The Season 2 finale of Hulu‘s Paradise, “Exodus,” is here. And while we’ve got a full-on Paradise Season 2 ending explained to delve into the big questions, there’s one huge dangling one left over: is Dylan Sinatra’s son in Paradise?
Great question, and to delve immediately into spoilers for Paradise Season 2: we don’t know, not exactly. Or rather, some characters are very sure that Link (Thomas Doherty), aka Dylan is the somehow alive son of Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson). Specifically, Sinatra becomes convinced that Link is her son thanks to the machinations of Alex, an AI who is able to send messages through time and predict the future (it’s a whole other thing) and is causing anomalies that themselves cause visions of the future and nosebleeds.
Look, this is all very complex, but I’m going to be clear with you: anyone who says “Link is definitely Dylan” is wrong only in their certainty, because the show itself doesn’t 100% explicitly confirm it by the end of the Season 2 finale. However, let’s dive further into the evidence for and against Link being Dylan, now that Season 2 has been sent back to the nut cheese factory.
Yes, Link Is Dylan, Sinatra’s Son On Paradise Season 2
To recap briefly, in Season 1 we learned that Sinatra had a son named Dylan who died at a young age of some unspecified disease. Inspired by his dream to go to heaven where there are horses (look, I don’t write the show) she hooked into a plan to save the world from environmental disaster by building a bunker called Paradise in his honor. And then in Season 2 we discovered that wasn’t her real plan; she also bought/stole a device called Alex from a scientist named Henry Miller (Patrick Fischler).
In the finale, we discovered that Miller was merely the face of the company; Alex was created mostly by Link, aka Dylan, a genius kid who was auditing classes taught by Henry. They did, and thanks to unlimited funding started to build Alex; but thanks to time travel rules it was already sending messages back in time and causing anomalies, like things happening twice, or weird coincidences. Henry backed off from building Alex because it was too dangerous, so Sinatra hired a contract killer to murder Henry and take his company. But after seeing a strange coincidence happen, the killer left Link/Dylan alive. To be clear: Sinatra met Henry; she never met Link, up to this point.
Years later, after the ostensible end of the world, Link tracked down Alex to the Paradise bunker and was planning to “kill” it as it was considered too dangerous to exist… But Sinatra had hid Alex 100 miles away under the Denver airport. We don’t find that out until later, but we do get to see Link get called Dylan in front of Sinatra. She asks his birthday – May 16 – which is the same as her Dylan.
That’s enough to convince Sinatra that Link is her Dylan, and though a scientist she’s working with is doubtful an anomaly would be a whole person, she’s convinced. She even tells both Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) and Link about it… And it’s enough to convince her that her Alex project has already been successful in saving the world (again it’s a whole time travel thing), and motivates her to sacrifice her life to save everyone. The last we see Sinatra she’s essentially headed to Heaven herself, picturing her younger Dylan joining her and walking off into the distance as the Paradise bunker explodes.
That was the brief recap, by the way. If we buy that Sinatra is correct then yes, Link is her son Dylan, somehow alive and unaware of his connection to Sinatra. Adding to the evidence, the show has been dropping Star Wars references about Link being Luke to her Darth Vader, and — spoilers for Star Wars — Vader is secretly Luke’s father, and sacrifices himself, redeeming himself, to save his son.
How would this work? We don’t have all the time travel rules on the show yet, but there’s clearly something going on with Link and Xavier, who keep having flashes of the future and nosebleeds, which indicates some connection to Alex messing with time. So for the sake of argument, Alex (at some point in the future) made enough changes so there is a dead Dylan and an alive Dylan (aka Link) in the timeline at the same time. At least until Dead Dylan is dead, while Alive Dylan continues to live on.
If we accept that, and what Sinatra says is true, then yes: Link, aka Dylan, is Sinatra’s son. And we’ll likely explore that a lot more in Season 3.
No, Link Is Not Dylan, Sinatra’s Son On Paradise Season 2
Alternately: Link doesn’t seem convinced. He very easily accepts that he is the father of Annie’s (Shailene Woodley) baby based on Xavier showing him his own student ID, which the latter got from Annie. But when Sinatra says that Link is her son Dylan, he doesn’t respond. And the way Doherty plays it seems dubious.
It’s entirely possible that the show is saving an emotional reveal for Season 3, and once Xavier and Link get to Alex, the AI will be like “yep, Sinatra is def your mommy.” But there’s a more likely possibility here: that’s what Alex needed Sinatra to think.
Everything we’ve seen on the show so far has indicated we’re dealing with a sort of time loop… Things are happening because Alex from the future is tweaking things in the past. That’s exactly what happens with psycho Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom), who becomes a crazy person in Sinatra’s employ because messages are being sent to the past that lead her down this path; it happened that way because it always happened that way.
This is pure speculation, but what if Alex essentially created itself by sending a smart kid named Dylan who was born on May 16 messages that led him to build… Alex. And the Alex AI did that because it knew getting a Dylan who was born on May 16 in the right place at the right time would lead Sinatra to sacrifice herself, as well as give Xavier a code card — created by Alex — which Xavier needs to bring to Alex in Season 3?
In fact, Xavier and Link having linked nosebleeds make a lot more sense when you throw out the idea that they’re both with Alex at the end of things in — presumably — the Season 3 finale. They help Alex reboot the whole universe, leading to a world where the super-volcano never exploded, leading to those whole situation in the first place. And in this scenario, Link is not Dylan, Sinatra’s son; he’s just a smart guy who Alex needed to be in the right place at the right time.
Granted, a lot of this is based on A) the show leaving things very much open and unexplained at the end of Season 2, and B) a general knowledge of how time travel sometimes works in fiction. But Paradise is never afraid of being definitive and bluntly hitting us over the head with answers. When it comes to the Dylan/Link mystery they’ve been weirdly cagey, which certainly tells me that we don’t have all the answers yet… Right now, Sinatra is definite that Link is her son Dylan. Me? Not so much.
And backing that up is a quote showrunner Dan Fogelman gave to the LA Times. After definitively answering the question about Sinatra being dead (she is) and being vague about Jane being dead, he also gave an extremely vague answer about Dylan/Link.
“She certainly thinks so,” Fogelman teased. “That is what we’re intending the audience to feel. Even if you don’t trust her motivations when she’s saying something or completely comprehend it, it seems true. Is he her son is a tricky question because of where we’re going on a science fiction level. But, yes, we’re meant to believe that he is her son. Or a version thereof.”
To break down how interview answers work: he’s being vague because there are more reveals to come… And frankly, that reveal is likely that no, Link is not Dylan, Sinatra’s son.
Link Is A Secret Third Thing?
Hey, maybe there’s something else going on, like… Link is Sinatra in some sort of Fionna and Cake multiverse style twist? But we won’t know until Paradise‘s third and final season premieres, likely in February or March of 2027 (TBA). As is, choose your favorite theory and run with it.
This article has been updated to include Fogelman’s answer about Dylan.
Paradise Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Paradise premiere Mondays at 12 am ET / Sundays at 9 pm PT on Hulu. The season will premiere with three episodes on February 23, followed by one episode a week until the Season 2 finale.
Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in Paradise Season 2, with premiere dates.
- Monday, February 23, 2026: Paradise, Season 2, Episode 1, “Graceland”
- Monday, February 23, 2026: Paradise, Season 2, Episode 2, “Mayday”
- Monday, February 23, 2026: Paradise, Season 2, Episode 3, “Another Day In Paradise”
- Monday, March 2, 2026: Paradise, Season 2, Episode 4, “A Holy Charge”
- Monday, March 9, 2026: Paradise, Season 2, Episode 5, “The Mailman”
- Monday, March 16, 2026: Paradise, Season 2, Episode 6, “Jane”
- Monday, March 23, 2026: Paradise, Season 2, Episode 7, “The Final Countdown”
- Monday, March 30, 2026: Paradise, Season 2, Episode 8, “Exodus” *Season Finale*
Where To Watch Paradise Season 2
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