The 'Paradise' Bloody Nose Theory

Okay, so I’ve watched the last two episodes of Paradise twice now, and I need to work this out. I think the show is doing something more specific than the multiverse stuff everyone is suggesting online. I think Samantha Redmond sent her dead son back in time. I think A.L.E.X. is a time machine.

Here is what we know after seven episodes: Link’s real name is Dylan. He is 26 years old, born on May 16th. Sinatria’s son, who died as a child years before the supervolcano took the rest of the world with it, was also named Dylan, also born on May 16th, and would also be 26 years old right now. When Samantha learned this — when Geiger accidentally used Link’s real name as they were filing out of Air Force One — she got a nosebleed. So did Link. And then she went home, slept with her husband for what appears to be the first time in years, and told him: It worked. As in, whatever she did to save Dylan’s life worked.

The show wants you to entertain the multiverse explanation. Maybe Link is an alternate-universe Dylan, a boy who didn’t die in some other timeline, who grew up and ended up here through some kind of dimensional whatever. Fine. But I don’t think that’s it. I think Samantha sent him back.

Now, I don’t fully understand the science here, and I’m not sure the show does either, or at least it’s not in any hurry to explain it. But here’s what we know about A.L.E.X. — and first, let’s acknowledge that A.L.E.X. is not Henry Miller’s dying wife, Alex, despite the show’s brief attempt to convince us she was the whole mystery. She died of Huntington’s disease, euthanized by her husband right before Billy Pace put a bullet in him. She was never the project. She was the inspiration for it. Henry built A.L.E.X. — named for her — and whatever it does, it does something to time. The show keeps gesturing at quantum physics and then running away. But here’s the thing: Sinatra killed people to get her hands on this technology. She has been secretly siphoning power from the bunker to run it for years. You don’t do any of that for a machine that just lets you peek into a parallel universe. You do it to bring your dead kid back.

So here’s my theory. Dylan Redmond died as a child. Samantha, eventually in possession of Henry’s technology, uses A.L.E.X. to send Dylan — her Dylan, the actual one — back in time, to before his death, into a point in the past where he grows up without her, eventually stumbles into Henry Miller’s orbit, becomes Henry’s star pupil, and spends his whole adult life not knowing who he really is or where he really came from. That’s why he doesn’t recognize Sinatra. That’s why he has no memory of growing up with her. He was sent back before any of that could happen (interestingly, something very similar happened in La Brea, but it was La Brea, so it was done poorly).

This also explains the age thing. Henry said Link had been his business partner for roughly ten years. Link, meanwhile, told Annie in the first episode that he thinks he’s about 25 — he’s genuinely not sure, because “time is hard to track.” If Link were just an alternate-universe Dylan who crossed over recently, how does he have a decade-long professional history with Henry? The math doesn’t math. But if Dylan was sent back as a young teenager — thirteen, fourteen — the ten-year partnership with Henry makes complete sense. He just doesn’t fully remember where he came from, because he was a kid when it happened.

And then there’s Jane detail: In 1997, someone sent a message to a City Circuit employee warning that “a killer will be born on June 6 at 12:01 a.m. She can be stopped when it matters, if you deliver a message to her.” This was sent before Jane was born. Whoever sent it knew the exact minute she would arrive. You cannot explain that with a machine that bounces you between parallel universes. A parallel universe machine doesn’t give you foreknowledge of events in this universe. The only explanation for someone knowing the precise moment of Jane’s birth in 1997 is that they sent that message from the future. Which means A.L.E.X. has already been used for time travel.

Which brings me back to the nosebleeds, which are — we all assume — the machine’s fingerprints. The physical symptom of a body that knows something is wrong with where it is in time. Henry handed Billy Pace a tissue before Billy shot him, because Henry knew — somehow — that Billy would get a nosebleed afterward. He knew because he built the thing and understood what it does to people. Xavier got one flying through a storm (why? I don’t know). Link has been getting them since before we met him, spiking whenever A.L.E.X. comes up. Even Samantha got one the moment she realized who Link was.

Samantha said “it worked.” Not “this is extraordinary” or “oh my God, could that really be him?” It worked. Past tense. The confirmation of a plan. She did not stumble onto this. She has been waiting for it.

The cruelest part, of course, is what it means for Link. He came to the bunker to destroy A.L.E.X. He believes — probably correctly — that it’s dangerous, that Sinatra will use it to do something monstrous in the name of saving everyone. He has no idea he’s the proof of concept. He has no idea that the machine he wants to destroy is the machine that made his existence possible. He has no idea that the villain of his story is his mother, and that she built the weapon he’s fighting specifically to bring him back from the dead.

And this is why, again, Dan Fogelman is an asshole.