Who is Alex on 'Paradise'? Writer John Hoberg Breaks Down the Shocking Season 2 Finale Twist (Exclusive) ...Saudi Arabia

As Paradise closed out its second season, it delivered the answer to perhaps the biggest question of Season 2: Who is Alex?

It turns out the mysterious Alex is actually a quantum computer housed in a second bunker in Colorado. It was named after the wife of Henry Miller, the professor who worked on the computer with Dylan/Link (Thomas Doherty) and was killed by a hit man hired by Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) after he refused to sell his company.

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While the identity of Alex was finally revealed in Episode 8, several questions remain unanswered: Is Dylan a.k.a. Link actually Samantha's son? Is Jane really dead? Why is Xavier having visions of Link? And what is up with those bloody noses?

Despite lingering questions, it was an explosive finale that saw the destruction of the bunker and the death of one of the show's main characters, Samantha, who, before going down with the ship, told Xavier "X" Collins (Sterling K. Brown) to find Alex, follow its instructions, and save the world.

If you were to ask Paradise writer and executive producer John Hoberg what might have been the most surprising part of the finale for fans, he'd say, “I think it depends. Are you sniffing around in quantum stuff before this episode?" 

"At the end of Episode 7, you're like, what is this we're about to reveal? I think that's gonna be surprising," Hoberg told Parade in an exclusive interview the week before the finale. "I think Jane getting killed is going to really surprise people."

"To me, that I think is going to be really surprising," he added. "And the fact that the bunker actually goes down."

While Hoberg asserted that everything will be answered by the end of Season 3, he spoke exclusively with Parade about some of Season 2's biggest questions, as well as why they went the direction they did with Alex...

Disney/Ser Baffo

With the bunker gone, how does that change the world of Paradise moving forward?This show has been in a weird way, it has been like a new pilot for Season 2 and a pilot for a new show in Season 3. So much has to change with each one. If you think about it, that's what we're doing. We've left everybody outside of this bunker. Xavier's been given this mission from Sinatra that he may or may not think is insane and may or may not want to do. And we're picking up from there with all these sort of unfinished storylines, but a brand new world.

Do you think losing the bunker makes it more dangerous now for these characters who have been hunkered down there for all these years?  Some of them, like the people that arrived with Teri and Xavier have been out in the world,. But yeah, a lot of these people who've been in the bunker are going to be faced with a brand new reality. And so I think there's dangers, there's opportunities for these "cancer cowboys" [who] want to build a new world. It's kind of a big, wide open place for everybody.

Related: Paradise star James Marsden Reveals the Musical Legend He’s ‘Always Wanted’ To Play (Exclusive)

I think fans are going to be so happy to learn who Alex finally is in the finale. What led you guys to take the story in that direction, leaning into AI/the computer?We have this saying in the writers' room and we call it "Martini's Law," just randomly, but it's sort of this thought that we want this to, like Season 2, to end where you have a way to explain what happened as Sinatra might just be so desperate to connect with her child again, that she's believing something that can't possibly be true, or you can believe she's right, and this is true, and there is a computer, an AI, trying to use quantum physics to manipulate time. That's kind of important to us. You could watch that two ways and say, "Okay, I'm a believer," or "I also am skeptical." So that's one of the things.It really came out of talking about Sinatra, and if you have unlimited resources, and you are trying to figure out how to save the planet. She's trying to figure out how to save humanity from the beginning, but deep down inside, she's also desperately mourning that her child is gone. And so it just kind of naturally started to come out that it's like, well, if she had this conversation with that Dr. Louge, who said the one thing you billionaires can't buy is time, what she initially, in my mind did is, I need to find the fastest computer because I don't have enough time, so I need the fastest computer in the world to solve this issue, so that the volcano, we can somehow help with climate change and then stop this volcano from erupting. And then this unexpected thing happened, when she hired people and gave them unlimited money, and they added this AI, and suddenly it started thinking different.And so it started thinking differently than a human would, and it approached it in a way of, like, wait a minute, this might try to solve it by using quantum theories to deal with time and where the professor is like, this is too dangerous, I'm betting Sinatra was like, "Oh my God," like if there was even a hint of maybe things could be changed, and what if you heard like a child that you lost, you might be able to see them again in some way. It would be too tempting for her not to just throw all the resources into it. And so that's where we started talking about it. And then I went out with my co-writer in 208 Seena, and we spent hours at the quantum lab at Caltech [California Institute of Technology], talking to the head of quantum physics there about this theory and what we were doing. He's a consultant on the show, and we worked out what the actual quantum theory is right now about how time works.

I was thinking that as I was watching the episode. I know it started off with Samantha wanting to solve the climate crisis, but at a certain point, I was like, "Could this have something to do with her son? Because, if I recall, in Episode 7, Samantha even tells her husband, "It worked," or something to that effect.Yeah.

Disney/Ser Baffo

So maybe this does have something to do with her son. And could Link actually be Dylan? Could Dylan actually be her son?It's one of my favorite scenes in the finale, when she's in the elevator with Xavier, and she basically says, "I think I saw my son today." And then he's just kind of looking at her, like, "What happened while I was gone?" And she said, "Or I'm just possibly, it's just, I'm finally dealing with my grief." And I think that's up to you to decide a little bit, because it's a really interesting idea.

Will we find out next season?I will say this, we, from the beginning, made a pact, Dan [Fogelman] and I, that this show would not become frustrating because we didn't answer the big questions. And for two seasons, we've done that. We posed a big question and then answered, and so we will not leave people hanging.

You mentioned you went to Caltechwhen you were writing the Season 2 finale. Did you guys always know who Alex was going to be or that it would be part of the show since Season 1? Or is this something that happened when you guys went back into the writers' room for Season 2?So we had an inkling that we wanted to, in order to get to where we're going in the third season, when you see that, you'll realize, "Okay, we had an inkling that's what we wanted to do." And just kind of like any sketched out roadmap, it's like turns kind of start happening just because as you're getting into it, but there was this concept from the beginning. And if you go back and look, the entire show, in some ways, is based on time. We're always flashing back and looking at people's different times their lives. And so time is there. There's a whole thing about unlimited time before this volcano explodes. And so we were kind of trying to weave it in a lot. And then, in the first season, it's shot through a glass prism. ut when things started happening that altered what was going on, you could sort of see like a flare in the frame. And in Season 2, we started increasing that with then the bloody noses. So I think if you look backwards, you'll find some little, little hints. And some of the idea was, "Let's take our time getting there and try to earn sort of this shift as the show evolved."

You brought up the bloody noses. Will we get an explanation as to why Xavier, Samantha and Link had those bloody noses?We'll get answers. Having just broken out the eighth episode, I feel like it will be a very satisfying third season.

Jane's body was noticeably missing in the final moments of the finale. I'm assuming we haven't seen the last of Jane?I would. I mean, she was stabbed pretty badly. [Laughs.] I'm curious, what do you think?

I feel like somehow she's connected to Alex. Because before her birth, there was that message that was sent from Alex to that man, which said, "She can be stopped when it matters." So when does it matter? We have a whole third season to go.Unless it mattered because Gabby needed to be alive. I don't know. Or maybe that's not why. Maybe that's what mattered. Or maybe it's something else that mattered, or maybe that was what mattered. I'm very bad at this because I'm terrified of speaking about anything. [Laughs.]

In the end, Samantha tells Xavier that Alex can stop all of this, and already has stopped all of this. I'm wondering, without giving spoilers, can you explain what exactly Alex has already stopped? Why does Xavier need to follow the instructions, go there and save the world?Xavier has the information we have. And Season 3, he's going to have to figure out what to do, if anything, and what that actually means...Does that sound evasive? [Laughs.]

We've seen Xavier, throughout the season, is having these memories of Link. So obviously, there's a connection between the two of them. Is Alex at the root of all this?You have to track the coincidences and what people were talking about. Even the professor right before Billy shot him, said, "Do you believe things happen for a reason, or is it a coincidence?" And in a lot of ways, that's a theme that we're trying to ask people is, "Do you believe in coincidences, or do things just randomly happen?" And a lot of the things that were coincidental all seem to be circling around the professor [who] was working on Alex, seem to be circling around Alex.

I almost wondered at a certain point, could Alex have been behind the climate crisis? Was she the one that started it all?Maybe. I don't know. It's a cool idea, though.

Disney/Ser Baffo

Were there any alternative endings that you guys considered before settling on the one we saw this season?I think one definitely we dealt with, it was really hard to have Julianne go down with the mountain because she's so special. I mean, the good news in a Fogelman show is characters who die are never really dead in a lot of ways, because you have flashbacks and you see them in different times and things like that. That was a hard one. But we realized that's where her character would naturally go. She would feel like, if she's right, she's done her job, and she can now let everything go. Because in that moment, I think it's clear in the show, but you can't press the button to close the doors and get to the doors in time. So somebody was going to have to stay behind, and it made sense for her to stay behind, and it emotionally made sense for her to stay behind. So that was one of the things that we really debated about.We knew that bunker was going to go down like early on. We knew that the bunker was going to be destroyed back in those early meetings I was talking about with Dan and Scott and Jess. And we knew Xavier was going to be out in the world and that he was going to look for Teri. There was a lot of debate about when we would find Teri, and under what exact circumstances, but we knew we wanted that, with a collection of people to be coming back for the bunker, and then something about that collision was going to cause it to be destroyed. So a lot of little things changed. And, you know, you debate every little corner when you're talking about this. And the writers are so smart on this show and so you've got 10 really smart ideas about how to get there in those big, bold strokes. So we definitely went down a hundred roads on the details, but the big overarching idea was always there.

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I felt like Samantha kind of redeemed herself in the end. It was a redeeming arc.This show, to me — and Dan might have a different feeling about it. But to me, this is a show so much about grieving and loss and how people grieve. Everybody lost somebody who's down in that bunker. But we started on Xavier laying in bed and looking over. And we thought he had lost his wife, and he thought he lost his wife. And then we find out, "Oh Sinatra is also dealing with a loss that she's not getting over, but she put those horses down in the bunker." And in one version of the show, we were thinking the town was based on a place that she used to visit with her family back when her son was alive. So she's someone who was not making peace about her son being gone. We cut that for time and clarity.And in my mind, she needed to do that to find peace. And she even told Gabby in Season 1, "I don't need to make peace with this. I just need to be able to function." And it's part of what she had to get over. And so I feel like she completed her arc. I found it redeeming for her, because it's like, "Okay, now I kind of understand all the things she was doing." It wasn't just to be evil. It was sort of a version of one of those morality things where, if someone you love is tied to a train track, you could divert the train, but then a whole trainload of people would die. Or you can let it hit the person you love. What would you do? And in some ways, Sinatra is seeing that to save the world, to save the whole, some people had to be sacrificed. So I don't know if it redeems everything she did, but it helps you understand why she did what she did. It wasn't just malice ever.

Related: ‘Paradise’ Unleashes Its Most Disturbing Twist Yet: Jane’s Chilling Origin

Were there any writing challenges this season? Yeah. One of the great things as a writer working with Dan, is he's true to character always. To try to make something happen, he'll never make a character do something they wouldn't, and so in some ways, that makes writing it clear. Not necessarily easy, but clear, because you know you need to be true to what a particular character would do in a situation, and sometimes they don't want to do what you need them to do. So that's where it gets tricky, where it's like, okay, well, we clearly haven't found the right series of events to cause someone to do what we're hoping they'll get to do. And sometimes you're just like, "Nope, it can't be done."

Disney/Gilles Mingasson

I loved getting to see the POVs of people who were outside the bunker, like Annie's story, with her at Graceland, and Gary and Teri at the post office. It was really cool to see what was going on outside of the bunker.I feel like we all just, you know, being alive in our current time, we're witnessing things we just didn't think would happen all the time. And a lot of that's just we have cell phones everywhere, so there's cameras everywhere, and so we can all relate. My wife and I just watched something about that terrible tsunami that hit Japan. And we were remembering that we came home from dinner and turned it on CNN just randomly, and it was live footage of that happening, and just how like we were just watching what happened on the news while it's affecting your world. And I think that's why we can all relate. And I think that's why it's almost endlessly fascinating to see people experience that day and how you survived it. 

John, congratulations to all of you. This season was amazing. I feel like everyone I talk to, they're obsessed with Paradise.It's funny. Season 1, I was blown away by how many [people reached out]. I was getting emails from high school friends I hadn't talked to. And I feel like this season, it's even stepped up more. It feels like we keep kind of landing on the way people are feeling about things. I don't mean politically at all, I just mean the feeling like things are out of control in the world. We keep kind of landing on stuff that I think it's really resonating with people because of that.And none of that is like, "Ooh, what do we think in a year is really going to relate to what people are going through?" It's more just where everybody else is playing around with, "Okay, what's the worst case scenario of some of the world's situations, and let's just keep rolling with it. What's the worst-case scenario if a giant volcano erupted? Let's go with that." Because I think a lot of people are trying to deal with anxiety in the world. And another reason I think people are responding to it is when you do that, and you have an ending to it, it almost is comforting, even though it's anxiety-provoking. Bbecause at least in a show, you get some sense of closure and some sense of it all happened for a reason.

Yeah, and you're saying that again, so I can't wait to see the reason for why everything unfolded.[Laughs.] I tried to sneak that in one more time.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Related: 'Paradise' Renewed for Season 3 on Hulu — But Is This the End?

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