'The Resort' Star Cristin Milioti's 'Jaw Hit the Floor' Over Episode 4 Twist

For all intents and purposes The Resort seemed like a standard but enjoyable murder mystery show, until it wasn't.

Episode 4, which was released on Peacock on Thursday August 4, pulls the rug out from under viewers' feet, which is also exactly how stars Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper felt, they told Newsweek.

The episode's twists were so surprising to Milioti, in fact, that she said her "jaw hit the floor" when she read the show's script.

Warning: This article contains some spoilers for 'The Resort'.

The Resort follows Milioti and Harper's Emma and Noah, a married couple on the brink of collapse who decide to dive head first into a missing persons' case from 15 years earlier after Emma finds the phone of one of the teens that went missing during their vacation.

Teens Sam (Skyler Gisondo) and Violet (Nina Bloomgarden) disappeared during a storm at a resort on Mexico's Mayan Riviera near the one where Emma and Noah are staying in the present day, but there's much more to the story than meets the eye.

'The Resort' Star Cristin Milioti's 'Jaw Hit the Floor' Over Episode 4 Twist

Episode 4 of The Resort takes an unexpected turn when Emma's prime suspect in the missing persons' case Baltasar Frías (Luis Gerardo Méndez) tells them what happened in the lead up to the storm where Sam and Violet went missing.

Baltasar explains how his former boss Alex (Ben Sinclair) created the original resort as a safe haven for lost souls like himself and concierge Luna (Gabriela Cartol), but things took a turn when the owner's behavior became more erratic.

Alex, Baltasar says, claimed he had a condition that led him to lose his memories because they would leak from his ears, so he wouldn't remember anything he was responsible for, like beheading iguanas or destroying resort property.

On the night before the storm, Sam and Violet have an encounter with Alex, and even sneak into his penthouse suite at the resort. The next day Baltasar finds Alex with blood on his hands.

This makes it seem like an open and shut case, right? Except it doesn't because Alex's behavior appears to stem from visions he has of a future cataclysmic event, one that he paints on the wall of his suite to remember everything he's seen.

Baltasar tells the couple that he thought he was a fool to ever believe Alex wasn't involved in Sam and Violet's disappearance, until he points out that perhaps Alex was actually looking into the future because he painted Noah and Emma on his mural 15 years earlier.

Of this shocking moment, Milioti told Newsweek: "I think that was one of the things that really attracted me to [the show] is that I think I felt the same way that you did, I'm sure, which was that my jaw hit the floor.

"And I thought to myself, 'What is this? What is this show? What is it? What on earth? How are they going to figure this out? What does this all mean?'

"And I think that's one of the things I really love about this project. You know, I will say the four episodes ahead of you are so wildly different, like the way the show ends versus how it begins you couldn't go to a more opposite place in terms of tone and it really starts with that, the end of Episode Four.

"That it, like, opens up into this whole new portal and I just found that to be so exciting, and you don't read a lot of things like that."

Harper concurred, saying: "Yeah, and, you know, when I read that I was like, 'well, now I don't know anything,' which is kind of a fun place to be, especially in the middle of the season.

"You think you can start piecing things together and then all of a sudden you're like, 'Well, never mind, let me just throw all that away and let's see where this goes.'

"And, so, I think that's a pretty smart idea on behalf of the writers to sort of just be like, 'Y'all know nothing, now go on this new journey.'"

To which Milioti added: "And then you're on the journey that we're on, you know? I think they are so convinced, Emma and Noah think that solving this together is somehow going to give their marriage the sort of resuscitation that it needs.

"But, actually, they just don't know anything and they have so much to learn not only about each other, but about themselves and what the decisions they've made or not made [will mean], and it really... I thought it was so unique."

The Resort airs Thursdays on Peacock.

Update 08/04/22, 6:46 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include a clip from Newsweek's interview with Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper.