The Resort Ending Explained (In Detail)

The 2022 Peacock sci-fi mystery series The Resort ending explained many of its biggest questions while raising a few more. The Resort’s main cast includes Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper as Emma and Noah, a couple celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary with a vacation at a luxury resort in the Yucatán. The show quickly makes clear that all is not well with the marriage, but the relationship is rekindled by the mystery of Sam (Skyler Gisondo) and Violet (Nina Bloomgarden), a teenage couple who went missing 15 years earlier.

What begins as a potential criminal conspiracy involving the immensely influential Frías family becomes a mind-bending temporal conundrum as the parallel stories of Violet and Sam and Emma and Noah become increasingly intertwined. In the finale of The Resort, all four characters reach the fabled Pasaje. It becomes an Eldorado for the grieving Violet in 2007 and the grieving Emma in the present day. ​​​ After a treacherous journey, Emma finds Sam and Violet afloat in a pool, having not aged a single day since their disappearance. It’s through this discovery that the final pieces of The Resort ending begin falling into place.

Sam & Violet Are Alive

The Missing Teenagers Transcended Time

The Resort ending explained that Sam and Violet were not murdered, which had become increasingly unlikely, especially given the lack of credible suspects. Both Baltasar (Luis Gerardo Méndez) and Alex (Ben Sinclair) are quickly discounted as potential murderers and instead become valuable resources in tracking down the missing teenagers and leading them all to Pasaje. The Resort ending briefly hints the couple may have drowned in a tragic accident during the 2007 hurricane, but it’s then revealed that they’ve instead been in stasis for the past 15 years.

In the moments before they nearly drowned, Violet was drawn to a vision of her dead mother. This saved her and Sam from drowning in the cave during the hurricane, but it also led to them being preserved for the past 15 years. In The Resort, Cristin Milioti’s Emma is also drawn to the pool, hearing the laughter of the child she lost and never got to see. However, just as she is about to join Sam and Violet in the pool, she relents and instead revives the young couple from their stasis in The Resort ending.

Waking up in 2022, it feels as if only five minutes have passed for Sam and Violet. The responses of their respective parents are vastly different. Sam’s parents hang up on him, and Violet’s father Murray is speechless from being reunited with his missing daughter. The past 15 years have been tough on Murray (Nick Offerman), as he moved from place to place, performing shady jobs for government contractors and never putting down roots. Finally reunited with his daughter, the scarred and bedraggled Murray can once again turn into the loving family man introduced in The Resort episode 1.

What’s Next For Emma And Noah?

Emma Wants To Remain With Her Husband

In the previous episode, Emma and Noah’s marital difficulties came to a head when she lamented how co-dependent they had become, as The Resort ending explained. Fearing they were both losing their individuality, she pointed out how, rather than reignite their spark, Emma’s quest for Pasaje became another way for a concerned Noah to keep an eye on her.

In an emotionally raw performance by Cristin Milioti, Emma admits to Noah — via an overheard conversation with Murray — that she wants to find Pasaje, so she can see her daughter’s face, as she had refused to when she awoke to be told her daughter had died after only living for an hour. Noah’s concern for Emma, and her refusal to confront her traumatic experience, have driven a wedge between the couple.

Pursuing Pasaje based on the romanticized ideal of Sam and Violet, who — like Noah and Emma — fell in love at Christmas, is a way for Emma to reconnect with their relationship as it was before. When she finally reaches Pasaje, however, she decides not to enter the pool, later telling Noah that she “didn’t want to lose 15 years.” There’s a dual meaning to this statement.

On the one hand, it’s an obvious reference to the time that was lost by Sam and Violet when they transcended time, as The Resort ending explained. More importantly for Emma and Noah, it also affirms that, contrary to what she may have let him believe, she still wants to remain married to Noah. Her discussion with Violet about seeing her mother again confirms that Emma finally made peace with the death of her daughter and is ready to move on with her life. She still carries the pain of loss but no longer lets it consume her, as she tells Violet: “It’s always there…but it gets better.”

How Did Alex Know Everything That Was Going To Happen?

The Resort‘s most intriguing character is the hotel’s owner, Alex (Ben Sinclair). It was revealed in episode 5 that he was the one who placed Sam and Violet’s cellphones in the jungle for Emma and Noah to find 15 years later. In doing so, he triggered their whole investigation of Sam and Violet’s disappearance, even though they hadn’t disappeared when he planted their phones. The clues as to how Alex knew how everything would play out, despite seemingly dying years prior, are contained in the mural on the wall of his penthouse, as The Resort ending explained.

The painting depicts Sam and Violet looking out of the penthouse window and also shows Emma and Noah in the jungle. The inclusion of the meteor and dinosaurs in the mural heavily implies that Alex experienced time differently from others. The mural depicts past, present, and future existing side by side, which is how Alex surely saw time, a perspective that caused his “memory leakage.”

Was It Worth Losing Time?

Youth Isn’t As Valuable As It First Seems

Luna best explains the show’s real meaning when she observes that “They lost time […] It’s pretty on the surface, but if you squint, it’s f***ed up.” The Resort is a story all about the destructive pull of nostalgia. Violet is so desperate to see her mother again that she abandons her father for 15 years. Sam and Violet’s love story appeals to Emma because it’s sort of like time travel. Through them, she can relive that time when “everything is so meaningful and the highs are, like, so f***ing high” before “the lows keep getting lower.”

The Yucatán location and references to Mayan iconography throughout The Resort plays into this theme of the problems with recapturing one’s youth. Spanish conquistador Ponce de León is believed to have traveled to the same region in his search for the Fountain of Youth, which was said to restore the youth of those who bathe in its waters.

That’s essentially what the pool at Pasaje is. In transcending time, Sam and Violet’s youth is retained, but the price is devastating their family and loved ones for 15 years. Violet observes losing time to see her mother one last time wasn’t worth it, because the loss still hurts 15 years later, and always will.

Is The Resort Setting Up Season 2?

Where Is Baltasar Going?

Despite wrapping up the stories of Emma and Noah and Sam and Violet, there are a few loose ends left, as The Resort ending explained, that could lead to more from the show. At the very end of The Resort, Detective Baltasar Frias hands Luna a newspaper clipping and tells her that he will see her again soon. He says he’s off to “an ocean very far away” because he’s found something, or rather it’s found him. He walks away, showing that the back of his jacket is stitched with a representation of three friends looking out to sea.

When Luna reads the clipping, she smiles a knowing smile and leaves the poolside bar. Depending on how well the show performs on Peacock, there could be a season 2 for The Resort, focused on where Baltasar is going. Given the handful of clues, it’s clear that their time-sensitive friend and employer Alex may not be dead after all and is out there somewhere in an ocean very far away.

What Resort Showrunner Andy Siara Says About The Season 1 Ending

The Ending Of The Resort Was Deliberately Kept Ambiguous

The Resort ending explained as much as it could, but there were still a few stones left unturned. Showrunner Andy Siara had a few things to say about The Resort season 1 ending, and its sequel potential. While the story of The Resort has been completed, Siara purposefully left things open-ended in case anyone wanted to take a crack at The Resort season 2. In an interview (via Collider), Siara discussed The Resort ending, and how he keeps it just ambiguous enough to continue the story.

According to Siara, if Peacock wanted The Resort season 2, he has plenty of ideas for how the story would continue, particularly, with Luis Gerardo Mendez’s Baltasar. “If Peacock wants to do another one, I know how to do that and have different paths forward and multiple seasons that might include some of the characters, might include a whole new cast and stuff.”

It sounds almost like The Resort would end up mirroring The White Lotus in an anthology capacity if all the new cast stuff is to be believed. That being said, Siara purposefully ended The Resort the way he did, just in case there won’t be a second installment.

The Real Meaning Of The Resort Ending

The Peacock Series Is A Warning Against Longing For The Past

The Resort ending is filled with many questions and a lot of thematic depth. Fortunately, the real meaning of the end of The Resort has been explained by show creator Andy Siara. Siara gave a detailed explanation of what the message behind the overall show was, and why the final scenes were so important. According to the creator, the entirety of The Resort is a warning against getting lost in one’s past and using nostalgia for comfort instead of dealing with the struggles of the present:

“This whole thing’s about the allure of nostalgia and the curse of nostalgia and that idea of like, yes, you can go swim in the memories of your past and bask in the warmth of your past and of your memories. But there’s a danger to that, ’cause you will just lose time.”

As Siara explained, the literal loss of time via the Fountain in The Resort is a metaphor for the time missed in the present when one is ruminating on the nostalgia of the past. For him, this is the central message he wants viewers to walk away from watching The Resort with:

“Basically, the takeaway from the show is if you obsess too much about the past and your memories, and you don’t let things go, then you’re just gonna lose time in the present day.”

How The Resort Ending Was Received

The Ambiguity Was Divisive, But The Finale Still Won Over Many Viewers And Critics

Despite receiving a mixed reception when it debuted in July 2022, The Resort ending capped off the Peacock mystery series on a strong note, and managed to win over many critics and viewers (as well as distance itself from the comparisons to The White Lotus which plagued it during its debut). The Resort currently sits with an 88% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is incredibly strong. The ending of the story definitely accounts for much of the positive praise, since this figure was lower during the earlier episodes of the show.

While there were some criticisms of the final moments of The Resort, especially when it came to the levels of ambiguity and unanswered questions, this wasn’t off-putting for every viewer. Writing for Collider, critic Chase Hutchinson points out that The Resort didn’t need to resolve literally every single mystery for a satisfying conclusion:

“It all makes for an ending that fully embraces how some things might just forever defy our understanding. While this could be unsatisfying for those who were hoping to get things spelled out, it was an approach that felt more accurate and arresting precisely because it didn’t presume to know the unknowable.”

However, there were also many critics who didn’t appreciate the ending of The Resort. For example, Marah Eakin for Vulture opens her review with “it’s time to check out of The Resort, and frankly, I’m ready to go home”, and her thoughts on the final episode don’t get any more positive from there. Much like many other critics and general viewers who had a negative view of the ending of The Resort, the ambiguity and lack of solid answers in places led Eakin to feel the finale was less than satisfactory:

“The Peacock series has had its spooky peaks and paranormal valleys, but the season finale left me a little wanting. I kept waiting for some big payoff that never came, and I’m not entirely sure what the message of the whole thing was. I guess a piece of art doesn’t have to have a mission statement per se, but it does feel like
The Resort
wanted to teach us something. Is it that our memories make us who we are? That we can’t go home again? That we need to learn to live with pain and that it’ll get a little better in the end?”