“Acapulco” told its last story about Maximo’s idyllic time at the Las Colinas resort in the 80s, leading to a heartbreaking sacrifice and much growth in the past — and a storybook ending in the present day.
Episode 10, titled “Never Gonna Give You Up,” followed as present-day Maximo (Eugenio Derbez) celebrated the grand re-opening of a remodeled Las Colinas, though the festivities were dampened by the impending exit of Julia (Carolina Gomez), whom he’d failed to convince to stay by his side.
The finale also saw the return of his nephew Hugo (Raphael Alejandro) for the opening and to hear the tragic story about how the younger Maximo (Enrique Arrizon) and Julia (Camila Perez) first broke up in the 80s — leading to their present-day circumstances. With Hugo’s help, however, and the uncovering of a decades-long secret, Maximo and Julia were able to put their differences aside and finally come back together.
The central couple’s dual conclusion was the most challenging story for the writers to crack as they crafted the Season 4 finale, according to series co-creator Austin Winsberg, which was revealed to be the series’ final episode back in May.
“We usually wrap every season without knowing if we’re going to get another one or not. So we try to do it in such a way where we close enough doors, but leave a few doors open for the possibility,” he told TheWrap. “We went into the season expecting that this chapter was going to be over.”
The episode certainly wrapped up the Apple TV+ bilingual comedy’s stories in a neat little bow. For Maximo and Julia in the 80s, the success of hosting the Miss Universe pageant at Las Colinas led to diverging paths. Maximo was determined to build his legacy at the hotel with Julia by his side and planned to propose to her.
When the time came to pop the question, however, Julia came with news of her own. The Dior fashion house offered her a permanent designer position in Paris, and she was keen on taking it. The news led to an argument between the couple, as Maximo failed to understand why Julia wasn’t satisfied following his plan for their lives. The disagreement ended in a breakup, which Maximo then chose not to correct, allowing Julia to pursue her dreams. That also led Maximo to take an offer for a better job, leading him to the path of becoming the lonely billionaire hotel mogul viewers met at the start of the series.
In the present day, Hugo shared Maximo’s past plans to propose with Julia, which pushed her to another heart-to-heart with her former flame. Maximo then admitted his love for her had never faded, and he was ready to recommit to her and just live every day without a plan, as long as he had her by his side. She agreed, and they sealed the end of their epic love story with a kiss. And after the big celebration, the show
“Maximo has always been a guy with a plan … It’s something we really set up for his character to have that full circle moment, where for the first time in his life, he’s going to try to move forward without a plan. That felt like a good character arc,” Winsberg said. “You can get to that place where you’re always chasing more and wanting more, but what happens when you actually take a moment to stop and appreciate what you have and be grateful for what you have. That felt powerful for us.”
Of course, the rest of the ensemble also enjoyed a happy ending. Chad (Chord Overstreet) made amends with his girlfriend, and the pair rode off into the sunset. Sara (Regina Reynoso) was accepted into NYU and left Acapulco with her family’s blessing, with her mother, Nora (Vanessa Bauche), going with her and overcoming her fear of letting her children go (and of airplanes). Memo (Fernando Carsa) and Lorena welcomed their baby during the Miss Universe pageant telecast, and Diane (Jessica Collins) and Hector (Rafael Cebrián) also continued to live in blissful romance.
Despite the happy endings, Winsberg said the writers had come up with alternatives should the show move forward with Season 5 — as well as for potential expansions of the “Acapulco” universe via spinoffs.
“We talked about ways that we could reboot [the show] in surprising ways,” he added. “I’ve had an idea that I floated by Apple that’s kind of a different version of it.”
Read more of TheWrap’s conversation with Winsberg about the “Acapulco” finale below:
TheWrap: Congratulations on a great season. What made this the right time to say goodbye to the show and these characters?
Winsberg: We usually wrap every season without knowing if we’re going to get another season or not. So we try to do it in such a way where we close enough doors, but leave a few doors open for the possibility if there is going to be more. We felt like this season was probably going to be the last, and if we were ever going to get a Season 5, we would probably jump forward in time or do a big format change or something to keep refreshing the show.
We went into the season expecting that this chapter was going to be over. So a lot of it was trying to figure out, How do we want to end it? Where do we want to end Maximo and Julia in the past, and Maximo and Julia in the present? How much can we make sure that we’re at least addressing some of the questions that have been raised over the years about what happened to Maximo? Maybe a little bit more of an insight into how he went from this heartfelt person to the person he became in the present. There were a lot of things that we knew that we wanted to tie up to make sure that if this really was the end, that it would be satisfying for everybody.
This season followed as present-day Maximo rebuilt Las Colinas to its former glory and got Julia back, while the younger Maximo and Amelia drifted apart following their respective successes. A picture-perfect ending for this dual story. How was it to craft this as the final season for the show?
We end Season 3 with this big idea that he’s bought back the hotel and that ultimately the hotel was probably where his heart was, and where he was the most himself before he changed. The show has always been about family and community and how much that hotel meant to everybody who worked there.
Ending it in the present with him back there, and that whole table around him — that community of people, of family and friends — was an image we definitely wanted. Going from this guy we see at the very beginning of Season 1, alone in his mansion with a lot of regrets, to the guy at the end whose heart is more full. He’s reconnected with his estranged daughter. He’s gotten the love of his life back. He recognizes the things in life that are more important to him. That was always part of the journey that we wanted to go on with him.
Then we had a lot of debates over the years about how much to show. Initially, when I pitched the show, I pitched more of a “Breaking Bad” or “Better Call Saul” arc for him, where we would see him going bad over time. We would see the roots of how he went from this sweet, innocent kid to the person that he became. But the more that we started working with Enrique Arrizon, who played young Maximo, and the more that we started telling these hopeful, heartfelt stories in the past, we just didn’t want to see a lot of that. We didn’t know if the audience would want to see him doing duplicitous things and being evil. It just didn’t feel right with the tone of the show.
It was important for us to stick in the landing, to at least understand the start of that way came from the heartbreak from Julia and letting her go, and recognizing that in business, sometimes we have to be a bit more cutthroat.
By the end, present-day Maximo and Julia get their happy ending when he gives her a blank page to start writing their lives together without any planning. Was that the bit of launching pad for this potential follow-up for the show? What were you thinking in terms of how to move the show forward from here?
Maximo has always been a guy with a plan, and he’s always talking about his plans for the future. He always wanted more and more and more. It’s something we really set up for his character to have that full circle moment, where, for the first time in his life, he’s going to try to move forward without a plan. That felt like a good character arc. You can get to that place where you’re always chasing more and wanting more, but what happens when you actually take a moment to stop and appreciate what you have and be grateful for what you have? That felt powerful for us.
We’ve talked about where the show could go with them. We talked about ways that we could reboot it in surprising ways. I’ve had an idea that I floated by Apple that’s kind of a different version of it.
These characters were so vibrant, and the finale does leave the doors open for a lot of stories in that world. Could there be a spinoff series in the cards?
Absolutely. Doing this show was so joyful. And it sounds corny, but we really did develop this amazing sense of family and community over the four seasons. We did it together. I started off writing a show about family and community and along the way, we created this family and this community, and it happened because we all lived at that hotel. We worked at that hotel, we ate at that hotel. We never left that hotel. It was almost like we did summer camp for three or four months every year while we shot the show.
And on top of that, I think there is such wonderful support within the Latin community, and everybody lifts each other up. It really was so wonderful and heartfelt, and it was something that I didn’t know going into doing this show. And so it really was a great time. The idea to work with any of these people and continue that sense of community and that sense of pride that I think we all felt in the making of it would be awesome.
“Acapulco” is unlike any other series currently on the air. What was it like to bring such a unique, bilingual comedy to the world for these four seasons?
I think it’s been a surprise every step of the way. The show has continued to grow and evolve every season, the characters have gotten deeper. It was always important, even in the beginning of the show, when people felt a little bit more two-dimensional, that knowing in time that we would three-dimensionalize them all. And one of the great gifts of the show was having such a strong cast and so many people that we wanted to give their own stories and their own moments to. By having such a deep bench, it created more opportunities and challenges as the show went on to make sure that everybody’s getting their own stories.
You can’t give everybody stuff every single week, because then the episodes would get too long. So I think the hardest thing about this show was just trying to figure out how to service everyone and to live within that tonal balance that we always tried to do, which was comedic and heartfelt and musical and surprising, and making sure that every episode would have a big idea behind it, or have some good moral lesson for Maximo. And then also the challenge of trying to tell stories in the present that people could connect to at the same time. And that also evolved. It grew from the beginning, where it was just him telling these stories to his nephew, to really getting other characters involved and having more active storylines happening in the present as much as the past.
I don’t think, in the beginning, I ever knew that it would blossom and grow into this community of characters and actors and people that we wanted to give everybody there that much to do.
What was the most challenging storyline to crack?
Making sure that we thread that needle right with Maximo and Julia in both time periods, that we saw the decline of the relationship in one storyline. And then the evolution of the relationship, and then reconnecting in the other — the disconnect and the reconnect. That was the biggest one that we spent a lot of time on.
Then I look at Hector and Diane, and I look at Chad, and I look at the family, and I just feel like we just wanted to make sure that everybody had some growth. Sarah going off to college in America, that was a big emotional one for us. And also having Nora going with her, and leaving Mexico for the first time. And then we established in Season 3 that Hector and Diane were still together at the present-day memorial, so making sure that we gave them their happy ending. There was a lot.
I was so glad to see Hugo in the series finale, after he had been missing in Season 4. Why did Raphael miss so many episodes?
We loved Raphael and honestly, it was just a story decision on our part. We knew that we wanted to tell more active stories with Maximo in the present in Season 4, and if he was always telling the stories to his nephew, it felt like it inhibited us from doing that. So we just changed the device up.
Also, because it was season four, we thought maybe it was time to change the device a little bit. We all love Hugo, so we knew we had to at least bring him back for the finale. It was hard that we had to not have him in every episode, but it also freed us up to tell more stories with Maximo’s daughter and tell more stories about the resort itself. And we thought it was a funny device that he would be telling stories to different people every episode. It also allowed us to do the musical episode, where he told the story to that room full of musical people.
I loved the ending where Maximo hosted that dinner in front of that beautiful mural of the hotel. How was it to see that mural come to life?
Nico Scabini, our production designer, deserves all the credit in the world. He is incredible. And for four seasons, he worked with whatever money, whatever budget we had, and would create all these incredible sets and looks. We had a bit of a debate for a moment over what that mural should be, and he came in one day with the idea of this very famous painting, a mural in Mexico that has a lot of people in it … We realized that it could be a celebration of everyone from that moment in time, and then juxtaposing that against the present. And then the fact that dozens of artists sat there for weeks drawing in every single character that has ever been on the show. It’s not just a core cast. Every single person in there is someone that has had screen time on “Acapulco” over the four seasons. And the way that they were so detailed with the faces and the expressions and all of it, it was really extraordinary, and ultimately, a beautiful culmination of all the work that we did.
I even debated trying to get a piece of it and figuring out a place to put it in my house, because it was just so beautiful and impressive.
After four great seasons, what do you hope viewers walk away with after watching this show?
First of all, I think the message of the show: That it’s nice to dream big, and also, if you have regrets in life, looking at the present time, it’s never too late to make amends and to go after that love of your life that got away and repair relationships that were damaged — call your estranged relative.
I think another big takeaway is how wonderfully warm and open the Latin people are. Everything that you see on the show was what we felt behind the scenes. It was an incredibly warm, open, supportive group of people.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
“Acapulco” Seasons 1-4 are now streaming on Apple TV+.
