This post contains spoilers from the Season 2 finale of “Paradise.” Please proceed accordingly.
A bit of dark foreshadowing buried in “Paradise” Season 2 sets up some real badness in Season 3 — but with everything that took place in the show’s just-finished sophomore run, we’d understand if you missed the grim clue.
Episode 3 of the second season featured a flashback to Julianne Moore’s Sinatra talking with Geoffrey Arend’s Dr. Louge — aka the climatologist she met at the summit that first sparked her idea for the bunker. As she asked him questions about the climate event he’d stated would end life as we know it, he outlined “Venus Syndrome.” The first part — eruption of a super volcano that causes “a global tsunami, ash clouds, apocalypse” — is what we saw happen on “The Day” in Season 1; the event was revisited from Annie’s perspective in the Season 2 premiere, “Graceland.”
But this season’s flashback expanded on what happens after that climate-catastrophe kickoff. “Most people are killed. Not everybody, though,” Louge explained. “After a few years, 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.”
When the cooling stops, trapped greenhouse gases will “seize control,” he continued. “The heat starts to ratchet up, slowly at first, and then, all at once. The air thickens, oceans evaporate, and soon, the pressure crushes everything still standing. It’s what happened on Venus.”
His final warning was the most chilling: “Anybody still around for that will wish they died on the very first day.”
Who will lead the survivors in ‘Paradise’ Season 3?
So that means that the survivors — all of whom are living outside Paradise now, thanks to the bunker’s destruction in the Season 2 finale (read a full recap) — have a world of hurt coming. And when TVLine asked series star/executive producer Sterling K. Brown about what Louge’s predictions mean for Season 3, he clapped his hands in anticipatory celebration.
“You paid attention!” he said, laughing. “Other people will go back and watch and be like, ‘Oh yeah, [Louge] did say that!”
Brown then 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.”
And he theorized that with no true leadership — remember, two presidents and Sinatra have bought the farm — the former bunker citizens might not know to whom they should look for order. Maybe Xavier? Maybe Link?
“Maybe several people stand out as leaders,” Brown teased. “Maybe people decide to stay together. Maybe they don’t decide to stay together. Maybe they branch off.”
Regardless, he added, most of the characters will be oblivious to the impending arrival of The Climate Wants to Kill Us, Part 2.
“I think the lesson, the cautionary tale for us in this world is: Let’s take care of our planet so we don’t have to deal with the repercussions,” he said. “And then, in terms of ‘Paradise,’ just makes for some good-a** storytelling, you know what I’m saying?”
What do you think will happen in “Paradise” Season 3? Hit the comments, and let us know!