The Resort (Season 1 Finale), Episode 8 Recap & Ending Explained: Peacock’s The Resort has to be one of those shows that people get into unwittingly, and start loving it for what it is. I talk from a personal experience to what I just said as being extremely true. I was truly skeptical about the show but it turned out to be better than I expected.
That said, I’m not sure if I am completely satisfied with the final episode. While the episode does offer us answers and some kind of resolution to the central mystery, it leaves some of its more intimate and heartbreaking thematical elements away from a proper discussion. I know, that it wasn’t the point of the show, but the way the last episode kind of skips past its witty banters and situational humor is something I kind of missed as we reach a conclusion.
The Resort (Season 1 Finale), Episode 8 “The Disillusionment of Time” Recap:
Violet wakes up in the jungle and leaves for Pasaje alone; leaving a note for Sam in his shoes. She drops down on the underground bunker’s entrance as we cut to the present where Emma, Noah, Baltasar, and Murray go inside too.
The 4 of them reach the cave, but it is now filled with water. However, they soon find a raft that they use to paddle past the dark cave, coming to an open space. All of them wonder if this is Pasaje, but they are also unsure because they don’t feel any change in their physical or mental state. After looking a little further, Emma and Baltasar find two separate tunnels and decide to break into groups of two with Noah going aboard with Emma into the first one.
In the timeline 15 years ago, Sam wakes up with the approaching rain and storm, only to realize that Violet is gone. Violet, on the other hand, has dived deep into the cave with water filling in real fast.
In the present timeline, Murray confesses to Baltasar that he stopped looking for Violet after a point in time. He said that, in spite of trying his best, he distracted himself with other things that keep one busy (referring to the human instinct of survival), but he did end up circling back to Violet after all the chaos settled.
After Murray is done with his confession, he and Baltasar stumble onto some eggs and in a mishap, Baltasar has to literally face a yellow snake with four noses (a little on-the-nose metaphor to him coming to terms with being a Frias and him being able to handle the burden of being one).
Meanwhile, Sam finds Violet in the dark cave with the water filling up. He asks her why she left him back, to which she replies that she left a note for him. When he asks what it said, she says it doesn’t really matter (foreshadowing the reasons for certain things that will happen in the episode with no resolve and reason). The water keeps rising and somehow, Sam isn’t able to find a way out; not even find the way he came in, making them feeling stuck and scared for their lives.
In the present timeline too, Noah and Emma feel stuck for a while before Emma lands her eyes on a really small tunnel at a great height. Noah helps her to the top and she goes in, only to find that it gets narrower and narrower as she approaches. She comes back to him and asks him to follow up, but he is unable to as it is high up. Of course, he can’t reach there because this last bit of the journey has to be Emma’s own. So, she approaches further, alone, only to find herself stuck between rocks, unable to move ahead or back.
The Resort (Season 1 Finale), Episode 8 “The Disillusionment of Time” Ending, Explained:
The ending of the episode begins with close-cutting scenarios of Emma being stuck and hyperventilating, with that of Sam and Violet almost drowning in the raising water level. Soon enough, the show finally lands the punch that brings the two timelines together. A brief moment arrives when Emma closes her eyes to hear her child cry, and in that moment, she gathers all the strength out of her grief and pierces by, dislodging the rock that was holding her back.
She anchors through and reaches a place where she can see a pool of white liquid with the suspended bodies of Violet and Sam floating inside. While it looks like they are dead, they don’t feel like they are. The white liquid also feels like the sort of time portal that we were anticipating from the very first episode and it begins to dawn on Emma that she has finally reached Pasaje – a room outside time.
So, she kneels on her legs, reaches down, and looks at the pool of white water, hearing her baby laugh. She smiles and decides to pull the floating bodies one by one. Firstly, she pulls out Violet and then Sam, and is completely flabbergasted at the possibility of something like this happening.
In the next sequence, we see Violet and Sam coming out of the tunnel, with Murray and Baltasar’s faces in complete awe of this situation. Murray breakdown and hugs his daughter tight, while Sam talks with Baltasar telling him that it has just been 5 minutes for them floating inside, while it has been 15 years outside.
None of them are able to find the logic behind this situation and when Baltasar asks Sam what really happened when they were floating, he says he doesn’t remember and puts his fingers inside his ear (a slight hint to Alex perhaps?), leaving Baltasar with a whole new set of mysteries to unravel.
Emma asks if Violet saw her mom when she was in there and she nods, telling her that it still hurts. Emma breaks down and consoles her, by saying that it gets better, in spite of all the hurt that remains – indirectly trying to convince herself to move on from her own loss too.
They then fire flare guns to ask for the helicopter to pick them up as Noah asks Emma why she did not go into the water herself. She answers by saying that she did not want to lose those ‘15 years with him.’
The season ends when Luna and Baltasar are having a drink. Baltasar proposes that they go back to Pasaje and try going in for 30 seconds to see what happens. Luna isn’t interested so, Baltasar hands her a note and bids goodbye.
As he leaves, we see that his newly stitched suit has the silhouette of the three of them (Baltasar, Luna, and Alex) on it. Luna opens the note, is surprised at first, but then runs after him.
What does this mean you ask? If it is up to me, it obviously refers to another mystery where Baltasar and Luna try to find Alex in some shape or form. Maybe he is also stuck in some way in the room between time, and they could not find him this time for a reason known only to the makers. Anyway, a Season 2 for The Resort is definitely due, though I doubt it would have the same pull if Cristin Milioti is not involved in some way.
