How Jon Gries’ Return To ‘The White Lotus’ Could Shape Season 3
SPOILER ALERT: This piece discusses plot points from the first two episode of The White Lotus.
Up until Season 3 of The White Lotus, many assumed that an ingredient for the show’s separate island itinerary format was one connecting character from a previous season. Jennifer Coolidge, as Tanya McQuoid, appeared in back-to-back seasons, initially as a woman mourning her mother and then as an adventurous newlywed.
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Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda Lindsey befriended Tanya in Season 1, and while Rothwell sat Season 2 out, she has brought Belinda back in full force to Thailand for Season 3. As Rothwell explained to Deadline ahead of episode one, Belinda is navigating the line between hotel guest and employee this season, as she is more of the former while learning from a group of the latter to broaden her own career knowledge and expertise.
What nobody saw coming was a character who could connect all three seasons in existence so far — Jon Gries’ Greg.
Gries’ return in the first episode of Season 3, introduced to Aimee Lou Wood’s Chelsea by his new girlfriend Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon), spells out yet another layer to the Thailand-set installment. Greg met and made an impression on Tanya in Season 1, and Tanya ultimately abandoned her plans to help Belinda start her own spa after Belinda gave Tanya a soothing treatment in Season 1 when Tanya was grieving the death of her mother. Instead, she ran off with Greg and married him.
In a way, Greg’s return brings back the ghost of that friendship, or budding relationship between Belinda and Tanya, even though McQuoid died at the end of Season 2, trying to escape a hit by Quentin (Tom Hollander) on his order. In the White Lotus Season 2 finale, it was revealed that Greg had been conning Tanya. He had originally insisted they take their Sicilian vacation alone and expressed disappointment when Tanya brought her assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), but then he left in the middle of their stay at the hotel.
Episode 7 of Season 2, titled “Arrivederci,” watched Tanya confront Quentin about what she suspected could have been a past romantic relationship between him and Greg. She confirmed her hunch that the pair had fallen in love, and her perilous fall from the fancy yacht signaled that the lovers were scheming to kill her for her money. Despite Tanya’s prenup ahead of her marriage to Greg, his departure halfway through their trip to Italy provided him an alibi and loophole through which Quentin could kill her without it being pinned directly on Greg.
His return in the third season will hopefully answer some questions following that explosive ending for Tanya, such as whether or not he ended up with her money and also what he is aiming to get out of his now girlfriend Chloe.
In Episode 2, viewers learned that Greg now goes by Gary, and though Walton Goggins’ Rick Hatchett questions the retiree’s former line of work, all Gary/Greg teases is “a little bit of this and that.” Belinda’s double take when she lands on Greg’s bald-headed mug in episode 2 also signals something in the coming episodes, whether she will recognize him or not.
After all, though Chloe likens who she knows as Gary to an LBH, or loser back home, as many white, bald men in Thailand are commonly called, Greg could be anything but, or that plus some more sinister things if his past is anything to go by.
In the third episode of Season 3, Belinda realizes where she recognizes Greg from and confronts him while he is at dinner with Chloe, Chelsea and Rick, but he plays dumb, claims his name is Gary and overall does not react after Belinda tries to jog his memory with the Maui White Lotus and the name Tanya McQuoid. First she asked him if they had met before and then if he dated a woman named Tanya McQuoid.
RELATED: ‘White Lotus’ Star Natasha Rothwell On What Jennifer Coolidge Texted Her After That Season 2 Death
Before this confrontation, Chloe told Chelsea by the pool that Gary’s ex-wife killed herself and that she was “a real mental patient,” but Chloe didn’t name the woman. The story of her death involved her walking into the ocean and ended with all the search party finding being a part of her leg.
Stay tuned for updates as new episodes of Season 3 of The White Lotus arrive on Sunday evenings on HBO and Max.
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