Reviewed by Alicia Glass
After sweeping a whole bunch of awards, recognitions and embracing a legion of fans with the mysterious, explosive, murder-and-drama-filled first season of Hulu’s Paradise, SD Comic-Con 2025 welcomed creator and executive producer Dan Fogelman and of course the star and also executive producer Sterling K. Brown to talk about the upcoming Season 2!
Brown is by now well-known and beloved for his role as Randall in This Is Us, and has lent his voice to a whole bunch of cartoon shows, including Invincible, Solar Opposites, Interrupting Chicken, Big Mouth and even episodes of Robot Chicken, and the man has swept awards like an Emmy, Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award, SAG award, and more for a whole bunch of his other roles, both big screen and small. The man is incredibly talented, but also, down-to-earth and quite funny, and very uplifting and complimentary of his co-stars, as we saw when a newcomer to the world of Paradise was brought out on stage!
Of course before that we had to talk at least a little bit about the other projects Brown has going on right now, including the ambitious adventure series Washington Black, also from Hulu, and his starring in the live-action adaptation of the beloved anime series Voltron, in which Brown confirmed yes he is playing a character from the original IP, but could not tell us which character as yet. In theory, the live-action Voltron will come out sometime mid-to-late 2026!
We the audience were treated to a brief video introduction of a new character, a survivor of the Extinction Level Event from Season 1 with connections to Agent Xavier Collins, played by Shailene Woodley, of the Divergent film series. Shailene plays Annie, a tour guide at Elvis Presleys Graceland, of all things, who in the clip manages to get herself and a co-worker down to a bunker below the surface just as the ELE comes roaring in! And after that goodly amount of vibrating bass in the clip and the audience reaction to it, nothing would do but to bring Shailene Woodley out on stage in person!
Brown teased that indeed, in this new season, we will see at least some pockets of people who didn’t make it into Paradise the underground, survivors who had the wherewithal to figure out a plan, who didn’t have access to major resources but were able to put to good use stuff in their immediate vicinity, like our newcomer Annie.
Woodley talked about bringing her own reactions and experience to the character of Annie, figuring what she herself would do in the world of Paradise amid such situations. “What would my mother, my cousin, what would I do in such situations, people in my life that I could relate to different characteristics that Annie had, that was what I pulled from because it was the only resource I had (when we began filming).”
The epic soundtrack played a huge part of Season 1, and of course was asked about for Season 2. Due to the whole introduction of Woodley as Annie in Graceland and y’know, copyright and monetary issues, there will be lots of covers of Elvis songs used in the show. Brown laughingly mentioned a lot of old white-men music from the 80’s too.
Paradise Season 2 will hopefully, fingers crossed everyone, return to us in early 2026!