WARNING: INCOMING SPOILERS!
The premiere episode of the new series “Paradise” — now streaming on Hulu — closes with Sterling K. Brown’s Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins running through the sun-dappled streets of an idyllic American community as we hear a cover of Phil Collins’ 1989 hit “Another Day in Paradise”:
Oh, think twice
Cause it’s another day for you and me in paradise
Oh, think twice
It’s just another day for you and me in paradise …
We begin to notice something is amiss. A man stands in a pond that’s about 4 inches deep, making repairs to a mechanical duck. Everyone is paying for goods and services with the same type of electronic wristband. A street corner sign is updated to say, “SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE: DAWN DELAYED BY TWO HOURS.”
Wait, what?
Xavier looks to the bright and shining sun, and the camera travels up, up, up, up … until it is revealed the town is encased in a dome, and the “sun” is a gigantic artificial light, and the entire community is nestled within the mountains of Colorado.
Welcome to the latest entry in the Underground Bunker genre.
This isn’t the first time “Paradise” creator Dan Fogelman has ended a premiere episode of a series with a stunning twist. The opening chapter of the beloved family drama “This is Us” (which also starred Sterling K. Brown) concluded with a massive reveal, as did the lesser-known “Pitch.” With “Paradise,” we learn that a time-hopping political conspiracy thriller is also a post-apocalyptic sci-fi cliffhanger.
In the (sur)real world and these most uncertain times (one has to wonder if humankind every truly lived in “certain times”), we see stories about super-wealthy individuals planning and building underground lairs that make the Bat Cave sound like a studio apartment. (Some of these spaces are intended for lengthy, post-apocalyptic stays; others are more like safe houses or rooms.)
As CNN reported last year, Mark Zuckerberg’s Hawaii compound will include a “5,000 square foot underground shelter with living space, a plant and mechanical room to keep the bunker operational, and an escape hatch,” while Bill Gates “reportedly has bunkers under all of his many homes.” Some compounds even come with skylights that can mimic the passing of time, sunrise and sunsets, weather patterns, etc., almost like the “Truman Show”-esque community in the fictional “Paradise.”
Still, entire underground communities exist only in fiction — AS FAR AS WE KNOW, AM I RIGHT? Seeing as how 99.99999% of us won’t be building any luxury bunkers IRL anytime soon, we love to escape into the world-building of these series and films. Just some examples:
‘Fallout’ (premiered in 2024)
This gruesomely entertaining Prime Video series is set after the Great War of 2077, when survivors took refuge in a series of numbered, underground, putatively utopian communities. In the year 2296, a young woman named Lucy (Ella Purnell) leaves Vault 33 and sets out through the wastelands of Southern California on a vital mission.
‘Silo’ (2023)
Apple TV+ is the home for this hit series set in a massive underground bunker, where some 10,000 people live without knowing anything of their history. It’s essentially an enormous high-rise beneath the surface of the Earth, with agricultural levels, a common cafeteria, a medical center, a sheriff’s department, tech services and individual apartments for residents, annual holidays and rituals, the whole deal. If you’d like to step outside, feel free — but just know that in doing so, you’ll be dead within minutes.
‘The End’ (2024)
This insane, apocalyptic musical starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon is set two decades after an environmental catastrophe rendered the Earth’s surface uninhabitable. A nuclear family and a few friends live in a luxurious and expansive bunker deep within a converted salt mine.
‘Biosphere’ (2023)
Before “Paradise,” Sterling K. Brown co-starred with Mark Duplass in this mildly interesting but frustratingly ambiguous misfire of a post-apocalyptic satire about two men living in a geodesic dome under a dark sky after the planet has been destroyed.
Certain things almost always hold true in these stories. An environmental disaster or a war to end all wars creates the need for the hideaways. At least some members of the underground community are determined to not repeat the sins of humanity that necessitated such a project in the first place, but the same old patterns inevitably come into play, and we wind up with a ruling class, petty grievances and subterfuge, powerful law enforcement, an oppressed group, crime, rebellion. Also, the residents of the underground world have often been led to believe there’s no life outside their community, that life can no longer exist on the Earth’s surface — but that’s almost never the case. Eventually, someone is going up and outside to determine out what’s what.
The pluses in these series (not so much with “The End” and “Biosphere”) are manifold. They’re marvels of production design and VFX. Some of our best actors are drawn to material that combines high drama with action and fantasy. For the viewer, it’s a thrill to escape into a world where even after everything has gone kablooey, a few of us will remain behind and try to start all over again. (So we’re saying there’s a chance!)
Besides, compared to the trend of movies about assassins who go off the grid only to get pulled back in (“Nobody,” “The Family Plan,” “Back in Action,” the upcoming “Love Hurts”), these Underground Bunker shows are practically documentaries.