The Resort (Season 1), Episode 5 Recap & Ending Explained: Things ended at a very tricky slope in the previous episode. A sort of complete distraction from our central characters, the episode set up The Resort toward a more suspenseful turn that left us with more questions than answers. Also, since we have officially entered the second half of the show, Alex’s words that “the second half is a heartbreaker” start echoing louder as things get personal for Emma and Noah.
The Resort (Season 1), Episode 5 “El Espejo” Recap:
The episode begins with a cellphone recording of Alex talking directly to Baltasar announcing that things are crumbling fast and he doesn’t know ‘when he is’ (read: he doesn’t say where he is), before shifting back to the day when Violet and Sam are in his room.
The situation shifts a few minutes before Violet and Sam were found in the closet as we see a perplexed and naked Alex in his room. They try to make a run for it, but since the doors are locked they can’t escape. So, Alex asks them to sit down, and he starts painting them in his mural before his memory leakage strikes again.
Meanwhile, Baltasar, Luna, Emma, and Noah are all together sitting in Baltasar’s low-key detective cave. The dude has arranged all possible clues, interconnected possibilities, and discreetly collected evidence in a neat bow. He proceeds by saying that he has figured out almost everything about this mystery except for the one where the two of them are in a painting that someone did 15 years ago.
All of them also realize that Emma and Noah, the self-appointed detectives did not recheck the place where Emma found Sam’s phone. So they decide that they will go and investigate that trail the next day. Subsequently, Baltasar also comes to the point where he gets a little personal with them, telling them that they are actually related to the mystery because they have lost something, like everyone else who is also involved in it.
He claims that every single moment in all of their lives is essential and it is those moments that have led them to this point. So, he asks them questions like when they first met, if they hooked up the first night they met, & what was the high and low points of their married life. Basically, turning the investigation into some sort of therapy for the two of them. In all the questions and answers, it is quite evident that Emma is hiding something (a testament to Cristin Milioti’s acting abilities). This is really visible when he asks her what did you lose? Emma’s expression change and we are reminded of the first episode where we saw that she has had a cesarian (referring to her losing a child).
Meanwhile, we finally see the picture of Sam and Violet in Alex’s room being taken. This is when Alex stumbles on the book that Violet’s mother gave her and is confused and bewildered by how close it is to his own life. He gets obsessed by the book’s similarities and gets its cosmic, spiritual rambling mixed with some of his own, leading to the recurring term “Pasaje,” meaning a room outside of time. The plot progresses when Alex takes Violet and Sam on a ride to eat some fruit. We finally get to know that nothing happened to them inside the room itself, while also hearing vague references of Alex loving and losing someone.
Coming back to the present timeline, Luna, Baltasar, Noah, and Emma reach the place where they first discovered the phone. They get into groups of two where Luna and Noah go off finding clues in one direction, while Emma and Baltasar go in the other. Here, we see Baltasar plodding Emma to replicate the exact moment where she found the phone (referring metaphorically to what she is trying to find in her life), while Noah tells how hard it was for Emma to lose their child, a few minutes after its birth.
The Resort (Season 1), Episode 5 “El Espejo” Ending Explained:
The ending of the episode finds Alex abandoning Sam and Violet midway through their fruit-eating session (clearly telling us that he personally did not have any part in their disappearance). Before leaving, he tells them not to go to “Pasaje” which may mean that they are in fact trapped in a room outside time. However, we can’t still be too sure about it.
This next part feels like it is trying to superimpose Alex in the jungle (the part of the phone clip we saw) with the 4 of them in the jungle trying to figure out a clue. Alex makes a recording on his phone about Sam and Violet leaving to find Illán Ilberra ‘Pasaje’ (here referring to the author of the book that Violet’s mother gifted her).
In the present time, Noah sees that Emma is on the ground (replicating her fall) so he tries to rush to her thinking something is wrong, only to stumble and fall himself. Subsequently, his great fall leads him to find another phone (this one belonging to Alex, the one that has the recording of him talking about Sam and Violet’s detour to find Pasaje, and was randomly just laid by him there for someone to find).
The final sequence takes The Resort into more interesting grounds. We see Alex strategically placing the phone that Emma first discovers on the ground too. And what feels like another one of Alex’s memory leaks, the time and space continuum submerges as he runs away to avoid Emma’s fall to the same place (the one where she first found the phone).
Now, did the memory leak actually mean that time becomes an isolated space at that very moment; submerging past and present? Or is it another one of the show’s tricky misleading narrative turns? We’ll soon find out.
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THE RESORT (SEASON 1), EPISODE 5 SHOW LINKS – IMDB
THE RESORT (SEASON 1), EPISODE 5 SHOW CAST – CRISTIN MILIOTI, WILLIAM JACKSON HARPER, LUIS GERARDO MÉNDEZ, SKYLER GISONDO, NINA BLOOMGARDEN, GABRIELA CARTOL, NICK OFFERMAN
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