The last season of White Lotus, starring beloved stars like Aubrey Plaza and Theo James, left audiences with smiles laced with confusion and questions about love and marriage on their tongues. Each season of the anthology series so far has taken place at a fictional White Lotus resort in a vacation destination country and focused on the unraveling mystery of a death of one of the characters. Season one untangled the murder of the Hawaii resort manager Armand and introduced us to protagonist Tanya and her shady lover Greg. Season two saw the departure of beloved but grating anti-heroine Tanya, and revealed Greg’s nefarious intentions.
In season three premiere, we saw the return of Belinda, a spa manager that Tanya connected with and later abandoned in season one, as well as Greg, looking dubious as ever and accompanying another unsuspecting heiress to the White Lotus Thailand, where this season is set. At the opening of the episode we are introduced to Zion, Belinda’s son, cheerfully engaged in a wellness session before gunshots sound and he goes into panic as he doesn’t know his mother’s whereabouts. This is a classic White Lotus red herring technique, and it’s unlikely that it gives us any indication of who meets their demise this season.
We are also acquainted with the following sets of main characters:
Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie, three college friends on a girl’s trip
The Ratliffs, a wealthy family of five with some curious dynamics.
Chelsea and Rick, the seemingly stereotypical gold-digger couple.
Chloe, the young model accompanying Greg.
Blackpink’s Lisa and Thai actress Patravadi Mejudhon also appear as employees of the resort.
We are given brief introductions to each of these characters and their relationships with one another. In the Jaclyn, Kate, Laurie trio, we learn that Jaclyn is an actress who does well for herself and funds most of the trip. While Kate and Laurie engage in a subversive battle for her approval (one Laurie seems to be losing). The Ratliffs are there for research on their daughter Piper’s thesis on Buddhism. While their youngest son, Lochlan, faces friction with his siblings and parents about what he wants to do with his life. Chelsea, played by the characteristically hilarious Aimee Lou Wood of Netflix’s Sex Education, is a free spirit just along for the ride with her older and very gruff boyfriend Rick, who appears thoroughly irritated by everything. At the hotel bar, Chelsea meets Chloe, the companion of season 2’s unsuspected villain Greg and the two share a lively discussion and strike up a friendship.
The season’s premier on Valentine’s Day weekend struck up a number of queries likely familiar to avid White Lotus fans. Who are the bad guys? Who are the good guys? And whose body are they going to drag out of the water?
Greg’s return makes him the only character recurring in all three seasons, and begs the question of who he really is and what he really does, since we know now that he does not work for the Black Lives Matter movement.
What do you think? Will Mike White manage to twist our emotions the same way for the second time in a row? Or will our expectations be subverted yet again? Stay tuned for new episodes of White Lotus on Max every Sunday night to find out.