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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
41
Mixed:
15
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
The PlaylistFeb 20, 2026
Season 2 Review:
Seeing the dichotomy between Collins in flashback, once a stoic agent at the President’s side, and the weary, hardened, determined Collins of the present, see Sterling K. Brown at his absolute best. In every scene she inhabits, Woodley owns the screen, and the fear Collins feels of her moving him aside once he enters her ecosystem is immediately quelled as the two balance each other beautifully.
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Season 2 Review:
Season 2 doesn't pick up where we left off. In fact, it begins somewhere else entirely, reminding us that at the core of creator Dan Fogelman's exquisite and eerily timely sci-fi drama are the people desperately trying to cling to their humanity in unprecedented times.
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The PlaylistJan 24, 2025
Season 1 Review:
In sticking with what makes a good show great, it’s these moments that outpace the shortcomings and make “Paradise” something worth sticking with to see what other tricks it hides up its sleeve, and with nary an actor to be found delivering anything less than their absolute best, there’s more than enough here for audiences to wish for what some might consider their own form of paradise: a second season.
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Season 2 Review:
Thanks to showrunner Dan Fogelman going back to his emotionally grounded This Is Us roots, an eminently watchable performance by star Sterling K. Brown, as well as great performances by Julianne Nicholson, James Marsden, and new stars Shailene Woodley and Thomas Doherty, this may not be TV paradise, but it's still thrilling pulp fun.
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The TimesFeb 20, 2026
Season 1 Review:
It is frequently silly, weighed down by both its own hyperseriousness and its constant reliance on needle drops of Gen-X anthems. .... Somehow, though, Paradise is often more fun than most of the other bunker shows. It’s big and broad, with snappy pacing, continually shifting goalposts, and an innate sense that if it doesn’t keep offering up new surprises, it will instantly lose the audience’s attention.
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Season 1 Review:
The actors are very fine. .... But making sense is not a hill that such shows ever care to die on. .... The greater purpose of the show, naturally — and one it largely fulfills — is to guide you from revelation to revelation, keeping you off-balance with ethical hypotheticals and narrative zigzags, so you never know just where things are headed. Apart from a second season.
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The TimesJan 28, 2025
Season 1 Review:
As the eight-episode season goes on, “Paradise” has no choice other than to up the stakes and urgency. Critics were not provided with the finale, but headed into that last chapter, the series has acquired enough narrative momentum to propel this viewer’s interest through the conclusion and into a presumed second season.
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Season 1 Review:
“Paradise” marries the genres in a fairly satisfying way. Most of the qualities that add up to bingeable — good acting, interesting characters, suspenseful plotting, tone (overserious, considering the show’s fundamental absurdity, but right for dramatic impact) and world-building (metaphorically astute, at least) — are here in addictive doses.
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Season 1 Review:
Let’s just say timeline-jumping isn’t the only storytelling method Fogelman borrowed from his most successful series. It certainly sets up some intriguing possibilities, but let’s hope that it’s not the main driver of the story Fogleman and company want to tell. They’ve done a good job of setting up the personal relationships at the center of Paradise, as well as the timeline, and that’s where they should concentrate things.
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IndieWireJan 28, 2025
Season 1 Review:
“Paradise” isn’t a brilliant brainteaser or a mind-blowing science-fiction story — far from it — but Fogelman’s latest serialized endeavor is a sturdy combination on a number of levels: It’s a satisfying mystery (most of the time) and a moving melodrama (some of the time). It’s absurd in its galaxy-brained plotting and searingly intimate when it dials in on its characters.
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Season 1 Review:
While the penultimate episode doesn’t make up for all the series’ shortcomings, it confirmed that Fogelman has an intriguing story to tell — one that probably didn’t need to contort itself with so many narrative gymnastics. Twists can be fun, but sometimes simplicity is heaven.
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Season 1 Review:
Fundamentally, “Paradise” falls into the narrative rut that befalls most sci-fi shows predicated on a populace existing long-term somewhere else, where the powerful have a vested interest in maintaining lies and manipulating perceptions. There are only so many ways to tell that story, but I give “Paradise” credit for finding a unique way into it.
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Season 1 Review:
"Paradise" is what TV executives used to call "high concept," except that any Fogelman show (or movie, like "Crazy, Stupid, Love") usually gets around to what he's really interested in — human relationships, romantic entanglements, tragic loss. There's a lot going on in "Paradise," but if this big swing of a series connects — a medium-size if — it'll be for that reason.
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TV Guide MagazineFeb 12, 2025
Season 1 Review:
While Paradise is intriguing, you could get whiplash as the show veers from poignant meditation on end-of-the-world loss to harrowing action sequences and contrived cliffhangers. It's a lot, but could be more. [10 Feb - 2 Mar 2025, p.4]
Season 1 Review:
[Brown] gives gravity to material that can at times be thin and/or overly familiar. Marsden, Nicholson, Shahi, McRaney (another This Is Us alum) and others all have strong moments at different points, in either the past or the present. But the stories themselves are on the bland and predictable side, whether as individual pieces or combined together across these multiple genres. The one exception is the seventh and final episode critics were given in advance, which is set primarily on the day the world as we know it came to an end, showing all of the impossible, at times monstrous, decisions that Cal, Xavier, and others had to make.
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Season 1 Review:
On a scene-to-scene basis, the series can be gripping. But the disconnect between its lofty themes and the shallowness of its characters and world-building undermines its grand ambitions. What might have been an insightful commentary on the fate of the human race becomes merely big, twisty, and in some cases extremely silly entertainment.
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RogerEbert.comFeb 20, 2026
Season 2 Review:
The things that grate remain (Really, we’re going to end a climactic showdown at the bunker’s gates with a self-serious rendition of “The Final Countdown”?), but the new characters we get just aren’t compelling enough to wallpaper over the fact we’ve lost, or neutered, the old characters we loved last time around. There are a few pulpy delights here and there, but this particular apocalypse moves a bit too slowly for my taste.
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