For the Season 2 finale of Hulu’s Paradise, the end of the world had to feel massive without losing sight of the people caught inside it. In “Exodus,” director Hanelle Culpepper and visual effects supervisor John Weckworth brought down the carefully constructed world of Paradise, while deliberately echoing the visual language of the series’ pilot.
The finale mirrors one of the pilot’s most memorable sequences, when Sterling K. Brown’s Xavier first runs through the seemingly idyllic town in the hopes of continuing a sustainable future. This time, Xavier is escaping as Paradise collapses, while Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) walks through the city she helped build as it crumbles around her.
“What was important to me and to the writers is we wanted to mirror the pilot,” Culpepper said. In addition to showing Xavier navigating Paradise in the wake of this catastrophe, Culpepper deliberately chose to also return to Sinatra’s innocence.
Watch on Deadline
Considering that the finale episode supposes that Sinatra’s son Dylan, who died before the end of the world, may instead be a guy named Link (Thomas Doherty), Culpepper and the writers thought it would be appropriate to revisit that time of peace in Sinatra’s life. To do that, audiences saw a return to the toy horses that had been established as one of Dylan’s favorite things, as the Season 2 world-collapsing sequence ends with Sinatra reaching the horse, where a version of her son greets her, takes her hand and walks with her into the sun.
The sunlight carried its own significance. Paradise has its artificial sun, while the people emerging from the bunker are experiencing the warmth of the real sun for the first time. Culpepper wanted the real sun to backlight Sinatra throughout the walk, eventually allowing the image to flare completely to white.
There was just one problem: too much flare could obscure the VFX.
“I remember John was telling me, ‘OK, but you can’t have too much flaring because then we can’t see the effects,’” Culpepper recalled with a laugh. “But I was like, ‘I want the flare.’”
The compromise was to give Weckworth’s visual effects enough time to register before allowing the flare to take over. “I just needed a moment,” Weckworth added.
The result is a sequence that initially plays as chaos, but becomes surprisingly tender through the combination of slow motion, music and sound design.
“My first version of this that me and my crew put forward, there was way more going on,” Weckworth said. “We were bringing down large portions of the sky, and I kind of forgot what we were doing there for an instant.”
Dan Fogelman, the series’ creator, had a simple note when he saw the first version: Pull it back.
The final sequence allows the destruction to creep into the frame instead. A few panels appear around the periphery before the full scope becomes apparent.
“By the time we get to that side profile, you see, ‘OK, no, this is the whole city that she has built coming around her,’” Weckworth said.
For Culpepper and Weckworth, the sequence was an example of the various departments coming together at exactly the right moment.
“Every once in a while, all the departments are kind of firing on all cylinders and it all just kind of comes together,” Weckworth explained. “And this was definitely one of those times.”
The finale’s other major VFX challenge was a sweeping pullback that begins with the survivors at their campsite and expands outward across the ruined Paradise, past the mountains and suburbs of Denver, through the city and eventually to the airport before descending underground into the bunker.
Culpepper storyboarded the sequence, which then went through previs before the film team took it to set. The production’s drone team was then brought in to capture the opening movement. Originally, the drone was moving relatively slowly through the crowd. But Weckworth wanted more. “I just remember yelling at them, ‘Go, go, go!’ And they took the drone as fast as they could and as high as they could,” he said.
From there, the VFX team took over. To create the sense that the camera was traveling an enormous distance, Weckworth says they manipulated the digital environment in a particularly unusual way. “In the computer, we literally folded the environment like a taco,” he said.
The move allowed the camera to cover the apparent distance needed to reach the top of the crater while keeping the pacing and perspective under control. The sequence ultimately evolved considerably from Culpepper’s original storyboards.
One of her concerns was making sure audiences understood where the camera had arrived once it reached the airport featuring the iconic Denver blue horse, also colloquially known as Blucifer. Admittedly, Culpepper says she was one of the people who didn’t know the significance of Denver’s blue mustang, so she wanted to make sure the location was unmistakable. From there, the camera descends into the ground and ultimately finds Alex in the bunker.
Although much of the sequence relied on visual effects, the bunker itself contained plenty of practical work. When Culpepper arrived, the shell of Alex was already built, but she continued working with the production team on the details, including the symmetry of its lights and the movement of the smoke.
Even the massive door that appears to open automatically was practical.
“It’s not even automated,” Culpepper said. “It looks so automatic, but you have the special effects team that are pulling it open.”
Once Weckworth saw the practical effect on camera, there was little reason to add digital work.
“They thought that we were going to add to this, but once we saw it in camera,” he explained, “this looks really good.”
For both Culpepper and Weckworth, the work on Paradise ultimately led to their first Emmy nominations. Culpepper notes that her recognition was particularly historic: She became only the second Black woman ever nominated in the directing category.
“It was truly an honor to have my peers recognize the work in this way,” she said.
For Weckworth, the nomination was a recognition of how much television visual effects have evolved.“You basically have to be a feature film level now to be on top in television,” he said. “So to be recognized at that level… feels good.”
To learn more about the behind the scenes of the Season 2 finale of Paradise, watch the video above.