'The Resort' Creator Is Certain Fans Will Never Solve Show's Mystery

Viewers who watch The Resort may think they have the murder mystery all figured out, but the Peacock show is harder to predict than it might seem, creator Andy Siara told Newsweek.

The Peacock original debuted on Thursday, July 28, with its first three episodes, introducing viewers to couple Noah (William Jackson Harper) and Emma (Cristin Milioti), who decide to try and solve a 15-year-old missing persons case during a vacation in the Mayan Riviera.

Noah and Emma's marriage is in dire straits, and they feel like solving the mystery of what happened to teens Sam (Skyler Gisondo) and Violet (Nina Bloomgarden) might save their relationship, even if trying to do so will put their lives at risk.

'The Resort' Creator is Certain Fans Won't Solve Show's Mystery

Siara, the creative mind behind 2020 hit Palm Springs, has been trying to crack The Resort for the past eight years. He came back to the story time and again until he finally figured out the best way to approach the ambitious project.

"I'd always go back to it every year, because I used to think there's something in there that I couldn't quit," Siara told Newsweek. "And so I returned to it and looked at it through whatever lens I was [in and] where I was [with] my life at that point, and then it still just wouldn't work."

Originally Noah and Emma were in the same timeline as Sam and Violet, but Siara decided to "blow it up" and separate the storylines, and suddenly it all made sense.

He said: "I decided to, like, blow it up and then blow up those two [pairs] and put them over two different timelines. You know, now it's the couple trying to solve what happened to Sam and Violet, but also trying to solve what happened to themselves, and so because of that there's like a mystery component kind of inherent to all that."

Reflecting on the mystery, his hopes for what viewers will think and if they'll be able to solve it, Siara added: "Yeah, I'm very excited. I hope people watch it because I think that, again, I'm constantly thinking about how an audience member will perceive things. The balancing act is always, like, I never want the audience to be ahead, but I do like the audience guessing.

"My favourite moments of watching anything, any mystery show, is when me and my wife are sitting down and when the episode ends we both kind of break down what we think is gonna happen and we'll see how wrong they are."

"But also, you know, way back to when Lost was first premiering I enjoyed that part of the experience of like going on after an episode airs, like going and reading the breakdown of it from certain critics or after episodes of Mad Men or The Sopranos I'd read the recap that kind of starts to look into the symbols that are there.

"I think that [The Resort] is made for people who will ultimately just want to have a half hour to kill at the end of the night and are tired and want to have a glass of wine, or a bowl of ice cream, or just kind of relax and just be entertained, go on a little bit of a ride and hopefully feel something.

"But there's also clues throughout the entire thing, because there's nothing I love more than a proper setup and payoff. If you wanted to dive deep and go on a Reddit thread and crack what's going on, like, I still don't think you'd guess where the show ends up. But you might come close.

"I think you might have some good predictions there, because I feel like that's layered in here, [there's] a lot of attention to detail, where the slightest thing that you might not think as a clue could perhaps be a clue and so, yeah, it rewards both types of viewers, I guess."

Luis Gerardo Méndez, who plays one of Emma's prime suspects, Baltasar Frías, told Newsweek that what he loved best about the show was the fact it was so unpredictable.

"I think that's always exciting, you know, like as a performer and audience I like to see shows that are always changing, and you never know exactly what you're looking at," Méndez said. "The moment where you know what's going to happen it gets boring, and [The Resort] is changing all the time but, like, in really deep ways.

"At the beginning you're like, yeah, this is a comedy about a resort and then it's 'Oh, no, wait a minute, this is a murder mystery. Oh, no, no way!'

"There are different elements in this, I don't want to [give away] any spoilers, but it's a really deep, smart exploration about time, about what time does to people, to the soul, how time destroys everything, how time heals everything, in a very funny way.

"So I've never seen something like that on the page, and now that I saw it as an audience, I was screaming all the time so I think we're very happy with the results so far."

William Jackson Harper and Cristin Milioti on Their Characters in 'The Resort'

Lead stars Harper and Milioti have played a couple together in the past, and their shared experience ensured they already had a "shorthand" with each other when they signed on for The Resort.

Speaking to Newsweek about portraying Noah and Emma's relationship onscreen, Milioti said: "This is our second time playing a couple in distress, so we have explored material, it's very, very different but there is a shorthand and a trust there from having done this very intense and beautiful play about a marriage crumbling.

"But then on top of that, Will is such an incredible actor and I will just kind of follow him anywhere and I feel very safe, and very, I don't know, like, I can try anything with him.

"I also can't wait to see what he brings, and so it just feels like this really beautiful harmony and it's such a great dynamic to have when you're exploring things that are delicate, I would say."

Harper added: "I want to echo everything that Cristin said, but also, I think that Chris has got a really good brain and her instincts sort of lead us to really interesting places sometimes, and, so, when you have that kind of trust with the same partner, where it's okay for my interpretation of this scene to change because it's only going to be enriched by the person that I'm working with. That's, that's pretty special.

"And so, yeah, we have the kind of shorthand, we have played a couple in marital distress before. But I also think that, on this one, I think we've just been in this place where we've been able to just go as wild as we want to go with any scene, and follow each other down those, little rabbit holes with the confidence that something will work from one of those tapes maybe.

"We trust the vision of Andy and all the other creators to help us really craft something interesting, so, yeah, it's not a conscious build so much as it's, you know, you just kind of go in those instincts, and then trust the other really talented people around you to really mould it."

The first three episodes of The Resort are available to watch now on Peacock, and the show will continue to air weekly on Thursdays.

Correction 07/28/22 11:23 a.m. ET: This article was updated to correct the release date for Palm Springs.