» Breaking down ‘White Lotus’ Season 3 and that killer finale

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By Anne Branigin, Shane O’Neill, The Washington Post

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The vacation’s over, White Lotus guests have been sent home in body bags, and we’re all out of lorazepam.

If you don’t want spoilers, take a lesson from the monkey statues and hide your eyes right now.

The third season of the Mike White series was more popular but also more divisive than previous installments – and not just because of all of the incest stuff. Sunday night’s finale managed to rack up five deaths, one near-death experience and four aborted attempts at poisoning by piña colada.

Thailand’s trio of 40-something girlfriends, played by Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb, were welcome additions to the world of “The White Lotus,” as was scene stealer Aimee Lou Wood (and her natural toothy smile).

More controversial were the show’s pacing (too slow, some viewers complained) and Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey’s Southern accents. At times, behind-the-scenes feuds – a rift over the theme song; Isaacs’s disclosure that “friendships were lost” – seemed to eclipse the show’s on-screen drama.

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Despite these criticisms, or in part because of them, “White Lotus” still generated plenty of conversation, fan theories and memes. Here, Style reporters Shane O’Neill and Anne Branigin enjoyed a late-night postmortem.

Shane: I was very satisfied with this ending. It felt very old-fashioned, just a big, huge, operatic blowout: “He was your father!” “I’m poisoning my family!” “The one person I wanted to save was the one who died!”

And seeing Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) perpetuate the cycle of disappointment that she endured in Season 1 was realistic and poignant.

Anne: Belinda pulled a Tanya! Conceptually, I like the idea of making Belinda this corruptible character. But this time, the betrayal didn’t feel as powerful – or all that surprising? Also, in what world are the feds not going to be looking at that $5 mill?!

Shane: I was telling my boyfriend earlier today that the most unexpected finish would just be a Hollywood ending where Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) turns in the Russian guys, kills them all in a shootout, gets promoted and marries Mook (the K-pop star Lisa). The ending we got wasn’t exactly that … but it was kinda close.

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My second guess was that Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) was going to be killed. I WIN. I WIN. I WIN.

Anne: And with Gaitok, we have another “innocent” who gets turned.

Shane: Just the pleasure of seeing that actor’s face contend with his moral quandaries – it was like watching Jimmy Stewart or something.

Anne: It did feel a bit strange that Mook tethered his success so tightly to the White Lotus. Like, girl, this man can get no other job? Maybe at a less homicidal hotel chain?

Shane: I’ve talked to other people who found her ambition and prodding of Gaitok to be toxic.

Anne: What did you think of those ineffective-until-they-weren’t poison coladas? I was disgusted by Lochlan (Sam Nivola) not rinsing out the blender, but I guess the teen-boy-ness of it all makes sense?

Shane: I found the symbolism of Lochlan barfing on his own reflection in the pool after he called his whole family narcissists to be a little heavy-handed – but I also loved it.

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Anne: Gotta give credit to Mike White for giving us Chekhov’s blender. There were a few moments throughout the season where I wondered: Why are we so burdened with Saxon’s (Patrick Schwarzenegger) protein-shake consumption? Now we know!

Shane: Thailand was above and beyond. Loved it top to bottom.

Anne: Frankly, I spent a lot of time playing Sudoku while watching this season.

Shane: It seemed more tuned in to the experience of being at a resort. It’s a little languorous, a little lonely. When you’re on vacation, the close relationships you have can be strained when there is nothing to do but enjoy them. Carrie Coon’s monologue in the finale nodded to that and also added a little redemption to that feeling. Full disclosure: I didn’t watch Season 2, which I think might be an advantage here. From what I’ve heard, it was very action-packed and eventful.

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Anne: That tracks because the second season is definitely my favorite. That story still felt propulsive while capturing that languorous quality you described. In Thailand, it felt like we’ve been in a holding pattern for much of the season – even with a whole incest storyline!

Shane: So much of the sex in this season is about actualizing fantasies fueled by unconscious desires. The first episode has innuendo about siblings sharing beds. Audiences are used to making jokes about Southern families being incestuous. By making it a reality on the show, the viewer is going through the same thing as a whole bunch of characters: contending with what happens when a latency becomes overt.

I love how everyone gets to live out their fantasy, but no one gets out of it unscathed: A son walks in or a friend snitches or a girlfriend comes home and smacks you over the head while you’re sneaking out a window. There’s always a consequence to fun. The tourism industry tries to hide this.

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Anne: Credit to White on this because what is a luxurious vacation for if not to actualize all sorts of fantasies – not just in terms of trysts, but more pedestrian desires. We want to look a certain way, we want to eat certain foods, we want to take a certain picture.

Another thing White has really carried throughout this anthology is how violent – to ourselves, to those around us – our desires can become.

There is so much to mine from this season – which is part of the reason I’m surprised I didn’t enjoy it more.

Shane: Is it just a hangover from missing Jennifer Coolidge? The Parker Posey “Piper nooo” memes aren’t enough?

Anne: I think this season is really fun to talk about. (And its ideal form may be clip compilations and memes). But as a season of TV, it kind of left me wanting. These resolutions felt … too convenient? Too tidy? Still, there are individual performances that have been fantastic.

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Aimee Lou Wood has been such a pleasure to watch. A lot has been made about her teeth, with the implication that we’re all exhausted by Hollywood’s perfect veneers. But I’ve really enjoyed seeing how she uses them for the purposes of her role, the uncertain lip biting, the gawky looks of surprise. She’s been a real scene stealer this season, and she has been a really refreshing balance to Walton Goggins’s (very) prolonged stewing.

Shane: Even though she is a conventionally beautiful woman, seeing someone whose looks deviate even slightly from the Hollywood mold is so refreshing. I can’t help but pour one out for Shelley Duvall when she’s on the TV. And while I don’t share people’s attraction to Walton Goggins or his hairline, I found their relationship realistic. I have met many women who believe that it is their literal destiny to fix men.

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Anne: I also enjoyed how White gave new life to the “frenemy” dynamic – which can be heavy-handed and more than a little sexist, in less able hands – by adding this trio of 40-something women on vacation. There’s something really delicious and layered about how those characters play off each other and the decades of history and tension they’ve built.

We all knew the “I’m so glad we did this” line was coming, right? And it would have been very easy to keep that on the level of farce, but then you have Laurie (Carrie Coon) really lay bare what that friendship means to her. It was the question hanging over viewers: What is keeping these people together? It was a lot of telling and not showing, to be fair, but when you’ve got Coon doing the telling, you’re forgiven.

In the end, it was the only arc that didn’t annoy me.

Shane: It’s kind of alarming how relatable that dynamic seems to be to so many people.

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The “Are you Republican?” moment was a watershed.

Anne: That was so deftly done – enough so that both conservatives and liberals connected to it. (Meghan McCain apparently?!)

Shane: One of my favorite takes I’ve read from this season came from the comedian James Tom, who posted on Instagram that he thought Sam Rockwell’s already infamous monologue was good “because I think white men are sickening perverts, especially when it comes to Asian women.”

Anne: Sam Rockwell’s monologue was incredible – and a season highlight. You don’t really see it coming, and as I was watching, it I kept being like, “Is this really happening? Where is this going?” And I really like when a performance puts me in that place.

Shane: It’s also very provocative in the current cultural climate. Rockwell’s character is describing autogynephilia – he’s eroticizing a fantasy of being a woman. That’s what some transphobes accuse trans women of doing: just fetishizing the idea of womanhood for sexual gratification.

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Anne: This is a really interesting point. I’m an Asian American woman who has lived in Southeast Asia – my early childhood and much of my 20s. And I distinctly remember that knife-edge feeling of being lusted after, envied and diminished, all at once, and not just by Western men. That monologue captures a lot of that dynamic (though in reverse).

Shane: And apart from really dumb jokes, we almost never hear anything – fictional or otherwise – from the perspective of the men who patronize Thailand’s trans sex industry. I’m also frankly relieved that we didn’t have a one-dimensional ladyboy character.

Anne: White is really invested in the power dynamics of sex, and we see that all over the place in Thailand. I was struck by how much more of the country we seemed to see than Hawaii and Italy, his two previous settings. Thailand is almost a character in itself this time around, which is pretty interesting, considering that it wasn’t his first choice. White originally wanted Japan, but HBO producers pushed him to go to Thailand for the better tax breaks.

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Shane: It’s telling that he’s more excited by the B-roll this go-round.

Anne: Back to the White Lotus guests, though. What other performances have you connected to this season? And what did you make of the Ratliffs? I wonder if we spent a bit too much time with them. They managed to do the most and the least at the same time.

Shane: I liked being in their orbit. I apparently carry the gay gene that renders me powerless to the charms of Parker Posey’s otherworldly “Southern” accent. I could listen to it all day.

I found the patriarch’s situation extremely relatable, that feeling of dread when you know you’ve done wrong and you cannot see your way out of it. I wasn’t getting a whole lot out of Sarah Catherine Hook’s pious Piper, but that made her final scene even funnier. Patrick Schwarzenegger chewed the scenery. And the other one looks like he was ripped out of a Calvin Klein ad from the 1990s. Mike White is so good at casting faces.

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The one area I’m not satisfied: the singing manager (Christian Friedel). I assume it was intentional that his set was cut short, but I hoped we’d get more of him singing in the finale. Alas.

Anne: Yeah, what’s up with that guy? Fabian? There is always a hotel employee performing for a well-dressed and generally disinterested audience. But as a hotel manager, he is nowhere near as fun (and diabolical) as Armond (Murray Bartlett) from Season 1.

Shane: Always a GAY employee.

Anne: My beloved Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore)!

Shane: Was that a Season 2 spoiler? I’m only on Episode 2, lol.

Anne: Forget you heard anything. Who is Valentina?

The White Lotus is now streaming on Crave

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