Editor's note: The below interview contains spoilers for Episode 5 of The Resort.From showrunner and executive producer Andy Siara (Palm Springs), The Resort is a comedy-mystery series unlike no other. The premise may start off in a familiar place: married couple Noah (William Jackson Harper) and Emma (Cristin Milioti) decide to vacation in the Mayan Riviera at the Oceana Vista Resort for their anniversary. The two have clearly been out of touch for some time, and the trip itself may or may not make all the difference. When Emma stumbles upon an unsolved mystery connected to the disappearance of two guests at a now-defunct resort on the same island 15 years ago, the couple wanders down a rabbit hole consisting of bizarre twists and turns, unanswered questions, and lots of intrigue and danger. In addition to Harper and Milioti, the series also flashes back to that fateful trip in the past, in which Skyler Gisondo (The Righteous Gemstones)'s Sam finds himself unexpectedly connecting with another resort guest, Violet (Nina Bloomgarden), while on a trip with his parents and girlfriend, Hannah (Debby Ryan). The series also stars Nick Offerman, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Gabriela Cartol, Dylan Baker, Becky Ann Baker, Ben Sinclair, Michael Hitchcock, and Parvesh Cheena.
Ahead of the fifth episode's premiere on Peacock this week, Collider had the opportunity to speak with Siara about some of the most pivotal reveals in "El Espejo." Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Siara discusses why this serves as the turning point in the series, whether there'll be any more reveals in Alex's strange mural, how Baltasar's character serves as a Captain America-type figure dragging both timelines together, how Noah and Emma will be forced to reveal certain hard truths from their past (or not), and more.
Collider: I wanted to touch on something that happens at the end of Episode 4, which is Noah and Emma discovering themselves in Alex's mural. Are there any other reveals that are going to be popping up in that mural moving forward?
ANDY SIARA: The mural has the answer to everything, but we don't really, necessarily, revisit it. Similar to the phone, I felt by the end of Episode 3, "We've seen this phone enough. Let's just throw it down an elevator shaft." [After] 3, 4, and 5? Okay, enough of the mural. We don't need to revisit it. If anyone wants to study it, they can go back and pause it and take a look. It's a very significant thing for sure that... I guess the easiest answer is that the train keeps moving forward, and that was a stop along the way.
Baltasar, as a character, is taking more of a prominent role in the story and is revealed to be someone who has been looking into this mystery for a while. When we talked before, you had mentioned this was a movie first, this story, and then you came back and revisited it years later. With his role specifically, was this something where he was in the original story, and he ended up in the show, or when you were developing it from the original idea he became a character that was involved?
SIARA: Yeah, that original thing a long time ago... that was, again, that was just some of the emotional core of it all. Characters trying to get back to it or recapturing a feeling they no longer have because they're older at a resort. That's really the only part of it that is, I think, still around in this newer version of it. Baltasar was not in that version. I'd say that that character was what helped crack this whole thing open for me. It became what made the entire show for me. It's the character that is like... My writers made fun of me for this when I brought this up, but, well, I'll bring it up here. I think it was Captain America: Civil War. Did you see that lovely film?
Yes.
SIARA: And you know the part where Steve Rogers grabs the helicopter, and then he's holding the helicopter with one arm and trying to pull it back and holding the helicopter pad on the rooftop? He's trying to pull them back together. I showed the room, and only half of them had seen it. Yeah, so Baltasar is kind of like Captain America, who's pulling these timelines together in a way — and also these characters that are moving apart, pulling them together, because the only way to actually move forward is to be together.
Captain American is the center of that universe in many ways, and so too, Baltasar became this center of the resort. Luis has talked about this too, where when we offered this part to him, I wrote him this letter, and I was like "This is a very, very important character to me on a very deep level. He's one of the main characters of the show. Truly a lead of the show." And I sent him the first two episodes where he's barely in it at all. That's why I'm very happy that the first few were released at once, because at least we started to realize that Baltasar is a key player in this entire thing, and he doesn't just go away in the back half. In Episode 6, he's literally in the driver's seat.
What becomes clear over this episode is that Baltasar's tendency to ask these really probing questions is that, in the process, it drives a lot of feelings that have been repressed to come to the surface, especially with Noah and Emma. How is working with him going to challenge their relationship, or force them to reconcile things that they haven't really addressed with each other in a long time?
SIARA: Another thing I would say in the room is that we can look at these episodes and especially this episode, but in this turning point after Episode 4 and Baltasar's entry into it all through this metaphorical lens of a couple who needs therapy, and here's a bad therapist that comes into play. [He's] a therapist that maybe is not asking necessarily the right questions, because Baltasar is a very flawed character as well. He's not this perfect therapist coming in. But there's a lens to look at it through where yes, they're solving a crime. It's all about solving this mystery, but you can kind of close one eye and squint the other and oh, it's kind of like a couple's therapist.
In the first half of the show, Emma's been looking outward, trying to solve this, because maybe this will solve the problems of her life, but she's looking outward for the answers while Noah is along for the ride, and it seems like he's just playing along until it comes to a head at the end of Episode 3. Now with everything at the end of Episode 4, it's a brain-breaking moment in a way — especially for Noah, who is a person who prides himself on being grounded, and then Episode 4 throws the rule book out the window for him. After that long scene in the daycare, Baltasar even says he kind of figured that Noah would be the tough one.
Noah starts to lean in a little more and Emma starts to lean out a little bit, but the only way to get the answers to this mystery is going to mean looking inside. Looking under the hood. That's a terrifying thing, but that's the part that maybe Noah is a little more curious about. After that daycare scene, everything that follows is a result of that. Noah leaning in, Emma leaning out, and that sparked by what Baltasar is talking about.
To your point, we see it happen in a literal way in the jungle at the end of the episode, because Noah is telling Luna about what happened, with them and losing the baby, and Emma is completely retreating into herself. What does that point signify about the relationship? How might it change?
SIARA: Part of it's that they lost something together, but then they each have their own experiences with that. Basically, Noah can never possibly know what that was like for her. As much as he can be wanting things to move on, even might feel like it's coming from a place of selflessness... it's just that they each have their own individual experiences with their loss, which has formed everything up at this point and will continue to form everything that comes from this point. Noah is finally just opening up a bit. It starts to feel like there's a weight that has been lifted a little bit too.
One of the things about Episodes 4, 5, and 6 is that there are answers in Episode 4 to questions that you don't really know you have until the end of Episode 5. There are things in Episode 5 that are answers to questions that are posed in Episode 6, because everything's told in a weird out of order way, and it's constantly being recontextualized. As Emma's trying to piece things together, Noah's still trying to navigate through that in Episode 6.
Speaking of recontextualizing, we get a little more of a lead-in or hint as to where that Post-It note in Alex's room came from and seeing what happened with Sam and Violet. How are the book and Ibara's location, which Alex warns Sam and Violet against seeking out, going to play into the back half of the season?
SIARA: In Episode 2, the first time we meet Violet on her own, the very first time we see her in our privileged point of view, she's getting bus times and writing those on a Mapquest map. She rushes, and she's on her way out, and that's when Sam runs into her, so she was already heading there Now we know where it is, we know what it is, which is directions to the author's house. We know that her mom wrote "meet me here" on a chapter called Pasaje. Alex reads the last page of the book and feels like the book is about him. He doesn't remember anything, but he feels like whoever wrote this book wrote it about him and about his experiences. Maybe he doesn't know what any of this means, but it's starting to flood back into his brain a little bit.
I think if you were to look at the Mapquest thing, it's probably four hours away. So all of that is to say that when Alex leaves them, and he heads to the jungle where he put the phones down, we've already seen him after that. Episode 4, we see him when he crashes into the sign, so we know that he doesn't go back to the kids. The last we see them, is they're at a fruit stand, probably pretty close to the author's house. So I guess there's something there.
New episodes of The Resort premiere each Thursday on Peacock.