The White Lotus was one of the hippest shows of 2020. The internet was obsessed, I’ve met zero people in the real world who watch it, but the GIFs and the memes were everywhere last summer. A second season, to be set at a new fictional White Lotus resort, is coming from series creator and writer/director Mike White. Jennifer Coolidge will be returning as Tanya McQuoid, and she will be joined by new cast members Michael Imperioli and Aubrey Plaza. Plaza will play “Harper Spiller”—who sounds intolerable just based on her name, and we are not talking enough about how good the character names on The White Lotus are—a wife vacationing with her husband and friends. Michael Imperioli is always a good get, but doesn’t Aubrey Plaza feel like EXACTLY the person to star in a season of The White Lotus? The minute I saw the headline I was like, Yes, precisely, this is the work.
Another face to this casting is something Maria pointed out, that Aubrey Plaza has used a “blaccent” in her performances, and while she hasn’t been questioned as intently as Awkwafina on that front, people have noticed.
What the fuck kind of ~blaccent~ was Aubrey Plaza doing in Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates though
— AB (@AlannaBennett) July 9, 2016
Could her performance in The White Lotus be a way of reckoning with that? The first season, at least, is all about white privilege and power dynamics. If the second season keeps building on that theme, this could be a way for an actor to revisit a past bad decision and interrogate their own choice(s) in a way that demonstrates empathy and personal growth.
I am not going to try to out-guess what The White Lotus season two will be about, but unless and until someone proves otherwise, I am choosing to believe that The White Lotus and Knives Out exist in the same universe. Like you cannot convince me that the Thrombeys and the Mossbachers don’t exist in the same world. And doesn’t The White Lotus, itself, seem like a place Benoit Blanc would end up investigating a suspicious death? Like we know Knives Out 2 is happening in Greece, who’s to say the locale couldn’t be a White Lotus outpost? Give me this, 2022. You’ve taken so much already.
