Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 30, 2026
The Season 2 finale of Paradise, titled “Exodus,” dropped this week on Hulu, and if you’ve already watched it — and if you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you have because Alex manipulated time into ensuring it — you know that the show has gone into some weird, uncharted territory. The bunker is toast. Sinatra is dead (probably). And the series has pivoted into science fiction territory, with an AI named Alex apparently rewriting the rules of time.
But this piece is not about that. It’s about why Paradise chose to place Alex, the one Xavier now has to find and shut down in season three, underneath the Denver International Airport. It’s a joke, see. The writers are basically nodding at something very amusing. Denver International Airport is one of the most legendarily conspiracy-theoried pieces of infrastructure in the United States, and has been since the day it opened in 1995.
Here’s a partial rundown of what people believe is happening there: a network of underground tunnels connecting to NORAD and the Cheyenne Mountain Complex; a secret bunker designed to shelter the global elite when the apocalypse comes; a headquarters for the New World Order, which is either the Freemasons, the Illuminati, or some combination of both. The dedication capstone at the airport’s south entrance bears a Freemason symbol and references something called the “New World Airport Commission” — a group that, as far as anyone can determine, does not exist and has never existed. The airport’s runway layout, viewed from above, has been said to resemble a swastika. There are apocalyptic murals in the baggage claim area.
And then there’s “Blucifer”: a 32-foot fiberglass horse with glowing red eyes that stands between the inbound and outbound lanes outside the terminal, and which, during construction, apparently killed its own creator when a piece of the sculpture broke off and severed an artery in his leg. Yikes.
The airport has, amusingly, leaned into this reputation. They’ve run ad campaigns with taglines like “Are we creating the world’s greatest airport? Or preparing for the end of the world?” They installed an animatronic gargoyle in one of the concourses that randomly announces, “Welcome to Illuminati headquarters.”
Alex, time-manipulation, and Xavier’s bad-ass run aside, Paradise is now in on the joke too. Placing Alex — a rogue AI that has apparently been manipulating time and may have already split reality into two separate timelines — underneath the most conspiracy-theoried airport in America is immensely clever of Dan Fogelman.
More on Alex and the finale tomorrow when I can make better sense of it.
