Good news, "Paradise" fans: even before the Sterling K. Brown-led political thriller wrapped up its eight-episode debut season with that shocking season finale on March 4, Hulu announced that the series would be officially getting a season 2 pick-up.
Given that we all surely have burning questions that need answering, especially now that we know who killed President Cal Bradford (played by James Marsden), those new episodes can't come soon enough.
In case you haven't yet tuned into the Hulu smash-hit, "Paradise" follows Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins (Brown) who is assigned to protect President Bradford. However, when the POTUS dies of mysterious causes, Collins goes rogue to investigate the truth behind the killing, which understandably places him under suspicious. Is he being framed?
And what does Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), a wealthy tech CEO with close ties to both the late President and the government, have to do with it?
Thankfully, it seemingly won't be long until we get answers to all of those lingering questions, as work on "Paradise" season 2 has reportedly kicked off already. Here's everything we know so far about the second season of the hit Hulu drama.
'Paradise' season 2 release speculation
As "Paradise" season 1 only hit Hulu on March 4, there's no official release date just yet for the second season's premiere.
However, creator Dan Fogelman did assure fans that the powers that be won't be following the recent streaming trend of making fans wait multiple years for their show to return.
“We start shooting in just a few weeks," Fogelman posted on X earlier this week. "It won’t be 2 years, I promise!”
The TV creator — who is also famously behind the NBC familial drama "This is Us," which also starred Brown — expanded on that promise in a post-finale interview with Deadline: "Scripts are written. We go into production in four weeks," he told the outlet.
"I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with shows that are off the air for a very long time in which people get invested in and then it takes a long time to get it back on television. We’re ready to go right now and hoping to get this show back on TV in a normal span of time, hopefully the same time as it came out this past year as opposed to waiting multiple years.
'So if we came out in early 2025, hopefully the next season’s out by early 2026."
Mark your calendars!
Hulu announced "Paradise" was renewed for season 2 on February 20, 2025, just a few episodes into the first season, which star Sterling K. Brown shared in an Instagram video.
The pick-up wasn't a total surprise, seeing as how the series was proving to be a favorite among both audiences — the show was the top streaming series in the U.S. in its first week — and critics.
On Rotten Tomatoes, "Paradise" has an 80% approval rating, with the site's consensus reading: "Teeming with heady concepts and themes, Paradise is an overstuffed but addictively ambitious reunion of Sterling K. Brown and creator Dan Fogelman."
Who will be in the 'Paradise' season 2 cast?
A cast list hasn't yet been revealed for "Paradise" season 2. And given all of the twists and turns in "Paradise" season 1, things can obviously change when those new episodes eventually drop but we're expecting that the majority of the show's main cast will return for the second season.
This will likely include Sterling K. Brown (Xavier Collins), Julianne Nicholson (Samantha "Sinatra" Redmond), James Marden (President Cal Bradford) — who has been appearing via flashbacks, given that his character is murdered by the show's start.
They will probably be joined by Sarah Shahi (Dr. Gabriela Torabi), Nicole Brydon Bloom (Jane Driscoll), Krys Marshall (Nicole Robinson), Aliyah Mastin, (Presley Collins), Percy Daggs IV (James Collins), and Charlie Evans (Jeremy Bradford).
Regarding the cast, Fogelman told Variety in January 2025 that he plotted "Paradise" out as a three-season series with its tone and focus shifting each season à la the acclaimed HBO drama "The Wire."
That means that, along with those aforementioned familiar faces, there will likely be plenty of new characters intermingling with those recurring players next season.
What will 'Paradise' season 2 be about?
With the "Paradise" season 1 finale wrapping up its main storyline by answering the question of Cal Bradford's killer, it leaves season 2 open for new mysteries.
The most immediate one is, of course, whether or not Xavier will find his wife Teri (Enuka Okuma), and whether they will ultimately return to Paradise.
In a The Hollywood Reporter interview, Fogelman confirmed that the forthcoming season will begin right where the finale leaves off, and will split time between Xavier's storyline and those of the Bunker City residents.
"We’re going to live in both worlds," the creator told the outlet. "There is going to be a little bit of a start where we go on a journey with Xavier. A very exciting, emotional, big journey, and then we will also be living in our downstairs world of the bunker, and forces will eventually be colliding. That’s basically the plan."
And there's plenty more shocks and thrills to come in the new episodes, Fogelman promised. "We have a really giant three-season story coming that’s bigger than what people think it is right now, and it’s going to span a couple of genres," he told THR.
"The show was set up and sold as a political thriller about solving the murder of an assassinated president, and by the end of the first episode, you saw that it was something else and it went into a different genre."
Fogelman continued: "The second season is going to do the same thing to the first season. It expands upon itself. We have a plan and, hopefully, by the end of all three seasons, people will feel like they’ve been served a complete meal and that it’s all one piece, even though they went through a lot of different journeys to get to the end."
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