The White Lotus Season 3 Hides A Key Story In This Missable Moment

Mike White is going gangbusters with thriller elements this season of The White Lotus on Max, having more fun than ever with his use of foreshadowing in Thailand. Season 3, Episode 2, ‘Special Treatments,’ is full of omens, punctuated by ominous phone calls and near-death experiences.

It ended with what might first appear as an empty final moment with Jason Isaac’s Tim Ratliff. What viewers witnessed was Tim’s Mike White-directed thousand-yard stare, as always, backed by nature sounds indicating characters pondering things they can’t control. Closer examination unveils a barely audible story being told of a giant tsunami that once made landfall near the hotel. With this, the ending possibly becomes the most important moment in the episode.

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The White Lotus Season 3 Main Characters and Cast List

There are many familiar faces in Season 3 of The White Lotus, but some viewers may have trouble figuring out where they’ve seen them before.

Things Are Getting Shaky

‘Special Treatments’ features an opening scene jump scare which may be the scariest one of the series to date. Carrie Coon’s Laurie interrupts her trash-whispering friends with gunshot-like bangs on their glass door. We heard gunshots in episode 1, and more in episode 2. This time, they happened while verbal shots were being fired in secret.

A gun would appear again later in the episode, this time directed at Aimee Lou Wood’s adorkable Chelsea character during an armed robbery of the lobby store, compromising The White Lotus’ serenity earlier than usual this time around. If violence has found its way into The White Lotus this soon into the season, it doesn’t bode well for the characters’ security down the line. Chelsea browses with her free money-wielding new friend, asking to see a pretty “snake choker thing,” only to have it stolen from her before she could claim it.

The robbery incident is a clear indication that this White Lotus visit will be fraught with danger. As a violent band of thieves targets the hotel with a man on the inside posing as sculpted Russian wellness expert Valentin, evil is afoot, and not merely in a moral or philosophical sense as it has been in past volumes.

Speaking of past volumes, there’s a bonus Easter egg in this episode, aside from former Goonies star Ke Huy Quan at the other end of Tim’s damning phone calls. It’s a throwback to an earlier White Lotus season, helping to define one character’s motive as violence further strikes the resort.

Seismic Activity Detected

When Rick, played by Walton Goggins, reluctantly attends his meditation session, he reveals that his mother died of a drug overdose when he was young, and his father was murdered. He insists he’s empty. His last words in that scene declare “nothing comes from nothing,” which cues a knowing nod from the meditation guide and the welcome return of the original White Lotus theme song. It’s possible the music cue marks a callback to Sydney Sweeney’s character Olivia, who skimmed Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche by the pool in White Lotus‘s first season, a philosopher who famously considered ‘the will to nothingness.’

In Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, he argues that humans can desire suffering as long as they’re shown purpose for it. That purpose may just be surviving until tomorrow or, in Rick’s case, justifying his ‘this and that’ line of work which keeps him at a resting 8/10 stress level.

Nietzsche also notes an accompanying will to escape change, or, ‘the will to nothingness.’ This describes the state in which viewers find Rick: actively denying meditation therapy while on a wellness vacation. Here, viewers learn that Rick has abandoned the idea of meaning that Olivia had sought to reckon with on her drug-fueled getaway. In a nod to Season 1, Mike White rewards longtime fans with the classic White Lotus theme.

If there was one major takeaway from this episode, it’s that most characters won’t find peace. Rick has a tragic past and apparently no identity, as he informed the meditation coach. Now he’s embarking on a manhunt, so he’s probably an assassin. Belinda, played by Natasha Rothwell, can’t get away from her late client’s ghost. Meanwhile, Patrick Schwarzenegger’s Saxon rages after being denied a happy ending, harshing his dodgy pill-head mother’s buzz. Her husband, Tim, is involved in a storm for the ages back home, and that storm seems to be encroaching upon everyone’s Thailand getaway.

The Tsunami Story

This is all foreshadowing, which is made plain in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tale told by Lochlan, played by Sam Nivola, quietly overheard by both Tim and the audience at the end of the episode. Lochlan holds court with the family headed back to their room, vamping about a tsunami in a story that nearly requires subtitles to make out clearly.

He recalls the tsunami of Phuket, a real-life 2004 seismic sea wave resulting from a massive earthquake. It produced 100-foot swells that crashed down onto the west coast of Phuket, Thailand. The natural disaster was so devastating, it came to be known simply as “The Asian Tsunami.” Lochlan goes on to highlight the story of a young girl who was present, who had just learned about tsunamis. She screamed to her family about the approaching disaster, but no one listened despite her panic.

Eventually, her dad acknowledges her, but before Lochlan finishes his tale, he enters their hotel room and closes the door behind him, leaving Tim to consider what he’d just heard and apply it to his own situation. At this point in the season, Tim stares into a rising deep swelled by his past sins, while his own daughter sounds the alarm on her creepy older brother that no one cares to hear.

Who Will The Tsunami Hit?

If Lochlan’s story is indeed foreshadowing as it seems to be, most of the characters on the show are in trouble. It could help support Mike White’s insistence that this will be the darkest season yet. Though Tim’s family was present for the tsunami story, tsunamis are sweeping events, placing everyone in harm’s way.

Characters die at the end of The White Lotus. The way this season is shaping up, if most characters don’t die, they’ll surely be swept up in an incoming disastrous wave. Alarms are blaring already, but who will listen? Audiences will, as The White Lotus has changed its tune, but it’s once again hitting all the right notes.

The White Lotus

Release Date

2021 – 2024

Network

HBO

Showrunner

Mike White

Directors

Mike White

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