The White Lotus spoils

Spoilers ahead for The White Lotus season three.

The White Lotus season three wrapped up last night and it was fine. Some storylines resolved much more satisfactorily than others, but overall, this season was not as strong as the previous two. Not for nothing, this season also featured another episode (each season has been one episode longer), and one more main plot to keep track of. It was just a little too much, though, and some key characters were shortchanged, in turn affecting the dramatic resolution of their plot.

A perfect example of this is in the Ratliff family. As Victoria predicted, Piper can’t hack it staying at the meditation center, and Piper is forced to confront that she is more materialistic than she thought. The scene in which Piper confesses she cannot spend a year in Thailand is beautifully acted by Sarah Catherine Hook and Parker Posey, but Piper has been mostly a nonentity this season. There just isn’t much weight to her tearful self-realization—and disappointment—because we just don’t care very much about Piper. That falls on series writer/director Mike White, who definitely did not balance storylines and characters well this season.

Sticking with the Ratliffs, Timothy has been fantasizing about murdering his family for several episodes, and he actually tries it, via poison, only to change his mind and stop his family from drinking his poisoned cocktails at the last moment. The next morning, however, Lochlan ingests some of the remaining poison and appears to die. Only no, he doesn’t, he’s actually okay. All the Ratliffs are. Sure, Timothy finally tells them that their lives are changing, but the season ends before we see any of the other Ratliffs grapple with their changed circumstances. Timothy has been so afraid of his family’s reaction, and we don’t even get to see it! We just hear a reprise of the Christmas carol “Es Ist Ein Ros Enstprungen”, which signals Timothy’s renewed sense of self. Good for him! But WE built up eight hours of dramatic tension that went NOWHERE!

Another unsatisfying conclusion came from Rick and Chelsea, who, sadly, were The Bodies teased at the beginning of the season. Rick is a dumbass who can’t plan anything, and his poor planning gets Chelsea killed when he starts a gunfight at the resort. Again, the whole season built up to the confrontation between Rick and Jim Hollinger, but Jim barely gets in a word between them, and it isn’t even Jim who tells Rick that HE is actually Rick’s father. Once again, it is narratively unsatisfying to build up all that tension and then just not pay it off. Rick and Jim barely spoke, the words between them were largely meaningless, and the biggest revelation, that Rick killed his father, is rushed and neither we nor Rick have any time to process it.

Pacing and underwriting characters were the two key culprits of weakness in season three. Rick’s storyline was rushed, Piper Ratliff was too underwritten for her revelation to be meaningful, and in a similar vein, Gaitok was also too underwritten for his spiritual death to land as hard as it should. The struggle between his values as a Buddhist and the increasingly violent requirements of his job is also rushed, resulting in an underwhelming conclusion to his storyline. The sight of Gaitok driving Sritala, serving as her new bodyguard, should have been utterly chilling, as gutting as Rachel returning to Shane at the conclusion of season one, but instead it’s just kind of there. 

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Some things in season three worked, primarily the storylines involving the girlfriends and Belinda, whose spiritual death DOES resonate in a chilling way. Belinda and her son, Zion, successfully extort Gary-Greg for $5 million to keep his secret and not reveal he is in Thailand, and with her bag secured, Belinda ditches Thailand and, by extension, Pornchai, who genuinely cares for her. He proposed they open the spa of her dreams together; instead, Belinda is returning to Hawaii a rich woman. She has effectively done to Pornchai what Tanya once did to her—money really does taint everything.

Similarly, the friend trio of Jackie, Laurie, and Kate, which has been pretty toxic all season, finally have a sincere heart-to-heart, and Laurie reveals that she really does love her friends, and that their lifelong connection gives her life meaning. The friends reconcile, and their emotional honesty and renewed friendship is a lovely resolve to their storyline. These two plots, Belinda and the girlfriends, are perfectly paced over the eight episodes and reach satisfying emotional conclusions. The payoffs are rewarding even when it is dark.

But only two out of five main plotlines working isn’t a great batting average. Between underwriting and rushing conclusions, the themes of the season don’t resonate as clearly as they could. When they work, they work, as in Belinda’s case, but Rick, the Ratliffs, and Gaitok are all cheated out of more emotionally satisfying conclusions by thin, rushed writing. The White Lotus has already been renewed for a fourth season, and I hope it brings us not only another nightmare luxury vacation group, but also a return to the tighter, more thematically consistent writing we saw in the first two seasons. When The White Lotus hits, it HITS, but in the end, season three was mostly a miss.

Attached - Sarah Catherine Hook, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Aimee Lou Wood, and Lisa out in LA over the weekend.