Major Spoilers Ahead.
Late into the third installment of HBO staple The White Lotus (2021–Present), our dear, bereft Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) describes herself and her lover, Rick (Walton Goggins), as yin and yang. The comparison is straightforward but fitting enough: Chelsea acts as the soothing force to Rick’s impulsive anger. She loves him like he’s her child, as she describes to a friend in one episode; Rick, much older than Chelsea, also clearly sees her as a motherly figure.
Their unstable dynamic grows more fascinating because of their fated demise in the episode’s despondent conclusion. (Others have already identified the yin-yang formation of their bodies in the lily-pad-covered pond that surrounds the eponymous hotel’s Thailand location, where the third season takes place. Rick’s reckless actions lead to Chelsea’s death; arguably, Chelsea’s loyalty to fixing Rick’s issues is why she’s present at the show’s final shootout when her death takes place.
But Chelsea’s description of her relationship with Rick also illuminates the third season’s successes and pitfalls: a yin-yang series of characters, situations, and environments that meander serenely between profound and tedious. Perhaps we could argue these qualities are opposite sides of the same coin, balancing forces in a story driven by its characters’ actions. Yet moments of tedium lack the character development that would make them compelling, and the scenes of profundity come across as both overly important and surface-level.
The previous two seasons of The White Lotus, which took place in Hawaii and Italy, respectively, have enthralled audiences because of their character-forward storytelling. They emphasized and understood the intricacies, perversities, and comedies of interpersonal relationships: large families on vacation, feuding sexless couples on the brink of divorce, reunited friends tense from years of competition — all of them ultra-rich and on a new adventure to a glamorous resort, where they often deliberately isolate themselves from or unintentionally diminish, the lives of the locals that make their stay at the hotel perfect.
The show’s twist is also always the same: a dead body (or bodies) at the end of seven days, across which we discover the fissures of these relationships, or else how the characters patch themselves up at the end of their stay.
These pillars of the show make it worth returning to: the ensemble cast and the mystery of the murderer and the murdered. Unfortunately, the show’s defining characteristics make this season such a disappointment. While Chelsea’s and Rick’s deaths are striking and thematically sound—and the killers partially unexpected—our characters across the show receive unequal treatment in the depth, interest, and variety that the previous seasons have prided themselves on.
The greatest disappointment of the season is the Ratliff family, particularly Jason Isaacs as the family’s patriarch, Timothy. That he holds a secret all season of the impending lawsuits and financial crisis awaiting the family when they return home amounts to a conclusion that lacks any surprise or dread. The family never truly suffers under Timothy’s erratic, drug-induced behavior on vacation; none of them even really pressure him into saying what the hell is going on.
The show suggests that an explosive conclusion lurks around the corner, but by the time the family turns on their phones after a device-free week at the hotel, the show appears content to leave their reckoning with reality off the hook.
As viewers, we don’t even learn the specific actions Timothy committed that would place his family in peril of financial ruin. Explanations of criminality amount to vague FBI investigations and some wonderful over-the-phone panic acting from Ke Huy Quan as Timothy’s business partner. Otherwise, we are stuck for episodes in imaginative scenarios of Timothy killing himself and/or his family members — initially haunting inclusions that quickly yield to repetition and familiarity.
Meanwhile, Parker Posey as Timothy’s wife, Victoria, may go viral for her delightfully haughty Southern accent, but her character experiences little independent change apart from worrying over her stash of sedatives. The trio of Ratliff siblings — Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and Lochlan (Sam Nivola) — is each notable for their own, erm, odd reasons. But often the show rushes their development, especially for Piper, whose search for spiritual enlightenment at a nearby monastery concludes with a cowardly speech and rapid apology to her parents in the final scenes of the season.
These doubles of characterization also emerge in more satisfying, intriguing ways. Another trio of Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb), and Laurie (Carrie Coon), yearslong friends who seem to build their relationships with one another upon long-lingering tensions and competition, emerges as a tender central force to the show’s concluding episode. Coon’s monologue about her position among their friendship reorients our understanding of these seemingly surface-level relationships. That moment around the dinner table is so poignant and stirring, in no small part due to Coon’s empowered command over her delivery and her character.
The most exciting features of this new season, however, are Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and Greg (Jon Gries), repeat characters from seasons one and two. As she trains at the White Lotus Hotel’s spa, Belinda’s trajectory follows a bleak and tense path because of Greg’s nefarious presence — one informed by the events of the previous season. Their addition to the third season reminds us of the violence defining the series—and that such violence isn’t isolated to the previous season’s finales.
Our obsession with The White Lotus certainly amounts to a perverse interest in the lives of rich people; what would it be like to live in extravagance in a distant part of the world, at a luxurious spa-resort-hotel? As Victoria says in this season’s finale, “No one in the history of the world has lived better than we have. Even the old kings and queens.” But the moral truth of the show is evident in her follow-up statement: “The least we can do is enjoy it.” The show evades culpability for its evil characters, and what lasts is their entertainment value for us, the fans of a buzzy anthology show.
The White Lotus has long established itself as a legacy HBO show—and I’m sure there will be another season for us to watch all these ridiculous characters despise, yearn for, attack, and kill each other in whatever new far-flung place it takes place. I, too, will depart from the hotel with a pessimistic approach toward the events that transpired; what happens in the White Lotus will always happen in The White Lotus.
Review Courtesy of Arleigh Rodgers
Feature Image Credit to HBO via The Guardian