There are theories that William Shakespeare was not a real person—or that, if he was, he didn’t author his many plays. After Sunday night’s season finale of The White Lotus, it wouldn’t be ludicrous to speculate that perhaps, in a different lifetime, it was Mike White who penned all those works. Because, Jesus, Mike…that was a lot. Even our old friend The Bard, should he have actually existed, would need to take a long walk around the block after this one, staring off into space.
Fans had been waiting since the season premiere to find out who the floating body was and who shot them. They got far more than they bargained for.
Patricide, poisoning, ultimate betrayal, incest fallout, and no less than five dead bodies: The finale almost played as a smug middle finger to viewers harrumphing that nothing was happening this season. It was tragic in a way that The White Lotus, for its previous seasons’ respective killings, hasn’t leaned into before.
Something that epic was perhaps the only place the series—and creator Mike White—could go, given how huge the show has become.
It hasn’t just brought back the water cooler; it’s brought back an Olympic-sized pool for its fans to gossip over. Of course the only way to legitimize that would be to stain the water with blood and, from the viewers, tears. (Carrie Coon, may you win every award there is, find eternal happiness and beauty, and never face a worry another day in your life for that gorgeous monologue about friendship.)
So, uh, what happened? It seems everybody’s theories were wrong—but also everybody’s theories were right.
The First Murders
Rick (Walton Goggins) is an enlightened man, having freed himself from his lifetime of daddy issues after confronting his father’s killer, hotel owner Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn.) He wakes up in Bangkok to the sight of Frank (Sam Rockwell) mid-bender, dancing around with prostitutes in a pair of leopard-print underwear—an image that has been pleasantly seared into my brain.
Rick hoofs it back to the White Lotus to reunite with Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), who does a rom-com-style run across the beach to jump into his arms that is so sweet that even Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) seems moved. They finally seem to have achieved the cosmic connection Chelsea always knew they would, which, in the White Lotus universe, is a chilling state of bliss.
“At this point, we are linked,” Chelsea says. Rick tells her they will be together forever. Never has an exchange so romantic been so dooming. I’ve made a mental note to run screaming “I don’t want to die because of you!” if the next man I date ever says something sweet like that to me.
Mr. Hollinger is back at the hotel and spots Rick. They have a testy confrontation, during which Hollinger insults Rick’s mother and dismisses Rick’s idea that his father was someone worth ever knowing. It gets Rick so on edge that he tries for an emergency meditation session, but the therapist is booked. (Hate it when that happens when I have meditation emergencies!)
When he sees Hollinger, again, he starts shaking. It’s clear that something bad’s going to go down. While Chelsea chases him, Rick grabs the gun out of Hollinger’s holster and shoots him point-blank. As Hollinger’s wife, Sritala (Patravadi Mejudhon), cradles his dead body, she screams at Rick, “He’s your father!” A Darth Vader twist in The White Lotus? You’re a real one, Mike White.
Rick gets into a shootout with the bodyguards, killing them both before looking behind to realize that Chelsea has been shot. She dies as Rick weeps over her body.
Actress Charlotte Le Bon, who plays Chloe, teased that “people are going to hate Mike White” after the finale, and I feel like this is the reason. Chelsea was the purest character of the season, brought to life by a revelatory performance from Aimee Lou Wood. This death is the most devastating of all the possible victims.
The Last Killing
A popular theory leading into the finale was that Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) would be the shooter, after being emasculated by his crush Mook (Lalisa Manobal) on their first date. Plus, it was revealed that he had surprisingly great marksmanship at the gun range. It turns out that theory is correct, but not in the way many thought.
He knows that Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius) and the Russians were behind the hotel robbery, and considers turning them in. Mook, who seems to only be interested in Gaitok when he’s tough and can offer her a rich future, is ecstatic. Valentin, however, also knows that Gaitok is onto them, and pleads that he doesn’t rat them out. They’ll be deported back to Russia, where they’ll be killed, he says.
This conflicts my beloved, sweet Gaitok, who doesn’t believe in violence, as Buddha teaches. But when he hears shots fired, he grabs the security gun and runs to the crime scene, where Sritala is holding Hollinger’s dead body and Rick is heartbreakingly carrying Chelsea’s limp body away. Sritala screams at him to kill Rick, which he does, with two expert shots.
Rick and Chelsea fall into the water, where they will, as Rick said, be together forever. And Gaitok? Despite his misgivings for how violence would make him feel, it seems to have worked out for him: We see Mook give him a loving embrace as he drives away Sritala in his new position as his bodyguard.
The Familicide Fakeout
After several episodes of Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) fantasizing about killing himself and/or his family to put them out of their future miseries—once they get back to the States, they’ll be (gasp!) poor—something had to happen with this storyline. It’s the one that, were it not for the sibling incest and Parker Posey’s exquisitely insane line deliveries, bored most viewers to tears.
Well, tears were delivered in the finale—albeit in a different capacity.
Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) decides that she can’t live in the meditation center. The food is organic, but it’s bland! Horrifying. Victoria (Posey) beams at her child as she says this, as if she’s just learned that Piper won the Nobel Prize and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress on the same day—she’s never been prouder than when her daughter announced her desire to return to capitalist wealth.
This devastates Timothy, of course. He’s increasingly anxious over how his silver-spoon family is going to react when they realize their fortune is gone. He has a brief chat with Lochlan (Sam Nivola), who is wallowing after being rejected by his brother—despite jerking him off in a threesome (“I thought you looked a little left out, and I’m, you know, a pleaser!)—and his sister, who he was going to move halfway around the world to be with.
Lochlan tells his father he’d be totally OK living without money, which makes Timothy smile for the first godforsaken first time in this season.
Timothy remembers learning about the property’s poisonous fruits in the first episode, leading to the bit too deus-ex-machina return of scene-stealing staffer Pam (Morgana O’Reilly). How wonderful for you! She tells Timothy that locals literally call it “The Suicide Tree” and gives him the exact recipe for how people grind the fruit’s seeds to kill themselves. Thanks, Pam.
So it’s going to be pina colada night at the Ratliffs’ villa, with Timothy hatching a plan to serve everyone suicide smoothies, to save them from what awaits. He’s steadfast, however, that Lochlan, the only family member who hasn’t said how much losing their lifestyle would ruin them, does not drink the cocktail.
To my shock, he really goes through with it. The family, sans Lochlan, starts chugging the drink. Just when it gets to the point of horror at what you’re watching, Timothy knocks the glass out of Saxon’s hand, blaming bad coconut milk and forcing everyone to dump theirs.
He doesn’t, however, notice that there’s still some of the concoction left in the blender. The next morning, Lochlan uses it to make a protein shake, finally having been bullied into the habit by his older brother. I apologize to the bump on my downstairs neighbor’s head, from where my heart hit after sinking from my body and down through the floor. After all of this, the one that Timothy most wanted to save—sweet, slightly incesty Lochlan—was going to accidentally die.
Timothy finds his lifeless body on the pool deck. After intense cuts to the shootout action on the rest of the property and the viewer assumption that, Jesus Christ, I guess everyone’s leaving in a body bag, Lochlan wakes up!
Chelsea being collateral damage to the season was already too much to take. Lochlan compounding the heartache would have been historic levels of TV upsetting. And yet…I wonder if maybe it would have made the episode even more impactful to lean into that nihilism and go full, slit-your-wrists tragedy. Just my thoughts for a penny.
Nice(ish) New Beginnings
Belinda lives! Natasha Rothwell’s returning character from Season 1 had a target on her back, as she clocked that Gary/Greg (Jon Cries) was hiding out in Thailand after the suspicious death of his wife, Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge).
Gary/Greg had offered her $100,000 in hush money to keep her knowledge of him and her past relationship with Tanya in Hawaii a secret. Thinking of it instead as blood money, she doesn’t want it. But her son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) pressures her to negotiate for the kind of cash that would make morally compromising herself worth it. He joins her and leads what, to my eyes, was a hugely embarrassing negotiation, asking for $5 million. But it works!
Wanting to “just be rich for five f—ing minutes,” she decides that she and Zion need to leave the island and put any work plans on pause. That means she has to break it off with Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul), who not only is in love with her, but is super excited at the prospect of opening a spa business with her.
The heartbroken look on his face when she tells him that circumstances have changed and that it’s just not the right time now is certainly familiar: It’s the same expression Belinda had when Tanya did the same thing to her in Season 1. Damn, Belinda. But also, good for you? What can I say, it’s complicated.
The other characters unscathed by the violence—at least physically—are everyone’s favorite rich white ladies, my Holy Trinity of TV icons, the narcissistic Charlie Angels I would give my life for.
They come together at dinner on their last night to make amends and express their gratitude for, whatever hiccups they encountered, getting to reunite on this trip. Kate (Leslie Bibb) observes that they all seem to be a “garden in bloom,” citing a speech from her pastor. Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) says she’s been on Cloud 9 getting to spend this quality time with her friends. And Laurie (Carrie Coon) calls B.S.
That is to say, Laurie doesn’t sugarcoat her feelings—“All week I’ve been so sad”—going on to deliver one of the most honest and profound speeches about friendships I’ve ever seen on TV.
“As you get older you have to justify your life and your choices. When I’m with you guys, it’s so transparent what my choices were, and my mistakes,” she says, hitting so close to home that I started instinctively dialing my therapist’s number before I realized what I was doing. She has no belief system. Work was her religion, but hasn’t satisfied her. Neither did love, nor being a mother.
“But I had this epiphany today,” she says. “I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning. Because time gives it meaning. We started this life together. We’re going through it apart, but we’re still together. I look at you guys and it feels meaningful.”
She looks at Jaclyn: “I’m glad you have a beautiful face.” She looks at Kate: “I’m glad you have a beautiful life.” And then, with tears in her eyes: “And I’m just happy to be at the table.”
I am so grateful that I live alone, so that no one could see what I looked like after Carrie Coon delivered that monologue. Just gorgeously scripted, gorgeously performed—just gorgeous.
As you can tell, it was a full range of emotion on the White Lotus finale. It turns out that even includes whimsy. “Nothing From Nothing” by Billy Preston is the song that plays as Belinda’s boat speeds away and the credits roll. Such a weird, unexpected choice. Yet, like the whole episode, so White Lotus-y.
