[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Acapulco Season 3, Episode 10, “Burning Down the House.”]
Acapulco‘s third season has come to a close, and with it a chapter in the Las Colinas story as the installment saw Don Pablo (Damián Alcázar) and Diane (Jessica Collins) ousted from their positions as Alejandro Vera (Jaime Camil) took ownership of the resort, recruiting young Maximi (Enrique Arrizon) as Head of Operations in the ’80s.
Ultimately, this was the defining event of Maximo’s young life as he had to live with the consequences of his actions, one of which was revealing Don Pablo’s secret ledger to Alejandro. As his decision also leads to a fracture in his relationship with Julia (Camila Perez), in the future, Maximo’s (Eugenio Derbez) efforts to revitalize Las Colinas could mean the mending of his relationship with her in the present.
Only time will tell for certain. Below, series co-creator Austin Winsberg breaks down some of the biggest reveals and hopes for Season 4 as the show awaits renewal news at Apple TV+.
Apple TV+
Maximo has been referencing a moment that changed his life in the past. Is it Don Pablo and Diane’s dismissal at that moment or is there another fracture on the horizon?
Austin Winsberg: Well, first of all, we didn’t know if we were getting a Season 4 or not. So we needed to thread the needle in the season finale where if the story were to end there was some feeling of answers and closure, but also leaving enough doors open for more. So we definitely wanted the ousting of Don Pablo and Diane to be a big seismic moment for the hotel and certainly one of the justifications for why everybody would have strong feelings against Maximo in the present.
When it comes to Maximo and Julia’s relationship, was his acceptance of the Head of Operation position the end of things or the beginning of the end?
I would say more of the second thing. This is a bit of a warning sign for her or a concern of “the man that I love has some moral or value questions that I’m concerned about.”
Should the show be back for Season 4, do you envision Maximo getting his hands dirty in the renovating process of Las Colinas?
Absolutely. I think that he has a very clear intention going forward that he wants to take the hotel back to its form of glory and that he has spent a lot of time being this businessman. But I don’t know if that person that he became fulfilled his soul and made him happy. And I think he was probably his happiest, most pure self back in his early days at Las Colinas. And so I think his desire to hand over his company to try to rebuild and renovate, he’s going in with pure intent.
The finale made way for a pregnancy reveal for Memo (Fernando Carsa) and Lorena (Carolina Moreno). How might they cope with this big change?
We were trying to design the end of season three. We wanted to have a bunch of loose threads that we could play out in Season 4. So the new thread for Memo and Lorena was not only are they going to get married, but now they’re also going to be young parents and what does that look like and how does it feel to jump to this next level? We see in the present that they’re still together and very happy. So we liked the idea of them having a big brood of children. I think complications for Season 4 would be dealing with this pregnancy and what it all means while still working at the resort and Memo, trying to step up even more. He knows he’s going to be a husband and a father and all of these things.
Diane reveals her plan to weasel her way back into Las Colinas after being ousted, by having Chad (Chord Overstreet) serve as an informant to her. Do you picture that being a big part of her story or will she lean into the opening the chain of fitness centers she mentioned?
I think we’d never want to be too mustache-twirly on the show. There is a little bit of a fun telenovela aspect to the show with some of the twists and turns, but we never want to be too broad or too devilish with that stuff. So I think it’ll be fun to see Diane outside of her kingdom of Las Colinas and what does that look like for her? Is she confident? Is she in some sort of free fall? And I think that there’s some comedy to be played with that and then also her desire to figure out what’s next for her. What we learned in her flashback episode in Season 2 is that whenever something didn’t go her way, she would pivot to the next thing in her career. So it might be interesting to see in Season 4 how she pivots.
Don Pablo is also no longer at the resort, but is that the end of his story?
We had a game plan in place early on. We pitched Apple our Season 4 plans in February. So we already have a lot of ideas of what we would do going forward. So yeah, we love Don Pablo and we love Damián [Alcázar] the actor. So I think that any way we could figure out creatively to keep him in the show is definitely one of our goals. But that’s definitely one of the challenges that we set for ourselves. We’ve seen Diane and Don Pablo leave, we see all these changes afoot. So how do you keep characters in the show with the new dynamics and how do you not make people feel siloed? Those are all things that we’ve been talking about.
Apple TV+
Will the present-day timeline story change format a bit now that the story Maximo’s been telling his nephew Hugo has caught up?
Yes. So, we’ve established a bunch of characters in the present timeline. So we have a lot of other people that we can draw from in this world. So I think that in the rebuilding of the hotel and in trying to get back to what was once there, there’s a bunch of new people that you can play with in that story.
You mention not wanting to make characters full-on villains, but Alejandro was definitely Season 3’s villain. Would he remain a full-on villain as the story continues to unfold?
I think anytime you can three-dimensionalize somebody in our show and show why they are the way they are, it only helps and deepens the character. Even in the season finale, we talked about some of his motivations and some of what it takes as a Brown man trying to achieve in this world. Sometimes you have to do certain things in order to get ahead. So hopefully that gave a little bit of an insight just in terms of the challenges that he’s faced and I think that going forward he will continue to be an impediment and a help.
What other characters would you like to see emerge in the present timeline?
It’s kind of an embarrassment of riches for us and it’s just trying to figure out how we can service everybody and feel like the audience is satisfied and still make sure Augusto and Adriana, our pool singers, are in there with everybody. So yeah, that’s a lot of the balancing act of the show, but I do think we have a lot of people to draw from and those storylines.
Acapulco, Seasons 1-3, streaming now, Apple TV+