Alex-Dylan connection in season 3

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Paradise,” now streaming on Hulu.

Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) has a new mission heading into Season 3 of “Paradise,” but whether he will accept it is up for debate at the end of the Dan Fogelman drama’s second season finale, which dropped Monday on Hulu.

In the final episode of Season 2 of “Paradise,” titled “Exodus,” it is revealed that the “Alex” that Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) has been hiding is a supercomputer more advanced than any AI has ever been, to the point where it is potentially able to travel through time. The device was created by Link (Thomas Doherty), who is now determined to shut it down as he fears it has taken on a mind of its own and could be a detriment to the remaining people of Earth rather than a saving grace.

At the same time, Sinatra has formed the theory that not only is Link actually (somehow thanks to Alex) her dead son Dylan, but that Alex is the key to undoing what happened to Earth, and that Xavier is the one who has to solve it. Why Xavier? Alex has given instructions for a ‘User And before Sinatra sacrifices herself to close the bunker while everyone else escapes its destruction, she tells Xavier that he should be the one to go to Alex and save them all – because she thinks he’s already done that somehow in the future, leading to timeline anomalies like Link/Dylan.

“I think this is Fogelman’s exploration of the multiverse. Any show that deals with genre and science fiction or whatever ultimately likes to play with the idea of: Is time travel a possibility?” Brown said Variety. “And what are the rules that dictate our excursion into time travel? The first time it really freaked me out was ‘Back to the Future’. So you’ve seen Marvel tackle the multiverse and all the different timelines. ‘Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ also did its own specific thing. I find it intriguing because ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ is more real than people think. And it unlocks your brain in such a way that anything you think can be possible, if you can imagine it.”

Brown continued, “And now that this has been introduced into our world, I think the question is: What do you really want? Do you want to go back? Do you want to move on and leave it alone? Is it too mysterious to play with, to even tinker with, or is it too compelling not to? And different people have to make different decisions based on where they are in life at that moment. And you’ll see how that plays out over the course of Season 3.”

John Hoberg, executive producer of Paradise and co-writer of the season finale, confirms that creator Fogelman’s plan is still a three-season arc, with the upcoming Season 3 – which begins filming on April 7 – serving as a “fairly definitive” ending for the story.

“When you think about where all our characters are and what we were left with at the end, which is that Xavier has been tasked by Sinatra to go to this second bunker, the question for me is, is he going to do that?” Hoberg teased. “Does he believe in what Sinatra is up to? Is Sinatra actually up to no good? Does this machine do what she thinks? Or is she really just dealing with her own grief, as she said? And will Xavier answer the call to do what she wants? I don’t know if I can name a specific genre [to describe Season 3]but I do know that we will continue with it. Xavier has been given a task, and I ask myself: will he keep it up? And what are the consequences if he does and if he doesn’t?”

What makes Xavier the chosen one in this case? Hoberg promises that “Paradise” will answer that burning question, and much more, before the series ends. In fact, it’s a mission for Fogelman and the “Paradise” writers’ room (which pitched the series finale outline to Brown last week) not to leave any major loose ends: “There’s a reason why Xavier is User X, and we’ll find out,” Hoberg said.

“I think from Season 1 we’ve established the moral compass that is Agent Collins, and he’s willing to make tough decisions for the greater good,” Brown added. “There is something about him and why Dr. Torabi chose him in the first place to be part of the President’s Secret Service to come to the bunker that makes him uniquely equipped to deal with difficult situations in the clearest way possible.”

Meanwhile, Link/Dylan is also dealing with an identity crisis: he may be Sinatra’s son, he’s certainly the father of the now-deceased Annie’s (Shailene Woodley) baby daughter, and he may still be leading the crusade to take down Alex.

“He knows it’s feasible. Is it true? We don’t know that yet. We’ll definitely find out in Season 3, so that’s why I don’t want to say too much about that,” Doherty said. “I think with Season 3 we’re going to see all this information — I mean, one of those things is individually hard to calculate, understand, let alone process. I think we’re going to see him process his daughter. We’re going to see how he processed Sinatra, possibly his mother. We’re going to see the loss of Annie.”

Although nothing can be confirmed yet. Brown says the “coincidence” of Link/Dylan’s name and date of birth is “more than just a coincidence, but more of a coincidence.”

“There are things that we had in that finale that were left out that go a little further in trying to explain the connection,” Brown said. “I think they finally decided to take them out because I don’t know if the science is exactly scientific. What can I say? Oh, my God! They’re clearly connected. I don’t think it’s just her sadness that works. There’s a connection.”

At the end of the Paradise season 2 finale, Xavier’s family has been reunited, but his wife Teri (Enuka Okuma) and children Presley (Aliyah Mastin) and James (Percy Daggs IV) now face a new challenge, along with the thousands of other people just driven out of the now-destroyed bunker.

“You have the 10,000 people that Link had, the 20,000 people that were in the bunker,” Brown said. “There is no central leadership. You could say that Link is leading the people on the outside – but there is a large amount of people who came to do something and now it’s a question of: are they going to continue destroying Alex? Are they going to change course? Is Alex not that important anymore? What do the people in the bunker decide to do? Do they stay together? Are they going to split off and try to find their own people? There will be many different groups that spread out throughout Season 3 and we will follow them all.”

Doherty says that in “Paradise” season 3 it will be “very, very interesting” to see the dynamic between Link/Dylan and Xavier, as Dylan looks to raise his daughter (brought to him by Xavier alone on Annie’s “sacred charge”) and continues his quest.

“I think they’re cut from the same cloth, but I think Xavier is much more settled as a person. He’s older, he’s more experienced, he’s more calm; whereas, where we leave Dylan, he’s still kind of full of grit and full of justice,” Doherty said. “And, like younger people in general, he has that testosterone and that, ‘this is the right thing to do,’ compels them. It will be very interesting for him to be around someone who shares very similar beliefs, but is also more of a realist than him. Is Dylan going to learn from him, or is he going to fight Xavier?”

Xavier has other problems: now that he has been reunited with his presumed dead wife, he must deal with his one night stand with Dr. Explaining Torabi (Sarah Shahi) to Teri. “You’ll see in Season 3 that it’s definitely brought to her attention,” Brown said. “And you’ll see how they get it done as a couple. We’re not going to just slide over it.”

Overall, the Collins family is happy to be back together, but a lot has changed in the few years they’ve been apart. Xavier and the children lived in the bunker and Teri survived outside.

“I think it’s a very different setup,” Brown said. “We also have two white babies with us. A wonderful welcome to the tribe. I think he’s as happy as a pig to be with his wife, to be with his children. They’re obviously displaced, so they have to figure out what life is like for them now, where they’re going to go, where they’re going to settle, who’s going to be part of their tribe? His daughter is getting older. She has a boyfriend, she’s running away. So there will be different challenges in terms of that dynamic. There will also be something very interesting with our two newest members, with Bean and Annie. Now Annie is obviously with her father, but something will have changed too, and the shift is causing a certain amount of friction that will force us into action for Season 3.