‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Review: Murder, Drugs, and Shocking Sex Awaits
At this point, The White Lotus has said just about everything it has to say about the sorts of people who frequent luxury resorts: the rich are selfish, ambitious, duplicitous, vain, rude, ruthless, intolerant, desperate, sexed-up, and violent, so consumed with themselves and their appetites that they think nothing of causing others pain.
Nonetheless, in Mike White’s HBO’s smash, the devil is in the details, and he finds compelling new ways to critique the elite with his series’ third season, which sets up shop in Thailand to witness the unraveling getaways of disparate vacationers. Once again blending murder mystery suspense with amusingly loopy social satire, it may no longer be revelatory, but at its finest, it’s an incisive portrait of class, wealth, power, and the push-pull between appearances and reality.
White’s gift for precise and telling characterizations and interpersonal dynamics is what continues to keep The White Lotus afloat, lending it a specificity that overshadows the familiarity of its worldview. At the White Lotus chain’s Thailand outpost, owner Sritala (Patravadi Mejudhon)—a national singing and acting legend—and her general manager Fabian (The Zone of Interest’s Christian Friedel) greet a collection of arriving guests.
Before they even step ashore, Timothy (Jason Isaacs) has already clashed with Rick (Walton Goggins) over his smoking, and tensions only escalate after they’re ensconced in their opulent villas, which are nestled in the forested hillside overlooking a radiant beach. In each of these ritzy bungalows reside beautiful and well-off individuals who seem, on the surface, to have it all. Yet per the series’ tradition, they’re really dysfunctional creeps and weirdos, amusing in their obnoxiousness and repellent in their callousness.
Timothy is a financial-industry bigwig and is traveling with his snooty wife Victoria (Parker Posey), his fratty dudebro eldest son and protégé Saxton (Patrick Schwarzenegger), his younger and more reserved boy Lachlan (Sam Nivola), and his nonconformist daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), whose desire to interview a local monk for her thesis is the reason they opted for Thailand.
No sooner have they settled in than the clan is informed that the resort encourages all guests to disconnect by handing over electronic devices for the week. They balk at this suggestion, and for Timothy, that proves both a shrewd and stress-inducing decision, since he shortly thereafter receives a call from The Wall Street Journal asking him about his dealings with an acquaintance. This is bad news, and it gets worse in the coming days, as Timothy learns that his involvement in a shady deal now jeopardizes everything he’s built—including his family, who are as spoiled as they are shallow.
Elsewhere at the White Lotus, things aren’t much calmer. Rick (Goggins) is a perpetually antisocial grump who isn’t thrilled about being at the retreat, much to the consternation of his younger girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), who weathers his storminess with remarkable positivity.
Less overtly hostile is TV star Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), who’s excited to be reconnecting with her lifelong BFFs Kate (Leslie Bibb), an Austin, Texas-based wife and mother, and Laurie (Carrie Coon), a divorced New York City businesswoman. Still, while their rapport appears to be flawlessly sunshiny, their habit of breaking off into pairs to gossip about the not-included third member of their party indicates not simply a degree of cattiness but the schisms—in terms of personal, professional, and political outlooks—that define their friendship.
As Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie get involved with hunky Russian-born employee Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius) and his buddies, The White Lotus additionally focuses on the resort’s staffers. Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) is a cheery security guard who pines for coworker Mook (Lalisa Manobal) and endeavors to prove himself worthy of her affections by getting a job as one of Sritala’s bodyguards, even though his sloppiness is a hindrance to that goal and mires him in firearms-related trouble.
Also at the White Lotus is season-one vet Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), who’s there both as a guest—waiting to be joined by her college-student son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay)—and to receive work training from Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul). Straddling the show’s upstairs-downstairs divide, Belinda quickly finds herself in potential danger when she encounters a familiar face from her past (not to be spoiled here). That figure is now operating under an alias, and his arm-candy partner strikes up a relationship with Chelsea that leads, ultimately, to twisted madness.
The White Lotus’ third go-round is fixated on psychic pain, its characters torn between materialism and its attendant comforts, and spirituality and the soulful contentment it affords, wondering along the way: Can we change? Can we heal? Can we confront and accept our own sins? Can we be honest with ourselves and others? White tackles such ideas with equal parts outrageous lunacy and scathing scorn, and his storylines’ twists and turns do a solid job generating anxiety, just as his cameos—including an inspired appearance by an Oscar winner—provide entertaining surprises.
As usual, hovering over everything is the specter of death, given that the premiere opens with Zion’s meditation session being rudely interrupted by a cascade of gunfire that culminates with a corpse floating by him in a pond. Hints strewn throughout The White Lotus allow it to function as a guessing-game whodunit, and a solid one at that, with the showrunner fashioning so many of his players as volatile, angry, and unstable that they might all be the season’s murderer.
“Bad things come in threes,” worries Chelsea, and while that’s not the case when it comes to The White Lotus, there is a nagging sense that the series’ formula is losing its freshness. Fortunately, White’s understanding of modern social dynamics remains sharp and nuanced, and he wrings regular humor from exposing and exacerbating the cracks in his characters’ facades.
His cast is similarly adept, led by a fantastic Isaacs as a paterfamilias crumbling under the weight of his guilt, shame, and impending doom, Coon as a woman whose chumminess is complicated by the true nature of her cohorts, and Goggins as a furiously unhappy man who’s convinced that he can only alleviate his suffering by confronting its source. Even if some of its novelty has worn off, these stars, and White’s lacerating scripting, makes it a pleasurably extravagant trip.