‘Paradise’ creator Dan Fogelman breaks down the finale, Xavier’s decision

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Tuesday night’s episode of Paradise, “The Man Who Kept the Secrets.”

It’s just another day in Paradise — a.k.a. one filled with threats of bodily harm, suicide, shocking reveals, and more.

The Hulu series, which concluded its first season run on Tuesday, answered the biggest mysteries of season 1, including the identity of the man who killed President Cal Bradford (James Marsden). It wasn’t any of the secret service agents or anyone in the employ of Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson).

Instead, it was a guy we’d seen plenty of this season but were not likely to remember — the meek and pleasant librarian, Trent (Ian Merrigan). Trent, as it turned out, was living under a stolen identity, having once already tried to assassinate President Bradford in the pre-apocalyptic times. Once a project manager on the construction crew excavating the mountain, he had learned that something cataclysmic was coming after trying to halt construction upon discovering the dust generated from their work was hazardous to his and his crew’s health.

Xavier (Sterling K. Brown), hoping to protect his kids and gain a shot at searching for Teri (Enuka Okuma), tracked Trent down, using clues that Cal left behind. But after recovering from a mild concussion, Xavier tracked Trent to the technical interior of the bunker, only to witness the assassin take his own life by jumping into one of the panels generating the false sun and sky of their city.

Having cornered Trent, Xavier then returned to take down Sinatra, only to be stopped by Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), who whispered to Sinatra that she has plans for Sinatra that require her to be alive. Assured of his children’s well-being, Xavier made the difficult decision to leave Paradise and return to Earth’s surface in search of Teri and the truth about her possible survival.

Paradise has already been renewed for a second season, so we called up the man who keeps the secrets himself, creator and showrunner Dan Fogelman. He hinted at Jane’s motivations, teased Xavier’s arduous season 2 journey, and explained why season 2 will be the show’s The Empire Strikes Back in their planned trilogy of seasons. So, put on your favorite Rat Pack record and get ready to learn some confidential information.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We learned who killed Cal. Is there any more to Not Trent’s story or is it pretty much self-contained within this episode? 

DAN FOGELMAN: We’ve told his backstory and he ends up splattered on the ground, so I don’t think we have a lot more story to tell there. We always set out to have somebody hiding in plain sight, who ties back not just to Cal, but to the entire idea of this show — the construction of the bunker and the upstairs and downstairs nature of some people getting selected and a much larger swath of people not getting selected. But yeah, that’s the completion of his story. Are we done talking about the construction of the bunker and how the bunker was formed and what the bunker’s secrets really are? No, not necessarily, but pretty much his story has been told.

We end with a big decision from Xavier going out to look for Teri. What might he find out there and how much is this going to disrupt the world inside Paradise?

It’s a really big deal. I think of this coming season as the middle episode in our trilogy. So it’s The Empire Strikes Back. The first season had two mysteries — who killed the President? And what happened in the outside world, why was this bunker built? We’ve answered those mysteries now, and now there’s two new big mysteries looming, which is what happened to Teri? Is she out there? What is her story? And two, what are the effects of all the happenings of episode 8 on the bunker and somebody having publicly left the bunker and opened the doors and gone out there? Those are two stories we’re telling in a much bigger story.

It’s a question that we’re going to keep asking about, Jane. Is this a psychopath or sociopath? Is there something deeper going on here? She says to [Sinatra], ‘You shouldn’t have called me f–ing crazy.’ Is there something bigger in play? Did she have loyalty to Xavier? These are all questions that will be serviced as we move forward with Jane, who is this young woman who presents as this All-American gal and is possibly the most dangerous person down there.

What stops her from hurting Xavier’s kids? Is it a moral code? Is she playing Sinatra? Is it something we’re unaware of? 

That’s the next question that comes, right? Is she playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers? Or is she just out of her gourd and she didn’t want to kill a teenage girl and she preferred to get a little bit of vengeance on Sinatra? Either version presents Jane as somebody who has now made a couple of beds and created a couple of exit ramps for herself. She ostensibly saved Sinatra from Xavier, who was about to blow her brains out, by gravely, but safely wounding her. She also hasn’t distanced herself or blown her cover with Xavier and the rest of the Secret Service agents. In some ways, Jane is sitting prettiest right now because she could make the argument that she’s on everybody’s side as opposed to having picked a lane. That’s probably the clearest answer of why she might not have killed Presley.

Yes. I’ve already killed James Marsden and Jon Beavers. I’m bringing Julianne Nicholson back into the show. So, she’s not dying and she’s not going to be in a vegetative state. But she is gravely wounded. It’s the first time in the show since her early backstory that you’re going to see Sinatra vulnerable and out of a position of power. This young woman who’s maybe a much more dangerous version of herself has taken her out. The question is who steps into the power vacuum that’s left behind if she’s incapacitated and what does it do emotionally and physically to Sinatra to have been wounded like this and been taken out of power?

Even though we know what her backstory is and that there’s an emotional depth to her, she’s always been a super villain who’s two steps ahead of everybody else. Even when she loses control, she quickly gains it back. Here’s the first situation she’s come up against where her position down below is going to be challenged. That’s part of what we’ll be waiting to see next season — how she regains control or tries to.

Jane also makes that threat after she shoots her about it would have ruined my plans for you. How much is that going to be weighing on Sinatra? She clearly does not actually know Jane. 

She does not know Jane. She’s got this person near her side who in some ways is her closest ally in that she’s the person who knows all of Sinatra’s secrets. She’s the only person left who knows what happened in that room with Sinatra. So in some ways, Sinatra might be a little dependent on her, but in some ways, she’s also probably got to be a little fearful of her. It’s a complicated dynamic we’ll get back to next year.

I think so. She’s starting to come to terms with what she’s done. She obviously didn’t expect to order the killing of a child. She was sorting through what to do and crazy Jane hung up the phone on her and took it further. But there’s this moment where she says, “God forgive me.” And you can see that the person who constantly goes, “I’m doing what I need to do to protect my people,” is breaking down a little bit. There’s a much bigger story to Sinatra and her conception of this bunker and what her plan was for this bunker long-term that will fill her out and explain her story even more. She’s a very complicated character trying to do something very big.

Cal’s son, Jeremy (Charlie Evans), survived, and he finally realizes what his dad was doing and is running with it. What might lay ahead for him? I assume he’s going to want to tell the town what’s up? Is that going to put him in danger? 

These are big questions of who assumes a power vacuum when Sinatra’s out. If you consider the bunker and Paradise a great civilization, in that it’s only civilization left ostensibly, eventually civilizations fall. Often the revolutions are led by the young. Every great song or every great revolution, it was often led by kids. A fire has been lit under this kid. His father said, “If you don’t like the world I built, fix it.” It’s fair to say yes, he’s looking for change and he’s asking questions about what’s really out there. And it could put him in a fair amount of danger.

We wanted to do something which felt extreme, so it would feel intense and immediate, but we also wanted it to be something that is probably not the most likely way that environmental catastrophe will occur. The effects of it — the societal collapse, the potential for a planet that becomes inhabitable, the domino effects of countries behaving badly and economies collapsing because of climate change — are very real issues that should be front and center of our conversations right now. This exact scenario is probably one that I would imagine people don’t have to put at the forefront of their list of terrifying effects of climate change, but it’s not to say it’s impossible.

What can you tease for us about season 2?

Sterling’s journey is intense and surprising and emotional. Back down in Paradise, people should be prepared for [the fact that] there’s a far bigger story to tell about this city. The first episode [of the series] seemed like it was a political thriller, and then, the end of the first episode turned what the show was on its head. The second season is going to turn what you thought the first season was —and what Paradise and the bunker was — a little bit on its head.