Warning: this article contains spoilers for the finale of season three ofThe White Lotus. Do not read on unless you have seen episode eight, season three.
Inthe Hollywood Reporter’s recent oral history, Mike White bristled at the thought of The White Lotus lapsing into a formula. For most of its third season, this didn’t make a lot of sense. After all, in its depiction of the obliviously wealthy, its whodunnit structure and its now mandatory transgressive sex scenes, a lot of this year’s season felt like The White Lotus by numbers.
The finale went a little way to change things up, though. In the first two seasons, the long-promised deaths were both whoops-a-daisy accidents – in one, someone walked into the blade of a knife; in the other, Jennifer Coolidge fell off a boat – but this season ended in good old-fashioned murder. After last week assaulting the man he thought killed his father, Rick (Walton Goggins) was tracked by him back to the hotel. In retaliation, Rick shot him. Rick’s girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), was caught in the crossfire of the ensuing shootout, and then Rick was shot by hotel security. Where The White Lotus was once led by farce, it now found itself being led by grim violence.
It was at least in keeping with the episodes that preceded it. This year’s White Lotus was darker and slower than previous outings. Realistically, this was always going to be the grimmest ending to a season since the series began. However, it was also perhaps the least satisfying.
Much as White might protest, there is a formula to The White Lotus. A death is always hinted at in the first episode, and the narrative is propelled by the discovery of what happened. And that means that, while all the headlines today will be about Rick and Chelsea, everything else that happened over the last couple of months ends up feeling like a red herring.
This was especially true of the finale. So many promising storylines, simply by dint of the fact that they didn’t result in death, just dissolved. Saxon Ratliff (Patrick Schwarzenegger) arguably had the most interesting plot of the show, as an obnoxious materialistic alpha-bro whose eyes were gradually opened to life’s deeper meanings through drugs, spirituality and (to some extent) incest – but essentially sat the episode out, his journey unresolved. The story White has described as a “blond blob” – about three women who bitch about each other a lot – ended with a nothingy monologue that came out of nowhere and relied entirely on the ability of Carrie Coon (as Laurie) to elevate weak material through sheer strength of will. Remember when Victoria (Parker Posey) blanked Kate (Leslie Bibb) in episode two? It was never mentioned again.
Even the big deaths failed to stand up to much interrogation. The man Rick killed (who was his father, but everyone guessed that a month ago) was married to the owner of the hotel. And yet Rick returned to the hotel anyway, after invading his home and assaulting him. Why not immediately leave the country? Why not spend even a second acknowledging the danger he was now in? It was such a startling, lazy lapse in logic that it undermined the entire plot.
The White Lotus has always been a brilliant moment-to-moment show. And, in fairness, the finale did some terrific work building a sense of inescapable dread purely through cutaways. As the climax drew near, monkeys screamed. A hotel worker spraying some foliage became something out of Apocalypse Now. Somehow, a simple shot of the island panning into view became the most terrifying thing you have ever seen. But this all means much less when the show forgets how to hang itself together properly.
But there’s always next time. The White Lotus has become a wildly important show for HBO, so more is certainly to come. And, if nothing else, White used this finale to plant the seeds of something that could end up being very special indeed. I’m talking, of course, about Belinda.
In the first season, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) was a hotel worker who found herself bonding with and then being screwed over by Tanya (Coolidge). This time she found herself becoming extraordinarily wealthy after meeting Coolidge’s ex-husband, and then screwed over Pornchai, her colleague turned love interest who wanted to start a business with her. The season ended with Belinda sailing away into the distance, her wildest dreams achieved at the cost of her humanity.
Might Belinda turn up for season four, just as rich as patronising and oblivious as all the White Lotus guests she has spent years rolling her eyes at? If so, it would be a heel turn for the ages. At the very least, it would go some way to salvaging what has ended up being a frustratingly middling season of television.
The White Lotus aired on Sky Atlantic and is available on NOW