Warning: Spoiler alert for Season 2, Episode 1 of “Palm Royale.”
“Palm Royale” Season 1 ended with a bang and started with one as well.
The finale of the Apple TV+ show ended with Ricky Martin’s character, Robert, accidentally getting shot by Mary (Julia Duffy) after she attempted to assassinate President Nixon. The final scene showed Robert, who was pretending to be Astronaut Grant, bleeding on the floor.
With Season 2 of “Palm Royale” premiering Nov. 12, fans are curious to know: Is Robert dead?
“Well, we’re not saying he (dies),” creator Abe Sylvia previously told TODAY.com following the 2024 finale. “This is a classic soap opera cliffhanger.”
The showrunner also noted that if people looked closer, he was still breathing. But did Robert survive?
Ricky Martin in “Palm Royale.”Apple TV+
Season 2 begins with a major musical production. Maxine Dellacorte (Kristen Wiig) returns to the Palm Royale and orders a drink, but instead of her signature cocktail, a grasshopper, she gets served a martini.
When she asks the waiter where Robert is, he says he’s getting ready for “his big number.” Confused, she enters the ballroom and to her surprise Robert, in a snazzy and bedazzled tuxedo, starts singing “Comin’ Home Baby,” complete with dancers and backup singers.
It becomes a whole production when Maxine, in a bright yellow two-piece ensemble, gets on the table and starts to perform her own dance routine. The performance, Sylvia tells TODAY, is the “musical number of my dreams.”
Kristen Wiig in the Season 2 premiere of “Palm Royale.”Apple TV
“We wanted to start with a bang. I’m such a huge fan of movie musicals. I started as a dancer myself, and so I brought a whole book full of inspirations to the designers and brought in the choreographer,” Sylvia says. “It’s a mash up of a lot of my personal influences, and I was just so grateful that everybody brought their A-game and that we were able to make the musical number of my dreams.”
Shot in one day from beginning to end in a single take, he says, the dancers rehearsed for about three days while the costumes took weeks. They also built the set from scratch.
However, as the performance continues, Robert is shot and begins to bleed. Maxine, still on top of the table, is dragged away from Robert as flashbacks of the Season 1 finale when he was shot appear on screen. The musical number continues and ends with Robert on the floor.
It turns out Maxine was hallucinating and admitted into mental institute Sunny Tides. They have drugged her and she keeps asking for Robert.
Robert is then seen unconscious in a hospital bed with Norma (Carol Burnett) by his side asking how he knew her name. Robert appears to be alive, for now.
As viewers recall, Robert discovered that Norma was really Agnes and stole her identity. This was after Norma asked Robert to marry her so that he could inherit all her wealth.
Carol Burnett and Ricky Martin in “Palm Royale.”Apple TV+
In the second season’s first episode, Norma begins to put the pieces together.
But will Robert survive and be a threat to Norma?
In one scene, Maxine escapes Sunny Tides and visits Robert at the hospital. She hides underneath the hospital bed as Norma walks in and the doctor tells her that Robert is “touch and go,” leaning on go. If he does wake up, the doctor says, his speech will be their first sign of hope and from there they will assess for any brain damage.
After the doctor leaves, Norma talks to an unconscious Robert and tells him, “I know who told you about Agnes.”
By the end of the episode, Robert opens his eyes and simply says, “Agnes.”
“It’s so funny because I read the last episode last season and I’m like, ‘Oh, am I dying?’ and then Abe told me, ‘Oh, Ricky, I’m sorry I forgot to tell you, you’re not going to die,’” Martin tells TODAY.com. “But I am open to anything.”
Kristen Wiig adds that “it’s been hard to keep” Robert’s fate a secret, “because people have seen photos. So it’s been really hard for us to be like, ‘Is he a ghost?’”
But as viewers know, if anyone gets in Norma’s way, their future could be up in the air.
Sylvia notes that this season he played with different genres, including the theme of ‘60s “bitty horror movies.” He cites “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” and “Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte“ as inspiration.
“We wanted to bring an element of that to us. Even though the show is ostensibly a comedy, we want people on the edge of their seat and have this element of thriller to it,” he adds. “And as you make your way through the season, that just keeps building and building and building.”
As for Martin and Wiig, they joke that “a fake death every season” would be “funny.”
“You haven’t gotten to 10, so who knows what happens,” quips Wiig, with Martin adding, “You have to see Episode 10.”
New episodes of “Palm Royale” premiere weekly on Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
