondering if anyone is actually steering this ship or if we are just drifting in a sea of question marks.

Early on, it’s careful and moody, letting you hang out with the characters, soak in the vibes. Then, somewhere past the halfway mark, Paradise slams the gas, and next thing you know, it’s throwing plot bombs and flashbacks at you. One critic even joked you should pop a Dramamine before watching, just to handle the whiplash from all the twisty backstory reveals and zombie-like character returns.

But all this surprise-for-surprise’s-sake actually guts the emotional heart of the show. TIME reported that the biggest mistake was saving a gut-punch flashback, something that would have given real weight to Xavier’s story, until almost the very end. By holding back, the creators missed their shot to dig into the big questions about morality and politics that make sci-fi tick. Instead, it’s like they are so hooked on shocking you that they forget to let you care about anyone.

Paradise is an intelligent TV. A million-dollar question is whether it could be a wise one, the type that knows the perfect moment to reveal its hand or the perfect moment when no action is the best choice. The series has the right elements for greatness: a gifted cast, a relevant idea, and an undisputed high-quality technical work. What it lacks is the courage to stop showing off its intelligence and to simply be smart.

Because here’s the truth: you don’t have to wave your genius around 24/7 if you have actually got the goods. Smart folks get it. They know when to jump in, when to chill out, when to show off a bit, and when to just spin a solid yarn. Paradise can pull all that off. Now it just has to figure out the timing.

The show is streaming on Hulu, with season two gearing up for next year. Even with my gripes, I will tune in, probably with my guard down a notch, hoping the writers don’t set the place on fire with all their plot fireworks. A series that’s this obsessed with keeping you on your toes deserves someone willing to get whiplash from all the twists, even if I’m already side-eyeing the next one peeking around the corner.

Paradise has been granted a renewal for a second season that will air in February 2026. The ending of the first season portrays Collins vacating the bunker to locate his wife in the ruined outside world, this being a promise for the series to go wider and deeper into the aftermath of the event that was largely off-screen for eight episodes.