Has It Always Been This Slow?

Summary

• Season 3 of The White Lotus is the longest yet with a late-night cliffhanger leading to a full-moon party.
• Could new characters like Chelsea and Victoria provide the comic relief fans are missing?
• Mike White’s engagement with themes of money, monkeys, and messiness is at its peak in Season 3.

Season 3 of The White Lotus on Max is set to be the longest yet with eight episodes. The episodes usually cover a full day at the hotel, but Season 3, Episode 4 ‘Hide or Seek’ ended on a late-night cliffhanger before the oft-mentioned ‘full-moon party’, a real-life all-night beach bash thrown monthly in Thailand. With all the story lines coming to a head at the halfway point, fans are likely in store for a banger. Let’s break down the key story points through episode 4, as well as where the series stood at the mid-point of the past two seasons, as this season so far has been a lot of set up without much action.

This season’s episodes might feel slower because of their relative lack of comic relief. Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya really lit up the screen previously and provided the series’ funniest moments. Could there be a budding Tanya replacement this season? Ditsy-but-well-meaning Chelsea, played by Aimee Lou Wood, and out-to-lunch Victoria, played by Parker Posey, are decent candidates. Fans aren’t quite sure yet who the MVP character is this early. However, if there are three things The White Lotus fans are sure of throughout the three seasons, it’s that Writer-Director Mike White is embattled by money, obsessed with monkeys, and loves making messes. With that knowledge, White is more in his element than ever right now.

Mike White Is Embattled By Money

Tanya was a lightning rod for Seasons 1 and 2 of the series. At the midpoint of Season 1, Episode 4’s ‘Recentering’, she offers Natasha Rothwell’s wellness expert character Belinda a business partnership on a lark – the potential opportunity is frivolous for Tanya, but would be utterly life-changing for Belinda. Tanya backs out of the deal, stating she wanted to stay away from “transactional relationships,” ironically, while dating fraudulent Greg.

Not only did Tanya represent a foil for most of the show’s comedy, especially in Season 2, but she embodied the sheer embarrassment of wealth that the show lambasts at every turn. By that logic, it makes sense that she’d die at the end of Season 2, despite how difficult it was to accept she was gone forever. Many fans were anxious to see who would take up the mantle in Season 3 and replace her role on the show.

Season 3 offers a couple of fun alternatives to Tanya’s wildcard character, including Chelsea, who remains bubbly and optimistic despite her perilous bad luck, seeing herself threatened with a gun and bitten by a snake before the season’s even halfway done. Victoria is an idiot-savant of a mother. She’s aggressively opposed to tests of her mental aptitude and constantly gives advice. Intent on seeing the bright side of life, she over-medicates to achieve Chelsea’s natural mindset. Their characters are sure to evolve, especially Victoria, having just had her pills stolen by her spiraling husband, Tim, played by Jason Isaacs.

‘Recentering’ introduces Greg as an adorable old man who falls for Tanya. Fans wouldn’t know until the following season that he was a murderous rat, but his emergence onto the scene was significant despite the audience’s ignorance at the time. Greg claims to be a government land management employee, but his presence at the hotel is unlikely at that pay grade. The White Lotus is an outrageously exclusive hotel for enormously wealthy guests. Similarly, in Season 2’s midpoint episode ‘In the Sandbox’, viewers meet ‘the gays’ – a yacht-bearing crew of fun-lovers who take a liking to Tanya. ‘The gays,’ as Tanya refers to them, are a band of criminals who present as great hangs for Tanya to blow off steam with as they conspire to murder her.

Again, the audience would have no idea that these characters were as insidious as they’d turn out to be, but their introduction in retrospect was super relevant. However, Quentin, the evil troupe’s leader, tells Tanya in ‘In the Sandbox’ that she’s like the star of her own Italian opera, to which she replies, “Does that mean I’m doomed?” He said no, but he lied, and signaled fans to look out for similar exchanges down the line.

What characters could potentially be welcomed in Season 3, Episode 5 that are unassuming but dangerous? Belinda’s son is expected to finally arrive, but he’s her sweet boy, right? He was already shown escaping gunfire in the series staple cold open. Surely, he’s a good egg, but everyone’s morals are so wishy-washy on this show, it’s impossible to be sure anymore.

Speaking of shooting at bad guys, Chelsea’s boyfriend Rick, played by Walton Goggins, is heading to find the man who killed his father. Apparently, his dad visited Thailand before Rick was born to stop The White Lotus from exploiting the locals. Who knows if that’s even true? That’s what makes it so enduring, despite its rigid patterns. The White Lotus‘s character motivations are as ever-evolving as they are erratic.

Mike White Is Obsessed With Monkeys

In ‘Recentering’, Mark Mossbacher, played by Steve Zahn, floats in the kids’ pool with his son Quinn. Mark had just learned, via a darkly hilarious phone call, that his father led a double life and actually died from AIDS and not natural causes, as he was always told. Quinn tells Mark he’d drunkenly said sex with Quinn’s mother was like eating a plate of live worms. Mark regrets saying it, leading Mark to come clean, while still kind of drunk, and get a monkey off his back with Quinn like his father never could.

Comedy and sincerity danced in a harmonious rhythm during Season 1 in a way that successive iterations have failed to recapture. Currently, Mike White is leaning further into the drama of tragedy and intrigue. That’s not to say Season 1 simply treaded water with heavier subjects, as levity provided air for the viewer to catch as characters explored deeper themes, seen when Mark fumbled his way through a particularly brave heart-to-heart.

Mark confesses to Quinn that he cheated Quinn’s mother once, which led to a long period of penance, describing it as hell. Fortunately, he found a way to grow through it, using a signature Mike White analogy to explain the act and its repentance. “In the moment, you’re a monkey, possessed… but you regret it,” Mark says. “There’s the man, and there’s the monkey, but somehow you gotta be man enough to face the monkey.“

There’s a clever shot early in Season 3 that positions the Ratliff kids as the proverbial see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys. Patrick Schwarzenegger’s Saxon wears shades, Sarah Catherine Hook’s Piper wears headphones, and Sam Nivola’s Lochlan drinks from a bottle. The ancient Chinese proverb classically represents the guarding of one’s spirit to avoid negativity, although it can also be used to refer to those ignoring malicious behavior. Saxon Ratliff’s incestuous tendencies in the broad view of his parents come to mind.

These monkeys are seen on the beleaguered Ratliff family’s hotel room countertop. The statuette chimps are featured in addition to real monkeys pointed to in Season 3, Episode 1, who are cautioned as aggressive and mentioned offhandedly by a meditation expert, who preaches calm for “our chattering monkey minds.”

Back in Season 1, just before the midpoint, Mark Mossbacher drunkenly tells his son that they’re all just monkeys living in ‘monkey pods’, “driven by base instincts to create these hierarchies and hump each other.” Later, on White Lotus Hotel Manager Armond’s desk rests the same ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ statue.

Season 1’s midpoint episode ends with Belinda walking in on Armond, who’s engaging in cocaine-fueled sexual deviance with one of his subordinates. Belinda would be forced to wrestle with her options, choosing whether to hold her boss accountable for the professional atrocities she’d just witnessed, as he used his rank and resources to take advantage of an underling. It was surely the most memorable midpoint cliffhanger of the series so far, and set the tone for what fans could expect moving forward as the heat ramps up for the volume’s closing half.

Mike White Loves Making Messes

It’s no surprise Parker Posey describes the Ratliffs as a family of monkeys. She says while the entire family is very playful and reactive, it was important for her character to “be funny, and to bring wit and silliness.” This is a potentially important note, as the Ratliff family is the messiest bunch of relatives we’ve seen in the entire series, maybe even since Game of Thrones. Plus, she could be hinting at a more rowdy version of her character down the stretch, gaining more bravado with each moment that passes off of her meds, which could delight aching Tanya fans.

Mike White has pulled out all the stops with the Ratliffs this season, serving up fraud, drugs, and incest – all under one family name. Additionally, violence is clearly on their horizon after patriarch Tim steals a gun during his pill-laden plummet on the heels of an international money-laundering scandal. Woof.

Meanwhile, Tim’s wife, Victoria, is ambiguously shady herself, awkwardly denying knowledge of one of three vacationing girlfriends who insists they met at a baby shower 10 years prior. Why be so weird about a baby shower? That group of two-faced friends represents a deep dirt mine for Mike White, who’s toyed with the idea of women in secret competition since The White Lotus‘s inaugural season.

In Season 1’s midpoint episode ‘Recentering’, Olivia Mossbacher, played by Sydney Sweeney, attempts to seduce her friend Paula’s flame-dancing fling. Later, she insincerely confides that the two girls are friends, and she’s thankful they’re so close. The audience also knows Olivia comes from money, and her family brought Paula, who doesn’t, with them to the White Lotus hotel.

The White Lotus‘s first family presented a perfect analog for the series’ exploration of the rich vs. the exploited, seeing Olivia discontent with everything she has. Exercising her vaunted class position, Olivia shows a need to prove she’s hierarchically entitled to a piece of her poor counterpart’s gains, however they’re obtained. Season 2’s midpoint episode ‘In The Sandbox’ features a more altruistic female friendship in Escort Lucia and dabbling musician Mia’s bond before Mike White blows the concept up entirely in Season 3.

Lucia, with Mia’s interest in mind, encourages Mia to milk the rich for their wealth with her good looks. Meanwhile, Aubrey Plaza’s Harper and her boyfriend Ethan have an uneasy bond. It’s shaken off the rails when Harper finds a condom wrapper in their hotel room seat cushions with Lucia as the culprit. The wrapper ultimately belonged to Ethan’s co-traveling frenemy, Cameron, played by Theo James. Cameron had already challenged Harper and Ethan’s trust leading up to this point, with Cameron making advances towards Harper.

Cameron’s injection of mistrust sets up blow-up fights later in the season, including a physical bout between Cameron and Ethan. He represents toxic masculinity in Season 2, with his shirt always off and his libido always on, to the detriment of his relationships, both friendly and romantic. Fellow philanderer Dominic, played by Michael Imperioli, unwittingly promotes Cameron’s extramarital sex by commissioning Lucia to begin with. These infidelity themes echo the Mossbachers’ struggles from Season 1.

Ethan, and to a greater extent, Dominic’s son Albie, are more ideal versions of faithful men, though their female companions rebel in varying ways against the good guys’ safer manhood. To close out ‘In the Sandbox’, Albie finds sexual reassurance in the same sex worker shared by Cameron and his own father. Woof, again.

In Season 3, three gossiping girlfriends demolish the friendly foundation laid by Lucia and Mia’s relative purity. Leslie Bibb’s Kait, Carrie Coon’s Laurie, and Michelle Monaghan’s Jaclyn constantly bury each other in secret using the same mouths they build each other up with.

In Season 3, Episode 4 ‘Hide or Seek’ After being sent to a cheap geriatric resort by a hot criminal staff member, the same one who led a hotel robbery that threatened Chelsea’s life, the girls commission him to show them a fun bar, where they meet his villainous cohorts. To close out the episode shortly afterward, a club-remix of Season 3’s title theme is cued, signaling next time, it’s going down for real.

Mike White Is In Top Form In Season 3

‘Hide or Seek’ follows a unique format in its longer season. It represents the first of two parts, chronicling a calendar day in Episode 4, which will conclude its nighttime events in Episode 5. Because of this, the episode didn’t see the traditional fireworks of a White Lotus middle episode. This may leave some fans pining for a gasp-worthy reveal, which has historically come in the form of a surprising sex scene, i.e. Armond’s coked-up partying or Albie’s father-son sexual partner swap.

Audiences likely need not worry, though, as the ‘full-moon party’ suggests bottomless drinks and boundless pursuits for multiple White Lotus players. Perverted Ratliff son Saxon on a smarmy mega yacht, and the treasonous girlfriend trio on a spite-driven romp of their own, are all sure to dive into some delicious dirt by the end of Episode 5. By this point, Saxon’s already sexualized his sister, exposed himself to his younger brother while masturbating, and otherwise generally proved himself an all-time douche. He’s now coerced Lochlan into helping him womanize the young dates of much older men on a huge boat belonging to Greg, or “Gary”, as he calls himself here.

Stars are aligning entering the full moon party, which kicks off Season 3’s second half. As of now, Belinda’s son is arriving soon while she tails Gary, who’s currently gathering intel on Belinda in a spy vs. spy tragedy of errors. Chelsea’s boyfriend Rick is headed to Bangkok to kill the Thai White Lotus owner who allegedly killed his father, and Tim’s just stolen a gun from hapless Security Guard Gaitok amidst a mental breakdown following the news of his impending criminal crucifixion.

We’re in for a wild conclusion. None of these plotlines are particularly funny, nor were they presented as such. Still, The White Lotus has never been as engrossing as it is in Season 3. Mike White is in rare form, and as Saxon says at the end of ‘Hide or Seek’, “Full moon, baby, sh**s about to get crazy.”