Summary
The White Lotus returns for Season 3 is typically fine form. Episode 1 is all about the introductions, as a new bunch of deplorable, dysfunctional patrons arrive for a deadly stay in paradise.
The White Lotus isn’t getting predictable, but it is getting more familiar, which you can tell writer/director Mike White is playing with intentionally in Season 3. The setup of Episode 1 is the same as usual – a bunch of wealthy patrons arrive at a branch of the swanky White Lotus, this time on the island of Ko Samui in Thailand. There’s a murder, depicted obliquely in the opening sequence but with no indication of who might have been killed or who might have done the killing. Then we wheel back in time to get to know the guests staying at the resort, all of whom are drenched in dysfunction and any of whom might justifiably commit or become the victim of murder.
But there are tweaks. Belinda is back, for instance, and it seems like the put-upon spa manager of White Lotus Maui might be a connective flourish in the same way that Tanya McQuoid was between the first two seasons. But then later in “Same Spirits, New Forms”, we also see that Tanya’s ex-husband Greg – the one who had her killed! – is also back, for unknown reasons. That’s literally twice as much continuity as we’re used to. The show’s evolving.
But the more things change, as people say, the more they stay the same, which is why we open with that murder. The Thai tranquillity – which, to be fair, is already pretty noisy, given the monkeys – is interrupted by off-screen gunshots, and Zion, a young man taking a wellness break on the instruction of his mother, rushes to intervene. Even this, though, is a little different, since Zion is Belinda’s grown-up son, and he’s rushing to save her, either from the gunman or, potentially, herself.
We see the body. But, as ever, we can’t make out who it is. The White Lotus has always operated on the most simplistic dramatic principles, and that’s no different in Season 3, it seems. We don’t know who’s dead, but we’d like to.
But there are introductions to be made in the meantime, and this constitutes the bulk of the premiere – again, true to form. And it’s always the best bit, this. The moneyed patrons all arrive one by one with little capsule displays of their own neuroses, and it’s tremendous fun trying to figure out which of these people will become the most despicable – the most likely to have killed someone or been killed themselves – before the season’s end. Usually, they’re all pretty equally in the running.
The Ratliffs, for instance, are classic The White Lotus guests who seem to have arrived without knowledge of the place beyond it being expensive and therefore desirable and are determined to prove they’re entirely above the rules and regulations. Patriarch Timothy is some kind of inscrutable finance bro who is almost certainly a criminal and his wife Victoria will absolutely not be giving up her pills for the duration of their stay, which I suppose is understandable. But it’s arguably their kids who’re most interesting – religious studies major Piper, little brother Lochlan, and older brother Saxon, a handsome but clearly psychotic uber-bro played by – who else? – Patrick Schwarzenegger with so much relish that it’s clear right from Episode 1 that The White Lotus Season 3 is going to rely heavily on him.
Still from The White Lotus Season 3 | Image via HBO
Walton Goggins is also here as a kind of frazzled hippy named Rick who is obviously very wealthy but is equally obviously struggling with… something, though it’s not entirely clear what. Either way he can’t be bothered with his much younger and annoyingly enthusiastic English girlfriend Chelsea, nor with any of the resort’s trademark wellness treatments. I love Goggins, of course, and I can’t help but feel like Mike White is smart enough that this seemingly restrained version of him can’t possibly last. We have an outburst or several in our future, I feel sure of it.
And then there’s Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie, three childhood friends who clearly hate each other but have become experts at pretending they don’t. Of the three, Jaclyn stands out as particularly problematic since she’s a modestly well-known TV actor who has paid for the other two to be there, and amid all the insincerity it’s very clear she didn’t intend this purely as an altruistic gesture.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jaclyn immediately captures Saxon’s eye, which is fair enough since she’s played by Michelle Monaghan, who is following up her turn in Bad Monkey for another run at “implausibly hot slightly older woman drives young men wild with her very presence.” If you’ve got it, flaunt it – that’s what Kate and Laurie would probably say, anyway.
Towards the end of the episode, Chelsea is left to wander, and runs into a young expat named Chloe who is dating a bald white guy – there are a lot of them in Thailand, apparently, so many that the locals have nicknamed them “LBHs”, for “Losers Back Home” – who just so happens to be Gregory Hunt, looking a little worse for wear. What’s he up to? We’ll have to wait and see.
