Thomas doherty strips paradise’s final twist bare: ‘i’m as lost as reddit’
Thomas Doherty is laughing, but it’s the kind of laugh you let out when the parachute doesn’t open. “I surrender to the writing and hold on to a very rudimentary understanding of what’s going on,” he admits, Zoom pixels wobbling over a hotel room in Los Angeles. The 30-year-old Scot just finished filming the sophomore finale of Paradise, Hulu’s post-nuclear mind-bender, and he still can’t decide whether his character is savior, Trojan horse, or simply Julianne Nicholson’s long-lost uterine souvenir.
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Viewers met him as Link, a Zelda-obsessed courier with a lopsided grin and a backpack full of plutonium ethics. Then the mask slipped: Dylan—possible heir to Sinatra’s subterranean empire, possible casualty of a covert genetics program code-named Alex. Doherty shrugs when asked if Dylan even owns a Nintendo. “I play FIFA and Fortnite. No rupees, mate.” He landed the part on a Friday, moved coasts on Monday, and by the following week was spitting technobabble opposite Sterling K. Brown while pretending to understand quantum entanglement. “Me and Julianne would sit in the green room trying to diagram the plot with coffee stirrers. We gave up and just learned the lines.”
The finale left Dylan cradling an infant he named Annie—a loaded tribute to Shailene Woodley’s doomsday doc, the woman who once tried to save the world and instead saved him. Fans immediately clocked the symmetry: Annie the elder died so the planet might live; Annie the infant arrives just as the planet finishes flat-lining. “Trauma bonding or epic love? I vote both,” Doherty says. “In the pre-apocalypse they’d probably swipe right, argue about recycling, and still end up in the same bed.”
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The writers’ room has promised him “lethargy and regret” when production resumes. Dylan never secured the Alex supercomputer, never got maternal closure, and—cruelest cut—never shook the nosebleed visions he shares with Xavier. Doherty leans forward: “He’s a guy who believed in happy endings and now realises he’s in the wrong genre. Season 3 is penance.” The actor himself isn’t faring much better. He’s already fielding DMs from theorists who insist Dylan is a clone, a Christ figure, or a walking Chekhov’s plutonium rod. “I love the enthusiasm, but the writers haven’t even told me if Sinatra is Mum. I read Reddit the same hour you do.”
Meanwhile, Daisy—the goldendoodle who doubles as his real-world apocalypse plan—snores on the bed behind him. “If the grid fails, I’m not heading to a billionaire bunker. I’m grabbing Daisy, a crate of protein bars, and hitchhiking to Edinburgh. Fresh air beats filtration systems.”
Fatherhood, fictional or not, has rewired him. He caught himself crying in playback when Dylan meets baby Annie. “I never cry at my own stuff. That day I did. Maybe because the show finally handed Dylan the one thing he never strategised for: hope dressed as an infant.”
He won’t spoil the final lap, but he volunteers one certainty: “Dan Fogelman doesn’t do tidy. If you want comfort, buy a weighted blanket. If you want catharsis, stay tuned.” The call ends and he’s gone—off to learn lines that will, in typical Paradise fashion, answer three questions and birth five more. Somewhere, Daisy yawns, blissfully unaware she’s the only contingency plan Hollywood can’t rewrite.