White Lotus wilts with season 3

Borrowing a proclamation from a dear friend, The White Lotus can be distilled into this thesis: rich white people doing awful things and getting away with it.

I couldn’t have described this show any better.

Over the course of three seasons, we’ve followed a rotating cast of characters whose intertwined stories each begin with a mysterious corpse and then rewind to unravel the events leading up to the death. But the show is less about whodunit than about who these rich assh*les are.

It’s a social satire dressed as a murder mystery, where privilege and indulgence collide with tragedy.

The show’s brilliance lies in its ability to hold up a mirror to its audience, forcing us to confront the very systems we simultaneously disgust and envy. It's easy to pass judgment on these characters, but would we be as callous, rude, and audacious as these people if we had the same money and privilege that they do?

*****

The third season is set in Ko Samui, Thailand—a setting that trades the hedonistic chaos of the first two seasons for something more introspective. Along with the rest of this seasons characters, we are introduced to Piper Ratliff, and idealistic college student played by Sarah Catherine Hook is joined by her family, made up of her (secretly) financially wrought father, Timothy, her lorazepam-reliant mother, Victoria, her manosphere-manchild older brother, Saxon and Lochlan, her alarmingly ignorant innocent younger brother. Piper’s journey is framed as a pursuit of enlightenment but ultimately reveals itself as yet another form of privileged escapism.

Glacially moving through the Tropics

The choice of Thailand as a backdrop is significant. While Bangkok might have offered easier access to the vices we’ve come to expect of the show—drugs, sex, and debauchery—Ko Samui’s relative isolation forces both characters and viewers to confront their desires more obliquely. Buddhism, or at least Western appropriations of it, becomes a thematic undercurrent. It’s as if the season’s pacing, which is glacially slow, is mimicking meditation itself.

This deliberate pacing might have been forgivable had the finale delivered on its promise of chaos. Instead, it felt rushed and predictable—a betrayal of the show’s ethos. We were primed to hate Mike White for his audacity-vitriol for doing something we can’t do, such as killing his darlings. Instead, we were left underwhelmed by his restraint.

The central deaths of seasons 1 and 2 were anticlimactic, often accidental, but both delivered with shock and confusion–moments worthy of picking up the remote or dragging the cursor on the progress bar to rewind and fully process their absurdity. Season 3’s deliberate deaths lacked that same visceral impact.

I would like to preface my thoughts by saying that I liked Chelsea’s character. Aimee Lou Wood played her so endearingly. And while I personally think that as actors, Walton Goggins and Sam Rockwell are interchangeable, Goggins as Rick felt like Chelsea’s perfect opposite, and their dynamic was somewhat entertaining to watch. Yet, her death, which should have been devastating, landed flat. Her death seemed engineered for profundity rather than serving the show’s thesis: that wealth insulates even from meaningful consequences.

Glimmers of Gold

Season 3 wasn’t without its iconic moments: Sam Rockwell’s asian girl monologue; Rick letting out snakes at a local snake show in his weed-induced haze, Saxon’s escapades culminating in an incest-adjacent blur, Carrie Coon’s face as Laurie falling of the window while she escapes from her one-night-stand and Alexie’s failed extortion; and of course all of Parker Posey’s scenes and her immaculate North Carolina accent. These moments were chaotic, unhinged, and darkly comedic—true to The White Lotus’ DNA. Yet they often felt disconnected from the narrative’s core.

The writers had time to put in these iconic scenes but didn’t have the energy to flesh out Rick’s backstory. How could someone so meticulous in planning revenge not know his target was his father? The reveal was less Darth Vader-Oedipus level iconic and more stale soap opera. A failed attempt to create a twist and curate a tragedy.

Carrie Coon delivered one of my favorite moments: a monologue dissecting the complexity of female friendships. It was perfectly delivered and well-acted, yet it felt empty because it was undercut by the absurdity that followed—a mass shooting escape where her trio of friends comically run away from the action.

Meanwhile, Patrick Swarzenegger’s Megan Fahy moment (you’ll know it when you see it), offered a glimpse of what this season could have been. Yet there was no follow-through. The Ratliffs evaded death—and even knowledge of the mass shooting that ensued—leaving their arc frustratingly incomplete.

Hopeful anticipation

Despite its missteps, Season 3 still delivered enough intrigue to keep me invested in this anthology series. Mike White’s ability to blend satire with tragedy remains unparalleled—even when he stumbles.

Will I tune in for Season 4? Absolutely. Because even when The White Lotus falters, it offers something few shows do: an unflinching look at privilege that leaves us questioning our own complicity.