“Palm Royale” creator talks explosive season finale, from Norma's reveal to Maxine's tragedy

Plus, whether or not Robert's [spoiler] will end badly.

Warning: This article contains spoilers about the Palm Royale season 1 finale, "Maxine Throws a Party."

Beneath the sun tans and the caftans, Palm Beach has a lot of secrets — and many of them came to light in the season finale of Palm Royale.

The AppleTV+ series wrapped up its first season with the Dellacorte Beach Ball, but things didn't exactly go as Maxine (Kristen Wiig) hoped. The society event came along with the discovery that Norma (Carol Burnett) is perhaps not really Norma at all, but instead, her long-presumed-dead boarding school roommate Agnes, who killed the real Norma and stole her identity.

After Maxine encouraged Mitzi (Kaia Gerber) to confront the father of her unborn child, she was horrified to discover the man in question was actually her own husband, Douglas (Josh Lucas). Heartbroken at this betrayal, things flew further off the rails for Maxine as the party descended into chaos when Mary Jones (Julia Duffy) attempted to assassinate President Nixon. Her stray bullet hit Robert (Ricky Martin), who had only just learned the truth of Norma's past and the episode ended with a (fatally?) wounded Robert lying in Maxine's arms.

Will Robert survive? Will Linda (Laura Dern) ever actually be able to stand by the courage of her convictions? Will Norma be exposed? And what will become of Maxine's marriage? We called up creator Abe Sylvia to try to get these answers (and more) out of him, so pour yourself a refreshing grasshopper and get ready to dive into the deep end of the sparkling waters of Palm Beach.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Maxine has spent the whole season trying to find her place in this society, and finally, we hear the full reality of her life about growing up in the orphanage. How much has this season been about her finding a place where she belongs or can be loved as opposed to attaining the trappings of this society?

ABE SYLVIA:  They're hand in glove, right? She's a victim and a purveyor of American exceptionalism. Whatever the pinnacle of the appearance of happiness is, that's what she's striving for. If she remains resolutely sunny, and in denial of reality, she thinks she'll get there and she, in fact, does. But the very moment that she gets there, every delusion or illusion she had about life and the how and the why and the what, comes crashing down all in one moment. So it's not so much about, "Oh, I am trying to keep up with the Joneses." It's, "I want to be of value in this world, and this world seems to value the status of these people."

We learn that Norma might actually be her roommate, Agnes, who's been living under a stolen identity all this time. Am I reading the implications correctly?

You're absolutely reading them correctly. So, this person whose approval Maxine sought, most of all, the person who never saw her as a worthy wife to Norma's darling Douglas is actually the biggest imposter of all. They're actually peas in a pod at the end of the day, Norma and Maxine. That's why Norma sees how dangerous Maxine can be. She sees a lot of herself in her.

What do you think Norma actually wants? Is it just power and control? Is it what Maxine wants? Is it something else? 

She wants to maintain her status at this moment in time, and she's really up against it because she's been an invalid for most of the season. But she wants what she has attained; everything that Maxine wants. She knows the moral compromises a person has to make to get there. She sees firsthand that Maxine is willing to make those compromises. And so, she sees Maxine as a formidable foe, Maxine's coming for what Norma has, and she's playing by Norma's rules.

The season ends in this moment of complete chaos. Is this what Norma wanted, or has it spun out of her control? 

It's certainly spun out of her control. But in the very last moments, Norma very much enjoys Maxine's public humiliation and the perhaps dissolution of her marriage. She enjoys the utter demise of Maxine's hard-won place wearing the crown at Norma's party. She's enjoying that very much until it turns, and her beloved Robert, is the one who becomes perhaps gravely injured because of it. She certainly didn't plan for Robert getting shot, but she loves the chaos of Maxine's emotional undoing.

Speaking of Robert, do you think he's actually the only person here who truly sees Maxine? It almost feels like his potential fatal ending is a worse blow to her than the truth about Douglas.

That's correct. That's the surprise. You have the truth about Douglas, and then you hear the way Maxine gutturally screams about Robert, who is probably the only truly decent person in Palm Beach. He's the one who pays the price.

Things are not looking good for him. Might he shuffle off his mortal coil in a second season?

Well, I'm not going to answer that question. Which I say with love.

In terms of Douglas, do you think there's some part of Maxine that suspected something like this was happening? 

Maxine, like a lot of people in a long marriage, continues to double down on her faith in the other person, even as the signposts are flashing a warning. That's a real sign of love. There is a certain amount of blind faith that goes along with love, and she keeps choosing this relationship because it's a source of identity for her. She's turned a blind eye. Josh, Kristen, and I made the choice that these two people really do love each other, and part of that love is looking past one another's flaws. I don't think it goes as deep as Maxine's been turning a blind eye to affairs for years and years and years.

Douglas says to Mitzi in the nail scene, "I didn't want to come back here. It brings out the worst in me. I'm triggered by this place." Douglas was perfectly happy living in a condo in Atlanta and having a nice life with Maxine, but the spoils of Palm Beach are corrupting. We made the choice that there's real love between these two people. There's real understanding. And the affair with Mitzi is something that has happened because of the compromises these two people have made over 20 years of looking past one another's flaws, and it finally erupts. Now, that's not to say Maxine's complicit in the affair. Douglas made a choice, let's be clear. But we are trying to connect the dots to how something like this could have happened.

Mitzi is planning to leave town and she gets talked out of it. This is a pre-Roe world. What does her future look like? What are her options here? 

For Mitzi, her original plan was to take a little money from Douglas, move to New York and have the baby and not hurt Maxine. It's Maxine who says women don't get anything unless they say what they want and tell their truth. Maxine, in some ways, is hoisted on her own petard. Mitzi probably would've gone away quietly. Maxine thinks that Perry is the father of that baby. And she says, "You go out there and you tell him that he is to stand up and be a man for you." And Mitzi goes and does that, and it's shattering.

My favorite surprise and delight of the season was the relationship between Evelyn (Allison Janney) and Eddie (Jason Canela). They are an unlikely duo, but there is clear chemistry there. Do they have a future? 

I certainly hope so. There's a direct line between many of the great scandals of Palm Beach that have served as inspiration for the show. And there was a story of a socialite in the '60s, Lilly Pulitzer, who shocked the town by marrying a Cuban man. So, we're really basing it on that. Evelyn says in episode 6 that Maxine was the tip of the spear that will destroy this society. Well, it's a society that probably needs to be destroyed. By busting through, Evelyn gets back in touch with her essential self and makes a choice that she never would've made if Maxine hadn't come to town and turned everything upside down. Maxine is the biggest iconoclast of them all, and that includes all the feminists in the feminist circle, in that she has, in many ways, freed Evelyn.

Speaking of which, Linda talks a big talk, but when the chips are down, she basically runs away. So how much does she stand by the courage of her convictions? How much are her ideals actually actionable for her? 

Linda truly believes in her political causes. It's completely sincere, but it's also a way for her to have an identity outside of the world that she grew up in. You find this so often with trust fund babies who now have a cause. They feel guilty about what they've come into in their lives, and they're like, "I'm going to give my life purpose through political action," and then aren't really able to see it through. That's really where the rubber meets the road for Linda. As we continue to explore Linda in season 2, that'll be the eternal question for her — is she prepared to really become the revolutionary she always wanted to be or said she was?

Laura's dad, Bruce Dern, played her father on the show. If you get a season 2, will we see Diane Ladd?

You just have to wait and see, but gosh, one of my favorite episodes of television ever is the Todd Haynes-directed episode of Enlightened. Diane Ladd and Laura Dern are so extraordinary in that episode. I pulled Laura aside multiple times and was just like, "You have to tell me all about shooting that episode." I think it's the finest episode of television, probably, in the last 20 years.

Mary Jones is perhaps the greatest surprise of the season finale. Will we learn more about her backstory and what drove her to this attempt to kill the president?

Again, we're pulling from inspiration from history, and Sarah Jane Moore, the woman who tried to assassinate Gerald Ford, came from the wealth and society that Julia Duffy's character comes from. She was endemic of a moment in time. Sarah Jane Moore says, "I just woke up one day and decided to kill the president. That that was the answer to my troubles." That's symptomatic of the society at the time.

Season 1 took place in 1969. Would season 2 take us into the '70s? 1969 is a time of immense cultural change, but the '70s take things even further and things get more cynical. What would that look like for Palm Royale?

I can't say too much about a potential season 2, but I will say Maxine isn't Maxine if she ever becomes cynical. Maxine's defining trait is her optimism. After what has happened to her, her optimism is severely tested, but she must choose it in order to survive. Her defining comic feature is optimism in the face of anything. It's her can-do American spirit. We just keep testing that can-do spirit with ever increasing things that would destroy a lesser person. So, Maxine will never lose that essential quality.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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