Paradise 2.08 (Season finale)
Mar. 31st, 2026 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which season 2 comes to an end with a bang and a whimper both.
Ever since Link/Dylan made that Luke and Vader quip, I had a feeling this was where things were going for Sinatra, though as mentioned last week, I didn't think they'd go there unless this was the series finale, which this wasn't. Surprisingly, I'm still okay with it. Perhaps because this was most definitely Sinatra's season, it brought her arc to a close, and as the Cal-backs this season demonstrated, Dan Fogelsang loves bringing back dead characters not via resurrection but via flashback which works with the structure of the show. So I expect that this isn't the last we've seen of Julianne Nicholson as Sinatra, there will be flashbacks with her next season, though like Cal, she is really, truly dead, having sacrificed herself, Buffy-style, for the world and her nearest and dearest. Or should that be Anakin Skywalker-style? The imploding bunker made for a hell of a funeral pyre, and I half way expected Xavier to see Sinatra's force ghost when he was talking to Link and Annie's baby, though I guess that really won't happen until the finale.
What I appreciate is that in order for this all to happen, Sam/Sinatra did not have to undergo a sudden 180% degree moral turn . Meeting Link and identfying him as her son Dylan had a profound effect on her, but not in the sense that she suddenly saw all she ever did as wrong, but that the existence of an adult Dylan when she had seen her son die as a child proved to her that what she did, up to and including stealing Alex (which as expected by pretty much everyone at this point turned out to be a computer) and ordering Billy to kill Henry to do it, might have been evil but it worked. In order for Dylan to exist in the here and now, Alex must have managed to manipulate time already, and if it could do that, chances were good that it could also save the world from becoming uninhabitable. And Sinatra has never been the kind of villain who put her own life before what she wanted to achieve. Sacrificing herself so that everyone else could live was thus entirely ic.
Mind you, I will miss her, and I do wonder who the very necessary shades of grey ruthless opponent will be next season. Possilby Jane - I missed it when watching and only found out via the first review I located, but her seemingly dead body was shown to be no longer in the shower and apparently she was among the fleeing refugees in the crowd scenes near the end, so she's still alive after all. (Which I'm good with, I found her seeming demise last episode unsatisfactory.) At the very least, it should be interesting to find out what Jane will do when she is really, truly on her own instead of working for Sinatra or before that for her CIA mentor figur. But right now, I think Sinatra's torch as morally ambiguous main opponent will pass not to Jane but to.... Dylan/Link. He was wavering whether to go for Alex or do the heroic thing and try to stop the meltdown and if Geiger hadn't insisted that they needed to try and help first, who knows. Plus as we just found out, Alex was mainly his and not Henry's creation, and he seemed very very sure Alex needed to be destroyed all through the season; I don't think he's going to change his mind easily on this, whether or not he believed Sinatra when she told him who she thinks he is near the end. As Xavier just got set up as the one who will get Alex to the next step.
I also found it interesting that so far, the show avoided the possibility of time travel. It's explicitly said that what Alex does is manipulating time by predictive calculations and putting people into various places. Now, evidently the message on the day of Jane's birth is an indication that Alex at some point must reach the ability to send messages backwards in time (at the very least), because Alex did not yet exist when Jane was born. And evidently what Sinatra is hoping for and sees the existence of an adult Dylan as proof of is that Alex will be able to reach backwards long enough to provent the climate catastrophe from happening the way it did, or at least with different, not world-ending results. But I don't think we will see Terminator style true time travel, even if Alex sounds suspiciously like a benevolent skynet and Alex and Link/Dylan are shown to have created each other. I also suspect that this won't end in a complete reset, i.e. the remaining cast wakes up one morning and the tsunami and stopped atomic war never happened at all, but that Alex will have found a way to ensure the Earth subsequently won't become Venus and thus kill off the remaining humanity and other living species.
If Sinatra had a satisfying exit, I have to say that the whole Nicole Robinson and Jeremy subplot really was something of a waste of Robinson. (Played, btw, by the same actress who played Dani in For all Mankind, which probably explains why Dani isn't in the later show anymore and had an exit last season.) They kept having the same conversation about her and Cal's relationship, and yes, they contributed to the Exodus scenario in the finale, but that wasn't enough pay off for scenes that did not earn more character growth than "Jeremy learns not to be a dick to his father's girlfriend". Otoh, Gabriela might not have killed Jane as she thinks she did, but her taking command in the absence of Sinatra was satisfying to watch and a good follow up from a season of getting more and more pro active. (I liked also her and Sinatra's final goodbye, that mutual acknwoledgment of competence even post breakup did it for me.)
Xavier and Teri showing up and reuniting with their kids was nice, but I stand by what I wrote a few reviews ago - Xavier this season was more of a supporting character, not a main character, and while he achieved his main goal - finding Teri, reuniting his family - and allowed us to see a post apocalyptic humanity that almost feels like it's set up as a complete contrast to what has become a cliche in every post apocalyptic show since the Walking Dead started (yes, there are still some jerks around, but by and large people help each other, are there for each other, when a bunch of men come across a lone woman, she doesn't get raped or molested, she gets supported, and this isn't a Dog-eats-dog world) - his story isn't the one driving the season, nor do his decisions finish it - Sinatra's story does the driving and her decisions, good and bad, allow the finale to happen the way it does.
Season 1 could have stood on its own as a miniseries. Season 2 feels different, though most of the questions it raised have been answered by the time it ends, not least because the sci fi elements have definitely been heightened through the existence of a quantum computer which does its best to manipulate time. I really want a third season now.
Ever since Link/Dylan made that Luke and Vader quip, I had a feeling this was where things were going for Sinatra, though as mentioned last week, I didn't think they'd go there unless this was the series finale, which this wasn't. Surprisingly, I'm still okay with it. Perhaps because this was most definitely Sinatra's season, it brought her arc to a close, and as the Cal-backs this season demonstrated, Dan Fogelsang loves bringing back dead characters not via resurrection but via flashback which works with the structure of the show. So I expect that this isn't the last we've seen of Julianne Nicholson as Sinatra, there will be flashbacks with her next season, though like Cal, she is really, truly dead, having sacrificed herself, Buffy-style, for the world and her nearest and dearest. Or should that be Anakin Skywalker-style? The imploding bunker made for a hell of a funeral pyre, and I half way expected Xavier to see Sinatra's force ghost when he was talking to Link and Annie's baby, though I guess that really won't happen until the finale.
What I appreciate is that in order for this all to happen, Sam/Sinatra did not have to undergo a sudden 180% degree moral turn . Meeting Link and identfying him as her son Dylan had a profound effect on her, but not in the sense that she suddenly saw all she ever did as wrong, but that the existence of an adult Dylan when she had seen her son die as a child proved to her that what she did, up to and including stealing Alex (which as expected by pretty much everyone at this point turned out to be a computer) and ordering Billy to kill Henry to do it, might have been evil but it worked. In order for Dylan to exist in the here and now, Alex must have managed to manipulate time already, and if it could do that, chances were good that it could also save the world from becoming uninhabitable. And Sinatra has never been the kind of villain who put her own life before what she wanted to achieve. Sacrificing herself so that everyone else could live was thus entirely ic.
Mind you, I will miss her, and I do wonder who the very necessary shades of grey ruthless opponent will be next season. Possilby Jane - I missed it when watching and only found out via the first review I located, but her seemingly dead body was shown to be no longer in the shower and apparently she was among the fleeing refugees in the crowd scenes near the end, so she's still alive after all. (Which I'm good with, I found her seeming demise last episode unsatisfactory.) At the very least, it should be interesting to find out what Jane will do when she is really, truly on her own instead of working for Sinatra or before that for her CIA mentor figur. But right now, I think Sinatra's torch as morally ambiguous main opponent will pass not to Jane but to.... Dylan/Link. He was wavering whether to go for Alex or do the heroic thing and try to stop the meltdown and if Geiger hadn't insisted that they needed to try and help first, who knows. Plus as we just found out, Alex was mainly his and not Henry's creation, and he seemed very very sure Alex needed to be destroyed all through the season; I don't think he's going to change his mind easily on this, whether or not he believed Sinatra when she told him who she thinks he is near the end. As Xavier just got set up as the one who will get Alex to the next step.
I also found it interesting that so far, the show avoided the possibility of time travel. It's explicitly said that what Alex does is manipulating time by predictive calculations and putting people into various places. Now, evidently the message on the day of Jane's birth is an indication that Alex at some point must reach the ability to send messages backwards in time (at the very least), because Alex did not yet exist when Jane was born. And evidently what Sinatra is hoping for and sees the existence of an adult Dylan as proof of is that Alex will be able to reach backwards long enough to provent the climate catastrophe from happening the way it did, or at least with different, not world-ending results. But I don't think we will see Terminator style true time travel, even if Alex sounds suspiciously like a benevolent skynet and Alex and Link/Dylan are shown to have created each other. I also suspect that this won't end in a complete reset, i.e. the remaining cast wakes up one morning and the tsunami and stopped atomic war never happened at all, but that Alex will have found a way to ensure the Earth subsequently won't become Venus and thus kill off the remaining humanity and other living species.
If Sinatra had a satisfying exit, I have to say that the whole Nicole Robinson and Jeremy subplot really was something of a waste of Robinson. (Played, btw, by the same actress who played Dani in For all Mankind, which probably explains why Dani isn't in the later show anymore and had an exit last season.) They kept having the same conversation about her and Cal's relationship, and yes, they contributed to the Exodus scenario in the finale, but that wasn't enough pay off for scenes that did not earn more character growth than "Jeremy learns not to be a dick to his father's girlfriend". Otoh, Gabriela might not have killed Jane as she thinks she did, but her taking command in the absence of Sinatra was satisfying to watch and a good follow up from a season of getting more and more pro active. (I liked also her and Sinatra's final goodbye, that mutual acknwoledgment of competence even post breakup did it for me.)
Xavier and Teri showing up and reuniting with their kids was nice, but I stand by what I wrote a few reviews ago - Xavier this season was more of a supporting character, not a main character, and while he achieved his main goal - finding Teri, reuniting his family - and allowed us to see a post apocalyptic humanity that almost feels like it's set up as a complete contrast to what has become a cliche in every post apocalyptic show since the Walking Dead started (yes, there are still some jerks around, but by and large people help each other, are there for each other, when a bunch of men come across a lone woman, she doesn't get raped or molested, she gets supported, and this isn't a Dog-eats-dog world) - his story isn't the one driving the season, nor do his decisions finish it - Sinatra's story does the driving and her decisions, good and bad, allow the finale to happen the way it does.
Season 1 could have stood on its own as a miniseries. Season 2 feels different, though most of the questions it raised have been answered by the time it ends, not least because the sci fi elements have definitely been heightened through the existence of a quantum computer which does its best to manipulate time. I really want a third season now.
