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Sterling K. Brown’s Hulu thriller returns at network-TV speed in a CCXP 2025 first look

Paradise season 2 trailer answers last season’s cliffhanger and teases new twists

Image: Hulu

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Paradise, Hulu’s normcore cocktail of Silo, 24, and Lost, was one of my favorite shows of the year, a rare mystery-box drama that gifted viewers cliffhangers, then actual answers, in the span of a single season. According to Dan Fogelman and his writing staff, satisfaction at breakneck speed was always the hope. Also promised from the beginning: more Paradise, sooner than later, bucking the prestige TV trend of years-long waits for season 2.

Now, just months after Paradise season 1 finale, Fogelman and star Sterling K. Brown are back with a big tease for the next chapter.

Hulu unveiled the first trailer for Paradise season 2 at the 2025 CCXP stage in São Paulo, Brazil, a sizzle reel that promised a bigger, and potentially stranger, follow-up to Fogelman’s airport novel-vibed thriller. The new footage pulls the series out of the confines of the Colorado bunker and into the ravaged world beyond — picking up right after the first season’s finale cliffhanger.

Season 2 follows Xavier (Sterling K. Brown) as he searches for Teri (Sarah Shahi) in the wilds of a post-meltdown America, which suffered from both natural and manmade catastrophe all in one blow. The trailer confirms that Xavier’s escape flight didn’t end well: The plane has crashed, forcing him to traverse a new wasteland where scattered survivors have spent three harrowing years adapting to catastrophe. Meanwhile, back in “Paradise,” the bunker’s uneasy social order begins to fray — and Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) hints that even more secrets are buried in the city’s foundations.

Other quick hits from the trailer:

• Teri, very much alive, seems to be smashing her way through a new mystery.
• Cal Bradford (James Marsden) appears again, likely in flashbacks considering he died.
• Descendants star and Sebastian Stan lookalike Thomas Doherty shows up wielding heavy artillery.
• Shailene Woodley surfaces as a pre-Day (?) scientist whose work seems to tie into the origins of Paradise.

Season 1 writer Nadra Widatalla previously told Polygon that season 2 would “pose new questions” while delivering answers fans have been debating since the finale. “What is out there? What happened to [Teri]? […] We’re going into season 2 posing new questions, but it’s bigger and it’s more exciting. It’s not what people are expecting, but it will answer the questions that people have.”

Paradise returns with more twisty, flashback-driven storytelling on Feb. 23, 2026.