Before you read this editorial there are spoilers from episode 7 “The Final Countdown” of Hulu’s Paradise.
If you watched the final moments of episode 7, you already know that feeling. Jaw dropped, remote frozen in your hand, brain spinning. Sinatra slips on her lab coat, glances upward, and her face is bathed in a warm, amber-orange glow. Then, quietly, she says two words, “Hi, Alex,” and the screen cuts to black.
That’s it. That’s where they leave us.
So who, or what, is Alex?
The show has been teasing this mystery since the very first episode of Season 2, but that final scene may have given us more than the writers intended. Look at the details. Sinatra isn’t looking across a room at someone. She’s looking up. The light that washes over her face isn’t the warm, natural glow of a lamp or a window. It’s that specific, unmistakable amber tone of a screen in a dark room and she’s not greeting a person, Sinatra is addressing a machine. The conclusion, at least from this scene, feels difficult to argue with. Alex is a computer program. Some form of artificial intelligence, or at the very least, a highly sophisticated piece of technology.
Here’s where the theory deepens. Earlier in the season, Henry Miller, a character with clear ties to the origins of Paradise itself, made a notable reference to his wife. Her name? Alex. Now, Sinatra, who is decidedly not a tech person by her own nature, somehow finds herself in ownership or possession of this technology. And in episode 3, “Another Day In Paradise” we find out how and why Sinatra obtain ownership over that technology.
One compelling theory circulating among fans is that “Alex” is a project named in honor of Miller’s wife, built around her name. It would be a classic science fiction move in the fact that this cold, powerful machine has an achingly human name.
What does Alex do, exactly? That’s the question that opens up the floodgates.
Two major possibilities are on the table. The first is time travel, a concept the show has been flirting with in its narrative architecture all season. The second is parallel universes, which would reframe nearly everything we’ve watched unfold and explain some of the more disorienting choices the writers have made with continuity and character.
Then there are the nosebleeds. They’ve appeared enough times now to mean something, and the leading explanation points to radiation, the kind of side effect you’d expect from prolonged exposure to a powerful, experimental piece of technology. If Alex is a machine capable of bending time or crossing dimensional lines, the human body paying a physical price for proximity to it makes a great deal of narrative sense. Episode 7 has also pulled Link, and Sinatra into the Alex orbit in ways that suggest a much larger reveal is coming. There are threads connecting her, Link, and whatever Alex represents that the show hasn’t fully pulled yet. The pieces are slowly moving into place.
The hope is that episode 8 begins to deliver the answers episode 7 so deliberately withheld. Whether Alex is an AI, a time machine, a portal to somewhere else entirely, or some hybrid of all three, one thing is clear. Paradise has been building to this moment from the start. Sinatra has swung the door wide open as she looks up and greets Alex.
We just have to wait and see what’s on the other side.
Paradise is now streaming on Hulu.
