The conversations around this “White Lotus” season have been fascinating to follow. Is the pace too slow? Is Mike White shortchanging his Thai characters? Does all the incest stuff go too far? Most important: Has White run out of things to say about fabulously wealthy, terminally dissatisfied white people?
Before the season started, I made the decision to watch all six of the episodes HBO provided to critics over a two-day stretch, and by the time I got to the end of Episode 6, this season was really clicking for me. I found all the talk about whether people can ever really leave their worst selves and bad choices behind to be incredibly moving, lending a deeper, more haunting meaning to all of this show’s usual kinky sex and barely contained violence.
Then Episode 7 was kind of a bust. It had too many anti-climactic moments and too many blunt conversations. It was the first new episode I had watched in over a month, and it made me wonder: Had I been too forgiving of the season’s lapses? Was I seduced by the binge?
For better and for worse, Episode 8 brings all the climaxes Episode 7 dodged. During this 90-minute finale (a lengthy one, but never a dull one), nearly every major character faces a choice about who he or she really wants to be. Several of them make terrible decisions, and some of them are rewarded handsomely for it — so long as you consider money and security a reward.
Let’s start with Belinda, our connection to Season 1 of “The White Lotus” — and Season 2, via Tanya and Greg. When we met Belinda in Hawaii, she was being coaxed into starting her own spa business with Tanya. Then Tanya fell for Greg and crushed the dreams that Belinda was just beginning to believe were possible. Something similar happens in the Season 3 finale as Belinda and her son, Zion, pressure Greg into giving them $5 million. Belinda immediately ditches her own plan to open a spa with her Thai lover, Pornchai.
It is hard to begrudge Belinda a financial windfall, especially given that she barely knew Tanya. But the way it plays out does not put her in the best light. During the negotiations, Belinda looks very upset with Zion’s casual dismissals of Greg’s shady past, and she seems especially bothered when he quotes a Langston Hughes poem to prove a point. But it turns out this was all a bargaining tactic. The money is what matters to her.
I have similarly mixed feelings about what happens to Gaitok, who early in the episode makes a choice to put his Buddhist faith ahead of his career ambitions. When Valentin realizes what Gaitok has figured out — that his friends Vlad and Aleksei robbed the White Lotus’s luxury goods store, with Valentin’s help — he begs for mercy, saying that if they are deported back to Russia, they will almost certainly be killed. Weighing his conscience as a Buddhist, Gaitok decides that if his actions might lead to someone’s death, he must avoid those actions.
But then, at a climactic moment in the episode, Sritala urges Gaitok to shoot and kill Rick, who is fleeing the scene after assassinating Jim Hollinger. Gaitok hesitates but eventually fires the kill shot. We see at the end of the episode that he finally lands the good job he wanted, chauffeuring and protecting Sritala with Mook cheering him on. All he had to do was betray his beliefs.
This is all part of White’s larger point, surely. The promise of money and success does drive people, in the real world and in fiction. These choices that Belinda and Gaitok make are not unbelievable given what we know about the characters. But they are a little depressing — especially stacked atop each other.
The end for Rick and Chelsea is a bummer too, though it feels apt. When he returns from Bangkok, Rick seems ready to embrace a life of peace and ease with his perpetually positive girlfriend. But then he sees Jim again, and the old man makes the mistake of calling Rick’s mother a drunk, a slut and a liar before showing Rick the gun he is carrying. It turns out that those mystery gunshots we heard in Episode 1 — at least the first ones — came from Rick, who grabs the gun when Jim is distracted and shoots him dead.
There are two twists to this scene. First, Rick gets Luke Skywalker-ed when Sritala tells him Jim was actually his father. (A lot of “White Lotus” fans figured this out weeks ago.) Second, Chelsea gets caught in the crossfire between Rick and the Hollingers’ bodyguards, and she dies. Last week, she told Saxon that she had “a yin and yang battle” going with Rick that one of them would eventually win. She was not wrong. Rick’s inability to let go of his pain and anger dragged her down. (It can’t be a coincidence that they die with him face up and her face down.)
White leans on water imagery again in this episode, especially in that one big scene of death — and two of rebirth. Rick and Chelsea float together in the water after Gaitok shoots him. And while this is going on, Lochlan is fighting for his life elsewhere in the resort while imagining himself swimming up through a pool.
The way the Ratliffs’ story ends offers a modicum of sweet, balancing all the sour elsewhere in this episode. The progression of events begins with Piper’s announcement that she no longer wants to live with the Buddhists. White keeps it ambiguous whether she is making this decision to keep Lochlan from following her lead or was genuinely uncomfortable at the temple, as her mother predicted. (Piper does cry some very convincing tears when she describes her night at the temple.) Either way, it rattles Tim, who was warming to the idea that the Ratliffs could learn to live with nothing.
So Tim expands his suicide plan yet again, this time by taking the poisonous seeds of a local fruit and blending them into four piña coladas, which he invites his family to drink with him on their last night in Thailand. He initially leaves Lochlan out of the party because his youngest son genuinely does seem able to handle being poor. Then Tim changes his mind altogether, knocks Saxon’s drink out of his hand and snatches everyone else’s, explaining that the coconut milk is sour. The next morning, Lochlan mixes a protein shake in the same blender as the poison seeds and nearly dies.
What I like about the Ratliffs’ story is that it does not close on an entirely redemptive note. As they are leaving Thailand, they get their phones back, which means Tim’s family is about to find out what he did — and what it means for them. But as he watches the water droplets splash in the wake of their boat, he is clearly thinking about what Luang Por Teera said to him about human existence as a cycle of going and returning, away from and back into a single giant consciousness.
It’s easy to read too much into episode titles, treating them like titles on paintings: a way to interpret the artist’s intent without having to think too hard what we are actually seeing. White certainly seems to be encouraging a reductive reading with this finale’s title, “Amor Fati,” which refers to a concept that comes up often in philosophy and theology. As Chelsea explains, it means “embrace your fate,” and it is often applied to the idea that we should celebrate suffering as part of what makes us human.
This episode underlines that thought with the way it begins, with all the characters waking up to another fateful day while Luang Por Teera tells his followers about how humans crave “solutions” that prove temporary and unsatisfying. It is, he says, “easier to be patient once we accept there is no resolution.” (I hear a whisper of Mike White there, warning “White Lotus” fans that they might not like everything that is about to happen.)
That is why my favorite moment in this finale is far less dramatic than the shooting or the poisoning. It comes at a dinner with the gal pals. While Jaclyn and Kate talk about what a wonderful time they have had in Thailand, Laurie breaks down crying, saying she has been sad all week, comparing her failures to her friends’ seemingly perfect lives.
She ends with what may be the best line of the season, saying in turn to Jaclyn and to Kate, “I’m glad you have a beautiful face, and I’m glad you have a beautiful life, and I’m just happy to be at the table.”
Maybe that isn’t the secret to life that this “White Lotus” season seemed to promise at times, before it retreated in the finale to caution and cynicism. But it’s a sentiment that resonates.
Concierge Service
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Given the reports that Season 3 of “The White Lotus” has been the show’s most watched, clearly the audience is not yet burned out on White’s formula, despite the many online debates about that. The show has already been renewed.
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If I could go back in time, I would have spent a few moments in my earlier reviews comparing the bald men at the resort (rich, surrounded by young women) with the bald men at the temple (spiritual, surrounded by believers).
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One of the saddest moments in this episode was when a totally wired Frank came running after Rick in Bangkok, begging him to stick around. “Don’t you like me anymore?” he asks, before complaining, “You started it; I can’t finish it without you.” I am glad then that at the end of the episode, Frank is back at a temple, as he promised.
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Let’s talk about this finale! I will be reading the comments below and will respond with some thoughts throughout the day on Monday.