Paradise Season 2: Is The World Going To End Again?! — TVLine's In-Depth, Ongoing Investigation

"Paradise" Season 2 is done. But if our (admittedly meager) understanding of the science raised in the show this go-around is correct, "Paradise" Season 2 may also be just starting somewhere else in the universe. 

Lost? So are we! What better time, then, to launch into an examination of the Hulu series' increasingly sci-fi-influenced mysteries? 

But let's back up a moment. Season 1 of Dan Fogelman's twisty drama got underway with a major mystery — who murdered the president of the United States? — and immediately chased it with a jaw-dropping reveal: After a climate catastrophe/nuclear war, the commander-in-chief and a large group of hand-picked citizens had taken shelter in an underground city built for surviving the apocalypse. By the Season 1 finale, Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins (played by Sterling K. Brown) had solved the murder mystery but unearthed another: Were there survivors — including his presumed-dead wife, Teri — topside?

The three-episode Season 2 premiere proved there were. Among them were Annie (played by Shailene Woodley), a Graceland tour guide who holed up at the historic home when things went south; and Link (Thomas Doherty), a secretive traveler headed to Colorado on a deadly mission.

In Episode 4, tragedy befell Annie, while Link arrived at the bunker's doors and politely asked to be let in. Episode 5 a) flashed back to how Teri managed to stay alive in the years following The Day, and b) found Xavier forming a plan to rescue his woman from the people he was told kidnapped her. Episode 6 delved into Jane's highly disturbing backstory, introduced a warning from the future, and reunited Xavier and Teri in the very last moments. Episode 7 revealed that Link's real name is Dylan and hinted heavily that he was Sinatra's son, whom we saw die of a terrible illness during a Season 1 flashback. 

The Season 2 finale didn't give us a definitive answer on Link's true identity, but it did definitively kill off Sinatra, who stayed behind to make sure the bunker's nuclear explosion was contained while everyone else escaped with their lives. (Read a full recap, then hear what Julianne Nicholson has to say about whether we'll see Sinatra again. And don't miss Sterling K. Brown's thoughts on a vital Season 3 clue you might've missed earlier this season.)

Much like we did last season, we spent Season 2 keeping track of the show's big mysteries and all the hints that might help solve them. But as we gear up for next week's season finale, a couple of ground rules. Which leads us to a very important Spoiler Alert!: Please make sure your viewing is up to date, because we wouldn't want the list below to ruin the fun. 

TVLine readers excel at figuring out TV-related riddles. So if you see or hear something that we didn't during an episode, make sure to shout it out in the comments or hit me up on social media @kimroots: If your tip is a good one, it'll be included (with credit!) in our updates.

Now have at it, "Paradise" faithful: Scroll down and start sleuthing!

Toward the end of the Season 2 premiere, Annie overhears Link and his friend, Geiger, talking about how they have to "get to the bunker, we've got to get inside, and we've got to kill Alex." The men wind up leaving before she (or we) can glean any more information about their target.

Then, in Episode 3, a pre-bunker flashback introduces us to Henry Miller (Patrick Fischler) and his wife — whose name is Alex. Alex is suffering from Huntington's disease, and she dies of a lethal injection shortly before Billy Pace kills Henry, on Sinatra's orders. When Henry's young assistant later shows up, we realize he's Link! (More on that later.)

There's more on this front later in Episode 3. In the present storyline, Sinatra surreptitiously asks her housekeeper, Carmen — whom we quickly glean isn't just her housekeeper — "How is Alex?" Carmen responds, "Alex is well." Is Alex a person? A project? A project named for a person? 

UPDATE: In Episode 4, Link and his group arrived at the bunker and asked to be let in by holding up signs outside, "Love Actually"-style. "Please," the signs read, "as they say, take me to your leader. I'm going to ask nicely. But not for long."

UPDATE: Whoever sent the email to Don in Episode 6 signed the message "Alex Q." Related? (See also: last slide.)

UPDATE: In Episode 7, when pressed by Sinatra, Link admitted that he and his group were at the bunker for Alex. Sinatra first feigned ignorance, then pivoted to say, "I will do everything in my power to protect her. And I won't let you, or anyone else, destroy what I've built." Savvy viewers will recall that Sinatra has referred to Alex with feminine pronouns before.

UPDATE: The Season 2 finale offered a solid answer on this one: Alex is the artificial intelligence unit, built by Prof. Henry Miller and Link/Dylan and named after Miller's ailing wife. It is housed in a facility under the Denver airport, and though it is not officially up and running, it seems to be able to predict the future — including Sinatra's death.

... what specifically, is the nature of the secretive project that Sinatra has hatched? In Episode 3, we learn that this mysterious initiative is siphoning a significant amount of energy from the bunker's electrical grid. We also see a flashback from when Sinatra tracked down Dr. Louge (Geoffrey Arend) at the conference and asked him for a specific breakdown of what would happen when the climate catastrophe he predicted actually took place. After he lays out a hellish future in which "pressure crushes anything still standing" years after the event, he says only one thing can fix it, "and it's the one thing even you can't buy... Time."

This interaction, as well as the fact that Sinatra was very interested in the work of quantum scientist Henry Miller, has led some fans to think that the sneaky presidential adviser might be trying to bend time to her will. (And can you blame her? The woman's been pretty damn effective in making other seemingly impossible things happen!) 

And if so, Might Alex be a project instead of a person, then? That would jive with the other part of Sinatra's conversation with Carmen, in which the housekeeper mentions that "the power problem has been resolved" and that "they" don't have an estimate, "but she is getting closer." 

"She" as in the way you talk about ships? "She" as in a person? Who knows?!

UPDATE: A monologue Sinatra gives in Episode 4 might provide more insight into her overall plan. As she holds baby Calvin, AKA the first infant born in the bunker, she quietly says: "Can I tell you a secret, gorgeous boy, something no one else knows down here? Someday, you're gonna see the real sky. You'll feel how warm the sun can be on your skin. You'll know what the moon looks like in all its phases. You'll see how the constellations travel across the sky at night. I swear, Calvin, I have a plan for you. For all of us. Someday you'll see real stars."

Cryptic, no? If she is thinking about time travel, this is a very roundabout way to talk about it. Maybe Sinatra's plan has several parts or phases? Make sure to log your thoughts on [waves hands] everything in the comments!

UPDATE: In Episode 6, as Dr. Torabi is listening to old recordings of Sinatra's therapy sessions, she comes across one in which Sinatra, upset, mutters something about being afraid of becoming the person she has to be "in order to save them," but that's all we get. 

UPDATE: At the end of Episode 7, Sinatra travels to deep below the bunker, walks down a hallway (which appears to be the one in Xavier's vision) and enters a room. She puts on a coat, and as lights come up, she beams at someone or something we can't see. "Hi, Alex," she says.

UPDATE: See the slide above — Alex is the AI that Sinatra had Billy Pace kill Henry Miller for in a flashback earlier this season.

In Episode 2, an ailing Xavier has visions (memories?) of following Link down a dark hallway. Then, in an Episode 3 flashback, Henry Miller tells Billy Pace not to kill Link, because "it's not hyperbole to say the fate of the world may depend on him." Though Billy easily could off the young man when he shows up at Henry's house, he doesn't. 

UPDATE: Xavier sees Link's photo for the first time in Episode 4, and he immediately connects Annie's baby daddy with the vision he's been having. He starts to tell her about it — "I've been having these dreams. Maybe not 'dreams,' almost like memories of things? But they're things that haven't happened." — but she thinks he's likely just experiencing the aftereffects of a concussion, and they don't get a chance to discuss it again before she dies of childbirth complications at the end of the hour.

Does the fact that Xavier already has memories of Link lend credence to the time-travel theory? Is Link the person who eventually makes such a quantum leap happen? And can you believe that we're talking about all of this for a show that we originally thought was just a murder mystery?!

UPDATE: Episode 7 reveals that Link's real name is Dylan, that he is 26, and that he was born on May 16. All of that information makes it seem like he might be an alternate-universe version of Samantha (aka "Sinatra") and Tim Redmond's son, Dylan, who died from an illness in a flashback in Season 1. And Sinatra's face sure looks like she thinks that's the case. Add in the fact that both Sinatra and Link/Dylan walk away from the encounter with nosebleeds, and it seems clear that some kind of temporal messing-around is afoot.

UPDATE: By the end of the Season 2 finale, we don't know for sure that Link is Sinatra's son. But she accepts the idea as fact, which seems to bring her peace in her final hours on Earth.

When Xavier finally makes it to Atlanta in Episode 4, he's met with the worst news: His wife, Teri, isn't there! A man named Gary approaches him and calls him by name: Gary says he's a good friend of Teri's, "and she's been taken from me." 

UPDATE: In Episode 5, Gary claims that Ennis, a member of the small commune that weathered the climate/nuclear catastrophe with him and Teri, was instrumental in Teri's getting taken by a group of menacing newcomers. But a flashback reveals (to the audience, at least), that the newcomers weren't really dangerous — and that Gary shot Ennis dead when he suggested that Teri might join the group's train ride out to Colorado. Now that we know Gary is lying to Xavier, can we trust anything he's said?

UPDATE: Teri shows up in the very last moments of Episode 6 as part of the group of people who run to see what's happened when Gary undermines Xavier and pulls the trigger early on the bomb Xavier was planning to plant. But we don't see what happens next!

UPDATE: A happy ending, for once! Episode 7 found Mr. and Mrs. Collins reunited, with Bean and Annie's infant in tow, and safe on the train to Colorado.

Episode 6 opened with a flashback in which a seemingly random tech support worker named Don received multiple emails... from the future? Someone named Alex G. (Sinatra's Alex? Unclear.) spammed Don with this message: A KILLER WILL BE BORN ON JUNE 6 AT 12:01 AM," the body copy reads. "SHE CAN BE STOPPED WHEN IT MATTERS, IF YOU DELIVER A MESSAGE TO HER:"

Don, who took the message to heart, waited outside the hospital on the day in question so he could accost new mothers and ask them their children's birth times. He got very agitated when he ran into a woman whom we soon learned was the mother of Jane, who'd grow up to be everyone's favorite, murderous Secret Service agent in Paradise. 

The incident unleashed a whole new slew of questions. To whom do the "she" and "her" in the message refer? The same person? Different people? Is the sender, Alex, an actual person or an artificial intelligence? And, if indeed the email was sent from the future... HOW?

UPDATE: We still don't know who "she" is. But if "she" is Jane, "she" somehow survived getting stabbed to near-death in Dr. Torabi's shower, and "she" likely will have a hearty degree of fury about that if/when "she" surfaces in Season 3.

In a flashback earlier this season, Dr. Louge warned that the events of The Day would only be the beginning of humanity's suffering. He predicted that, after the climate event that wiped out almost everyone on the planet, "things seem to ease up. The temperature stabilizes. The survivors are thinking, 'We made it. We're so lucky.' Not so fast, morons. That was just the first act."

Trapped greenhouse gases eventually will increase the planet's temperatures, he continued. "The air thickens, oceans evaporate, and soon, the pressure crushes everything still standing. It's what happened on Venus... Anybody still around for that will wish they died on the very first day."

So wait: Is another horrifying catastrophe on the docket for the lucky few who made it through the first one? In a post-finale conversation with TVLine, series star/executive producer Sterling K. Brown confirmed that "There is something else, climate-wise, that shall transpire, that the people will have to deal with in Season 3, that may be something — a catalyst for action."

OK, your turn. We want to hear all your thoughts/theories/wild flights of fancy, so hit the comments, and have at it!