white lotus season 2 yacht name

White Lotus Fans Are Convinced That Greg Was on the Boat

You might want to sit down for this take on the finale.

Despite the absurdity of it all, it seemed like a fairly cut and dry scene. Tanya finds a gun and uses it to defend herself. Then, in an adrenaline-fueled exit, she jumps off the yacht, knocks herself out on a pole, and drowns. While some viewers, like myself, processed her untimely demise, others were busy asking questions—like, where the hell was Greg during all of this? Was he hiding somewhere on the yacht?!

Well, Reddit user Large-Outside-9511 seems to think so. While watching the show, they spotted Greg’s name pop up on screen, which means he could have been one of the many voices yelling at Tanya before she began shooting. Check it out:

The closed captioning said Greg yells, “Tanya,” while she is locked in the room on the yacht. Then we heard people running upstairs and a door slamming at one point. Hugo was hiding behind the couch and the other two were shot. The captain was on the top of the boat so he was one of the footsteps. I’m thinking Greg was on the boat waiting for Tanya to be taken back to the hotel so he could stay the night on the boat and celebrate with Quentin while his wife floats away to her demise.

From there, the user suspect Greg ditched the boat and swam his sorry ass to safety.

He would have had enough time to escape to shore before the morning when Tanya’s body was discovered...Absolutely furious Greg won in this situation. I’m thinking next season he will be at the next White Lotus looking for his next con but gets caught.

As wild as it sounds, I'm on board with this is a theory. First of all, the Reddit fan was right— Greg’s name does appear in the closed captions. It’s quick, sure, but maybe we have a clue for Season Three. Speaking of, if the next chapter of The White Lotus is anything like this one, we can expect one returning character. In Season Two, it was Tanya, but now that she’s dead, Greg could be the throughline for round three. After all, Greg's story is the only one without a neat little bow—and even if he did manage to escape, he has quite the mess to clean up.

Not to mention: series creator Mike White teased that Season Three will tackle death and eastern religion. What if Greg travels to a new location to "grieve” Tanya's demise. In that case, I would be thrilled to see what karma has in store at the next White Lotus resort.

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‘The White Lotus’ Creator Mike White Explains That Shocking Season 2 Finale Death

The showrunner also says lingering questions from Season 2 may be answered in Season 3

Note: the following contains spoilers for “The White Lotus” Season 2 finale.

“The White Lotus” Season 2 finale made good on the show’s promise to reveal exactly whose bodies were floating in the ocean in the season opener, but few were prepared to discover that Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya was one of the victims. According to creator and showrunner Mike White, the seed for Tanya’s death was actually planted in the Season 1 finale of the HBO series.

In the final episode of Season 2, Tanya finally realizes that Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his friends are not who they appear to be. Quentin clearly is old friends with Greg (Jon Gries), and when his yacht arrives back in Taormina, Quentin makes some excuse as to why Tanya can’t get off the boat just yet. Instead, they’re waiting for Niccolo (Stefano Gianino) to show up and personally escort Tanya back under cover of night.

When Tanya goes through Niccolo’s bag and discovers rope, duct tape and a gun, she confirms they’re trying to kill her so Greg can inherit all of her money. She, hilariously, takes all but one of them out with the gun, but when trying to jump down from the yacht into the smaller boat to go ashore, she hits her head and drowns.

In a behind-the-scenes video from HBO that aired after the episode, White said the entirety of Tanya’s Season 2 arc was crafted around her eventual death.

“In the end of last season, Tanya is sitting with Greg in the last episode and he’s talking about his health issues and she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years. Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.’ And I was thinking it’d be so fun to bring Tanya back because she’s such a great character, but maybe that’s the journey for her is like a journey to death.”

“And not that I really wanted to kill Tanya because I love her as a character and I obviously love Jennifer,” White continued. “But I just felt like you know we’re going to Italy, she’s such a diva, larger-than-life female archetype, it just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story.”

It was important to White, however, that Tanya not die at the hands of someone else.

“I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic,” he said. “It felt like she needed to give her best fight back, and that she in a way had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her. So it just made me laugh to think she would take out [this] cabal of killers and that after she successfully does that, she just dies this derpy death. It just felt like that’s so Tanya.”

“The White Lotus” Season 3 has already been ordered by HBO, and given that this is an anthology series the plan is to have a new location and new characters. However, in the post-finale video White alluded to a continuation or some kind of closure to Greg’s murder plot in Season 3.

“I think as far as what happens to Greg and the conspiracy of Tanya’s death, it’s possible that I think Portia is scared enough to just leave it alone but the fact that all of those guys die on the boat feels like there’s gotta be somebody who’s gonna track it back down to Greg. But maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens.”

Just as Coolidge was the only character to reprise her role from Season 1 in Season 2, could we see Haley Lu Richardson’s Portia return as she tries to dig deeper into what happened to Tanya? Or Greg? It would fit with the theme White teased as central to Season 3.

“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex, and I think the third season would be maybe a kind of satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality, and it feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus,” White said in the video.

Stay tuned, folks. This particular story may have come to a close, but there’s more “White Lotus” to come.

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The White Lotus’s explosive season finale, explained

Who died (and who survived) at The White Lotus.

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This article contains spoilers for the season finale of the second season of The White Lotus .

For the last week , White Lotus fans have been losing sleep in stressful anticipation of the series’s season finale and the answer to the show’s ultimate question: Which White Lotus hotel guests are gonna die?

And in Sunday’s finale, we got our answer.

Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) met her watery demise in the season finale, as did practically a full yacht’s worth of conspiring gay men.

As episode six hinted at, new friend Quentin (Tom Hollander) and Tanya’s husband Greg (Jon Gries) had a relationship — Tanya picked up (a poorly photoshopped) photo of the two in Quentin’s bedroom. We never find out what exactly that relationship is, but Tanya — after a frantic call from the subtly abducted Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) — believes that Quentin and his crew were in cahoots with Greg to kill her and cash in an inheritance.

Offshore on Quentin’s yacht, Niccolò (Stefano Gianino), Tanya’s mafioso escort from her cocaine-filled night, arrives to bring her back to shore — just the two of them and a sizable black “cocaine bag” in a tiny boat. Tanya is convinced Niccolò and the gays are going to kill her (“These gays are trying to kill me,” she whisper-hisses, perfectly). In a desperate move, she grabs the bag, finds the tape, rope, and gun inside, and locks herself in a stateroom. When the gays come knocking, she blindly shoots her way out, still whimpering, and manages to mortally wound if not outright kill everyone on the yacht. (No, I am not making this up.) Tanya Wick just has to make it to the attached dinghy, but instead of taking the stairs, she decides to jump — whacking her head on the side of the boat and drowning.

Tanya went out doing what she loved most, obviously luring in people with her copious amounts of money and then thwarting them last minute. (The murky status of Greg’s inheritance notwithstanding.)

In a cheerier conclusion than the first season, the rest of the guests got relatively happy endings.

How everyone else fared at the White Lotus Sicily

Fatally miserable couple Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper Spiller (Aubrey Plaza) recovered their missing intimacy, accepting a little bit of mystery in one another. Knowing that his college roommate at the very least kissed his wife, Ethan tackles Cameron (Theo James) in the ocean and punches him in the face. Ethan reveals the possible indiscretion to Cam’s uncannily zen wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy), who gives Ethan basically the same ambiguously erotic pep talk she gave Harper: Don’t be a victim; get yours. Unlike Harper, Daphne takes Ethan on a walk to a private island. After that, and a surprisingly not-weird dinner with the full foursome, Ethan rekindles his attraction to Harper and the two finally have sex.

The Di Grasso men left the island as they came — all terrible with women in their own unique ways. Dominic (Michael Imperioli) has a sliver of hope his wife will talk to him again, thanks to his son’s semi-extortionist blessing; Bert (F. Murray Abraham) still gets sexually excited from a hug. At the airport, Albie (Adam DiMarco) reconnects with Portia, each having been pretty well and thoroughly scammed by the sex workers they unwittingly ditched each other for. The two exchange numbers, so they can go on to hurt each other another day.

And speaking of sex workers, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) got a real happily ever after. Lucia played Albie and his dad for 50,000 euro. Alessio, the man supposedly stalking her, wasn’t a pimp or a disgruntled mob boss but just a doorman at a neighboring hotel. And as a result of accidentally drugging the resident pianist, Mia convinces hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) to fire him. Good for them!

Men get played. Women get rich. Yachts became death traps. What a surprisingly jaunty ending for our White Lotus guests (save for Tanya) and oddly hopeful cap to the second season of this beloved HBO show.

The season is a well-executed murder mystery

The biggest shift this season was how The White Lotus transitioned from feeling like a show about unaware and unchecked privilege with a little murder mystery hanging over it, to murder mystery with a bit of unaware and unchecked privilege on the side. Fans were more determined than ever to decode every potential clue . The change in vibe began in the very first episode.

We meet Daphne who, at first blush feels familiar to anyone who’s seen The White Lotus season one. She’s got perfect hair, a perfect swimsuit, perfect teeth. Big, clean, gorgeous teeth. In White Lotus code, this means she’s probably a horrific monster. Daphne chats up the girls next to her, initiating a conversation about how lucky they are to be in Sicily.

“Italy’s just so romantic,” Daphne tells the women, before getting into the Ionian Sea one last time. “Oh, you’re gonna die. They’re gonna have to drag you out of here,” she says.

As Daphne takes the plunge, the water suddenly doesn’t seem as blue or clear as it did in the wide shot. And then it happens: A pair of floating legs (and Tanya’s corpse that they’re attached to) thump into Daphne, and send her screaming for shore. Onshore, we learn that a number of bodies have been discovered, but no final body count given (beach club supervisor Rocco tells manager Valentina that there’s a “few”). All we know is that the unalive people were guests of the hotel.

That’s where the real show starts.

In season one, the possibility remained that the body bag we saw in the very first episode had been the result of natural causes. But since we saw that end with snotty guest Shane (Jake Lacy) stabbing hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett), and started this new season with a whole pile of bodies, it seemed all but assured that foul play would be afoot at the White Lotus Sicily. Were these deaths an accident? Were they on purpose? Murder? Manslaughter? And more importantly: Who died? And who killed them?

White’s sneaky move was to let the subtle, even pedestrian betrayals in relationships feel like clues to a murder mystery. A thousand motives flit across the screen, all possible in the characters’ fragile relationships. Over an innocuous dinner or drinks at the beach, the tension between these characters seems like it might boil over — and occasionally does.

Suddenly, it wasn’t so difficult to see a scenario in which Ethan, frustrated with Harper, would kill his old buddy Cam. It wasn’t impossible to imagine Albie killing Lucia after finding out his father also slept with her, or Jack (Leo Woodall) tossing Portia into the sea because she found out Quentin wasn’t his uncle.

The first season took a big swing , giving us White’s ideas about how American greed and pleasure are interconnected and how Hawaii and Hawaiians became the mainland’s victims. The White Lotus ’s second season doesn’t even attempt to tell a similar story. Instead, it’s skewering gender by way of masculinity, sex, and desire. It’s a more sensational, more sordid, more sinister, and more streamlined story. It’s a less ambitious season, maybe, but a more successful one.

Daphne Sullivan won The White Lotus

The White Lotus didn’t invent miserable rich Americans, nor did it create our morbid curiosity with them. Watching the wealthy writhe in emotional displeasure is a long tradition, from The Great Gatsby to the Real Housewives . There’s something comforting in knowing there are limits to financial security, and witnessing people who could afford anything still be unfulfilled in ways that they’ll never be able to solve. There’s something about the rich on vacation that feels like it could go full Hunger Games .

Yet, despite the endless reasons to hate so many of the main guests — Ethan is so terminally insecure, Harper is a horny grump, Cameron’s a slimeball, Tanya is an emotional vampire, Portia has no backbone, and the Di Grassos have never met a woman they couldn’t impose themselves on — there’s one I would die for: Daphne Sullivan.

Obviously, a lot of my affection for the character comes from Meghann Fahy’s brilliant performance. And just as much can be explained by the ancient proverb : “girl does sociopathic shit, her gays [say] work.”

But it’s also what Daphne represents.

When we first meet her on the beach chatting up the two women on vacation, there’s a sense that she’s kind of a rich dumb-dumb. That’s the common thread among White Lotus guests. Look how they can’t even understand what’s happening around them.

Adding to that impression is that we also meet eternally mordant Harper, who’s crabby the minute she gets to Sicily. Harper does not want to be there. She hates being on vacation with people she hates.

This irritability makes Harper seem like the show’s protagonist. It allows her to point out how out of touch the people around her are, the implicit position of viewers at home. When Harper tells Cameron and Daphne that she’s an employment lawyer, Cameron quickly spouts on about how most harassment lawsuits are fake. When Cameron and Daphne tell her they don’t read or watch the news, she’s shocked at their incuriosity about the world. If Harper, who the show paints as smarter than the rest of the cohort, thinks Daphne and Cameron are idiots, then they must be idiots, right?

But as the show progresses, Daphne shows herself to be much smarter than she appears — and maybe wiser than Harper herself.

In episode 5, Harper, by way of a condom wrapper and emotional warfare, finds out that Cameron and Ethan did MDMA and that Cameron cheated on Daphne with a sex worker. When she tells Daphne as much as she can without spelling out all the details, Daphne doesn’t even flinch.

Instead of shock, Daphne tells Harper about her trainer Lawrence. They spend an enormous amount of time together. Lawrence makes her laugh. Lawrence keeps her fit. Lawrence doesn’t let her get lonely. She describes him to Harper as blond and blue-eyed, and offers to show her a pic. Instead, she hands over a photo of her blond and blue-eyed children. “Oops,” she says, with the smallest point, and we know she’s never made a mistake at all, but that Cameron has in underestimating her.

“I spend more time with him than Cameron sometimes because he’s so busy at work,” Daphne tells Harper, before her face sharpens into a smile that’s all edges. “The point is, maybe you should get a trainer.”

It’s in this moment that Harper realizes Daphne isn’t oblivious to her life but, rather, fully aware of every moment of it. Like her shopping sprees, infidelity to the point of paternity fraud is one of the ways Daphne has carved out happiness in what could be an utterly punishing life. She’s the trophy wife to Cameron’s wheeling, dealing, cheating asshole finance bro, but Daphne plays the game, too. She just happens to be smart enough to never be left footing the bill. She knows being unvalued will get her further.

Daphne puts her slightly mercenary wisdom to practice in the final episode, after Ethan tells her something happened with Harper and Cam. Taking just a beat to let the hurt wash over her, she’s quickly ready to metabolize. While we don’t know for certain what happens when Daphne takes Ethan on a walk to La Isola Bella, it seems to lead to a reset in the natural balance of the group, which had gone perilously lopsided for Ethan since he had reason to be suspicious of his wife. Does Daphne really want Ethan? (No, I don’t think so.) Do they actually hook up? (Yes, I think so.) What matters is that neither of them is a victim anymore.

Daphne’s worldview serves both halves of the Spiller couple well, eventually. Each had felt victimized by the other: Harper by Ethan’s expectations and lack of sexual interest, Ethan by Harper’s moods and frustration, both by the other’s lies. Daphne helps put the couple on equal footing by encouraging each one to take their power back. Honesty is overrated; an appreciation for mystery in yourself and the person you love is a much sexier solution.

“You don’t have to know everything to love someone,” she tells Ethan.

She should know; it’s an answer that has paid off her time and again. It’s also worth noting that Ethan and Harper being on good terms with each other is a good thing for Daphne. If Ethan doesn’t see Cameron as a threat, especially if you read his “walk” with Daphne as more than a stroll, he might be open to Cameron investing his money and obliquely funding Daphne’s lavish life.

Upward mobility isn’t usually rewarded in The White Lotus, as we saw with Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) from season one, and Quentin and his cohort this year. Striving for something more never works out when you play against the ultra-wealthy. But here, all along, Daphne defied the odds and found a way. Just don’t tell anyone about her trainer.

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'The White Lotus' Season 2 Ending Explained: We All Got Played

It's choppy out there. Let's dive in, shall we?

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Lucia and Mia really turned things around for themselves.

So much for Tanya McQuoid being the connective tissue between the two seasons of  The White Lotus . Obviously, spoilers up ahead for the season 2 finale, in which Jennifer Coolidge's character finds herself on a party boat that definitely isn't a party.

The seventh and final episode of the HBO Max series was a master class in social commentary, witty writing and gorgeous shots from writer/director Mike White. It wrapped up pretty much every loose end, while leaving one dangling strand involving Ethan and Daphne. And keeping that mystery unsolved is the point.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the season 2 finale of The White Lotus.

But first, Tanya. It was always going to stretch credulity having yet another person die at a White Lotus resort, but White chose the wildest and weirdly most believable option. The wealthy Tanya did indeed find a picture of her husband Greg and bankrupt British expat Quentin in cowboy hats together. (Although this isn't explicitly confirmed.) She and her assistant, Portia, conclude that Greg colluded with his ex-lover Quentin to have Tanya killed, because their prenup prevents Greg from taking any of her money if they divorce.

In a truly frightening sequence, a shaking Tanya loses Portia on the phone and has to face a boatful of people who want to kill her. She stalls for as long as possible before Quentin's man arrives to take her to shore and likely murder her on the way. Seizing her one opportunity to save herself, Tanya brazenly grabs her killer-to-be's duffle bag and locks herself in a room. Inside the bag, she finds a gun. As the door is kicked in, Tanya braces herself and squeezes the trigger, shooting anyone who comes at her.

Poor rich Tanya.

In one of many examples of absurd hilarity, Tanya makes sure to ask Quentin before he coughs up blood and dies whether Greg was cheating on her with another woman. Quentin stares at her incredulously, before carking it (dying, that is, in British English). Sadly, as Tanya attempts to climb down off the boat and escape via a dinghy, she slips and smacks her head on the dinghy's railing before crashing into the water, where she drowns. Her colorful dress made it look like the dead body we partially see in episode 1 was wearing bright boardshorts.

Many thought Tanya would be the only character to appear in every season of The White Lotus, which was  renewed for a third outing last month . In one of many smart rug pulls, White has eliminated that possibility. Why would Tanya spend all her time at White Lotus resorts anyway, if they're a hotspot for murder?

Harper and Ethan have fully accepted one another.

He could also potentially use one of the new characters introduced in season 2 as a familiar link. Let's pray it's Aubrey Plaza's Harper, although that seems unlikely. In a bittersweet turn of events, her eye-rolling, at first strongly principled, lawyer assimilates the same performative marriage facade that Cameron and Daphne put on. It's the only way now for her and Ethan to move forward -- whether they believe each other's stories about cheating or not, it doesn't matter. They're both willing to act out a happy marriage and allow each other to hold some level of mystery. Resting in each other's arms at the airport, they look a picture of peace and solidarity.

This is all after Ethan and Cameron have their inevitable showdown in the sea, but maybe it would have been too obvious and extreme if one or both of them died. The more unexpected turn of events involved Daphne taking Ethan to nearby island Isola Bella -- the shot looks like one of those Instagram pictures of couples leading each other down a path. It's left open to interpretation whether something happened between them, but it seems likely, since Daphne was unfazed by Ethan's worry that Cameron and Harper might have cheated together. She suggestively tells Ethan: "You don't have to know everything to love someone. A little mystery? It's kinda sexy..."

The mysterious leading the mysterious.

In a similarly messy situation, the Di Grasso men leave Sicily 50,000 euros poorer, yet they all seem surprisingly unfazed. Young Albie is momentarily put out by the revelation that Lucia was playing him the whole time, but he's swiftly on to the next opportunity: a changed Portia, who's now had her fair share of excitement and wants to settle for nothing more than the safest, most boring romantic option possible. (At least she looks mortified for one short moment about the fact her boss has just drowned to death.)

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Finally, in a nice 180-degree flip, season 2 sees no deaths and an optimistic outcome for the staff of the White Lotus, Sicily. Unlike season 1, this time it's the underprivileged who take advantage of the rich guests. Lucia has had a stellar payday, Mia is living out her dream as a singer and hotel manager Valentina has embarked on her sexual awakening. She's already less bitter in life for it, allowing her previous crush Isabella to work the concierge desk with her grateful fiancé, Rocco.

Best friends Lucia and Mia swirl down the cobblestone streets Elena Ferrante-style, basking in the glow of their accomplishments. Lucia briefly says hello to the now smiling waiter who chased her and the Di Grasso family down in a car, revealing that was all a ruse to convince the three generations of men that she was a hurt puppy in need of rescue.

It was a super satisfying end to an even better season of the genius show, Italy's fountains and volcanoes erupting in perfect climax. Maybe it would have been interesting to see Albie's father's reaction to his son being played, just like he suspected, but other than that, this was a truly immaculate capper to the season.

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Making a Splash: Jennifer Coolidge and Mike White Discuss the ‘White Lotus’ Finale

“I didn’t realize it until yesterday, but now I am sad,” said White, who watched the season finale with Coolidge on Sunday night.

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By Alexis Soloski

Mike White always knew how it would end.

Months before the shoot began for the second season of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” which ended in a murderous finale on Sunday night (and if you have not yet seen that finale, now would be a fine time to stop reading), he called the actress Jennifer Coolidge, his friend and a longtime collaborator. Coolidge’s Tanya, a lip-plumped heiress with a tenuous connection to observable reality, was one of only two characters to carry over from the first season, set at a five-star hotel in Hawaii, to this one, set at a sister property in Sicily.

“Jennifer,” he told her. “I’m sorry. You’re dying.”

He meant that in the finale, as not even the most obsessive fan had predicted, Coolidge’s Tanya, having shot her way through a yacht full of “high-end gays” intent on assassinating her, misjudges the distance from the deck to a dinghy and plunges, ineptly, to her death. In a filmed post-episode interview, White described the death as purposefully “derpy.”

In a season focused on desire and its consequences, the finale also saw a rekindling of the romance between the unhappily married Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza); a new understanding among the three generations of Di Grasso men ( F. Murray Abraham , Michael Imperioli , Adam DiMarco); and triumph for the local young women Mia and Lucia (Beatrice Grannò and Simona Tabasco). Mostly unchanged: Tanya’s assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), still making questionable fashion choices , and Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne (Meghann Fahy), the happily entitled young marrieds.

On Sunday night, at Coolidge’s home, she and White watched the finale together. And on Monday morning, each logged on to discuss Tanya’s gauche, tragic demise and where the series, already renewed for a third season, might go from here. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

If the first season centered on wealth and privilege, why did this one fixate on sex and desire?

WHITE Originally, I had a different concept. And then when I went to Sicily, those testa di moro sculptures [figurines inspired by a folk legend about sexual infidelity] are everywhere. It felt like a place where some classic male-female stories could be told with contemporary characters.

Did you know from the start how Season 2 would end?

MIKE WHITE In the first season, Tanya’s last line is, like, “I’ve had so many treatments in my life. Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.” I was like, maybe that’s where to take her story. In Italian opera, the women are supposed to cry and die, and I just imagined that that could be an appropriate story for the site of Sicily and this battle of the sexes, and Tanya is a victim of that.

During this season, fans on and off social media became obsessed with discovering who would die and how. Did you pay attention to the theories?

JENNIFER COOLIDGE I thought they were hilarious. There were crazy things people said. Like, Tanya’s husband, Greg [probably in on the murder plot and played by Jon Gries], needs to come back and save her from those gays. But I loved it. Every possibility was exhausted.

WHITE It’s funny, because 95 percent of the theories would have been really shocking but as a writer; there’s no way I could have pulled that off. Like, Daphne kills everyone! But I do think this ending is a little more wild. I usually work in a more modulated reality. This was a bigger, operatic conclusion. Because I felt like that’s what the vibe was there. And also, the idea of Jennifer on the boat with those guys just seemed so funny.

Jennifer, did you ever try to talk Mike out of this ending?

COOLIDGE You can’t talk Mike White out of anything, really. But whenever Mike was in a really good mood, and laughing about something, I’d go, like, “I don’t have to die, right?”

WHITE Even when we were shooting the scene in the ocean where Daphne finds her body. She was like, “Should we just do one take where I pull myself up on the shore? Just one?”

COOLIDGE That’s an actress fighting for another season! I wanted to be practical in case Mike had a change of heart. I just wanted to leave the possibilities open.

Why did you want a “derpy” death for Tanya?

WHITE It reminds me a little of Jennifer, because Jennifer, like, she’ll come and do this incredible performance and then lock herself in a bathroom. I can see Jennifer in this situation actually killing all the bad guys, surviving this assassination attempt, and then tripping on her way out the door. Part of Jennifer is: She’s not going to go down without a fight. She wants to live. But at the same time, she’s maybe a little klutzy.

Did you do any of the final stunt, Jennifer?

COOLIDGE I begged to do it! But Mike already had the stunt double there at the shoot. And she had been waiting for hours. There was just no way Mike was going to tell her, waiting out on the cold boat, that she wasn’t going to have her moment. So Mike wouldn’t let me do it.

WHITE She really did want to jump off the boat. Into freezing water. There was no way.

So will any of the Season 2 characters make their way to Season 3?

WHITE The truth is, I don’t really know. I just don’t know.

Well, you’ve teased a season about Eastern spirituality and death, so allow me to suggest Ghost Tanya.

COOLIDGE Thank you for trying to get me in there.

WHITE I mean, especially if we’re doing something about the spiritual realm.

During the first season, you shot in a Covid-19 bubble. This time, the actors and characters could leave the hotel. Did this shoot feel different?

COOLIDGE Obviously, we had such a fun time on the first one. With the second one, I was like, Oh my God, we’ll never have that camaraderie. It’s impossible. Because with Covid it was so intense.

Actually, I thought it was just as good. I loved Hawaii, swimming in the ocean and hanging out with all the castmates at the end of the day and possibly getting eaten by sharks, the drama of that. But Sicily is so beautiful, and then the people ended up being really funny and interesting. I said to Mike, “Not only do you give acting jobs to people, you give them an experience.” It was so unpredictable and extraordinary.

Do you have any regrets about the season? Are you sorry you killed off Tanya?

WHITE I really love this story. I really thought it was a funny way to go. And right. I don’t have regrets about that.

But yesterday, I went over and watched the show alone with Jennifer. At one point, I was kind of laughing and I looked over at her, and she was so sad for Tanya. In that moment, I was like, Oh, this is the end for me and Jennifer. And Jennifer’s the reason I did “White Lotus” in the first place. Because I just wanted to write something for her and I just adore her. So it’s sad. I didn’t realize it until yesterday, but now I am sad. It’s going to be hard to do it without her. There’s definitely going to be something missing.

COOLIDGE I didn’t expect, last night, to be as moved as I was.

Have you forgiven him for killing you off?

COOLIDGE No, not at all. I’ll forever be sad about this.

The show has already been renewed for Season 3. So let’s just get this out of the way: Who dies next time?

WHITE Maybe it’s like Kenny on “South Park”: Every season Tanya has to come in and just die all over again.

An earlier version of this article misstated the phrase Jennifer Coolidge’s character used to describe a group of other characters in “The White Lotus.” She said “high-end gays,” not “high-class gays.” (She was right. They were trying to murder her.)

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• <i>The White Lotus</i> Season 2 Was About Love as Delusion. In the End, It Fooled Viewers Too

The White Lotus Season 2 Was About Love as Delusion. In the End, It Fooled Viewers Too

Spoiler alert: This article discusses, in detail, the White Lotus season 2 finale. If you’ve yet to watch that, do yourself a favor and don’t read this.

“How was Palermo?” Albie (Adam DiMarco) wants to know, in the penultimate scene of the White Lotus season 2 finale, when he runs into Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) at the airport on their way out of Italy. “Not great,” she deadpans. Even though she’s yet to have her worst fears about Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) confirmed, it’s an understatement for the ages.

It also makes you wonder how this tragic vacation might’ve gone differently if things had worked out between her and Albie—two sheepish dupes who finally exchange phone numbers in the season’s final minutes—when they first met. He might never have let Lucia (Simona Tabasco) con him—or his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), the original mark—into giving her €50,000. Dominic might never have convinced Albie to run interference with his mom, apparently saving a marriage that she probably should’ve ended long ago. Portia might not have spent her last day in Sicily afraid for her life, because she wouldn’t have fallen for Jack (Leo Woodall), the earthy pseudo-nephew, lover, and henchman of “high-end gay” fortune hunter Quentin (Tom Hollander). Which would’ve made it tough for Quentin to get Tanya alone on a yacht with a bag containing half the murder weapons from Clue.

Sure, it’s ultimately Madama McQuoid who kills the gays, not the other way around. But in true self-sabotaging style—and taking full advantage of Coolidge’s unmatched physical-comedy prowess—Tanya manages to shoot her way out of the trap, only to end up in a watery grave of her own making. So central was this character to two excellent seasons of Mike White’s luxury-resort misery-fest that her death was unfathomable to just about everyone (including yours truly ) publicly hazarding guesses as to who the corpses in Sunday’s finale would be. In retrospect, it seems fitting that a season about love as a delusion would end by shocking viewers who ignored what our own eyes told us about Tanya’s fate because we adored her.

In fact, the only eyes that seemed to observe much of anything at the Sicilian Lotus were inanimate. A Renaissance painting of St. Sebastian , that creepy fresco from the title sequence, those macabre Testa di Moro statues peeking out from every corner—they were all watching the guests’ every misguided move. Yet the characters themselves couldn’t seem to see anything clearly, least of all the far-from-ideal objects of their affection. Just about everyone got scammed, from Tanya and Portia and the Di Grassos to Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), who’s crushed again when newly hired lounge singer Mia (Beatrice Grannò) confirms their obviously transactional relationship as such, to the two young couples constantly performing romance and jealousy for each other’s benefit. And it all happens because everyone is too busy projecting their own selfish desires and insecurities on each other to fix a critical gaze on their own delusions.

The Di Grasso men are a particularly sad case. Dominic essentially has to bribe a sex worker he personally hired to keep his family from falling apart. Watching Lucia exit with the cash while she thinks he’s sleeping, Albie finally grows up a little. Now that his feminist facade has been shattered by a genuine gold digger, he’s ogling hot girls at the airport right along with his dad and grandpa. Speaking of poor Bert ( F. Murray Abraham ), his big blow came in episode 6, when he discovered that the Di Grasso women of Sicily had no interest in forming a loving bond with a man who’d missed his chance to do right by the Di Grasso women of America.

That’s not to say there aren’t characters who come out of the season better off than they were going into it. Mia got her gig and Lucia got her money; that final shot, in which the two best friends skip off together to make immoderate purchases, might be the closest thing White will ever give us to a happy ending. Jealous Ethan (Will Sharpe) and exasperated Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) have rekindled their romance by allowing their insecurities to transform them into unfaithful, game-playing rich people like Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne (Meghann Fahy). The latter couple is no worse for the wear because their marriage has always been a farce.

And then, lest we forget, there’s Greg (Jon Gries), whose money-motivated deceptions in the honeymoon suite makes Lucia’s scheme look quaint by comparison. We don’t see what becomes of him once Tanya’s body is pulled out of the sea—probably because it’s so easy to guess his fate. His little Double Indemnity gambit works out even better than (as far as we know) he anticipated. Not only does he inherit Tanya’s hundreds of millions, but he doesn’t even have to share them with Quentin and company.

Of course , given the pessimism White’s shown us about love under heteronormative patriarchy, it’s the middle-aged white guy with two smitten, relatively vulnerable admirers wrapped around his finger who comes out on top. Meanwhile, Quentin might be too dastardly to mourn, but it’s worth noting that he dies, and gets a bunch of his friends killed, doing dirty work for a straight guy. That makes Tanya this modern-day opera’s one true tragic heroine. Doomed by her very existence as a lonely, self-conscious single woman of a certain age with a certain astronomical bank balance, she gets her dramatic, if also supremely klutzy, underwater death scene. Season 3 won’t be the same without her. (Does she have a twin sister Coolidge could play? Maybe season 3 can take place at the White Lotus in purgatory?) But would we want to keep coming back if The White Lotus didn’t manage to shock us every time? Like Cam and Daphne and Ethan and Harper, the show needs an element of uncertainty to keep the spark alive.

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Explaining the "Derpy" Death in The White Lotus Season 2 Finale

[Redacted] has checked out of The White Lotus for the last time.

Major spoilers ahead.

Yes, the body we see floating in the Ionian Sea in Episode 1 is indeed that of one air-headed heiress, Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge). In Episode 7, "Arrivederci," Tanya and her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), put together the puzzle pieces of an assassination plot orchestrated by her husband, Greg (Jon Gries). Under the terms of their prenup, Greg would receive zilch in the case of divorcing Tanya; but, if she dies, it's suggested that Greg would be her beneficiary. The flock of charming gay European men, marshaled by Quentin (Tom Hollander), turn out to be in cahoots with Greg and the Italian mafia to kill Tanya.

It's why Greg insisted that they holiday in Sicily, and it's also why he left the vacation early in order to give himself an alibi. And Quentin's Episode 5 confession of falling in love with a heterosexual cowboy who he would "have done anything for" is seemingly confirmed to actually be Greg, due to Tanya's discovery of a photograph of the two as young men donning cowboy hats in Quentin's palazzo in the last episode.

Portia—who is being held hostage by Jack (Leo Woodall), Quentin's not-so-nephew/lover—is helpless to shepherd Tanya to safety. Meanwhile, the heiress is stranded in the middle of the ocean, having embarked for one last ride back to Taormina via Quentin's yacht.

When the handsome, mafia-involved man, Niccoló (Stefano Gianino), who Quentin set her up with the night before, suddenly arrives via dinghy and armed with a mysterious black bag, Tanya's panic sets in. She begs the old, non-English-speaking captain to drive her to shore to no avail; she attempts to call for help but accidentally drops her phone in the ocean; she prolongs dinner by asking for another glass of white wine.

Finally, her conspirators can stand no more procrastination and implore her to "return" to the hotel by going on a moonlit boat ride alone with Niccoló. Instead, she excuses herself to use the bathroom and, along the way, steals Niccoló's black bag, the contents of which finally confirm her worst fears: rope, duct tape, a gun. In a performance that will surely earn Coolidge another Emmy nod, Tanya quietly sobs to herself as she takes the gun, closes her eyes, and begins to shoot. She kills nearly all of her captors on board, save for one lucky Frenchman who dives off the boat screaming and swimming to shore.

Apprehensively approaching Quentin as he bloodily gasped his last breaths, Tanya can't help herself. "Is Greg having an affair?" she desperately asks him.

With a gaggle of corpses behind her, Tanya now set her sights on escaping the yacht ride from hell. Seizing on the dinghy that Niccoló arrived in, she ignores the staircase right next to her and, extraordinarily, decides to instead jump from the second yacht's second level (while still wearing heels!). "You've got this," she tragically, pathetically cries to herself right before she leaps overboard, hits her head on the side of the dinghy, and sinks into the abyss.

Creator Mike White explains Tanya's ending in a post-credits interview. "I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic," he says. "It felt like she needed to give her best fight back and that she, in a way, had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her. So it just made me laugh to think she would like take out all of these cabal of killers, and that after she successfully does that, then she just dies this derpy death. And I just felt like, that's just so Tanya."

As for Portia, Jack unceremoniously drops her off blocks away from an airport, warning her to "get the fuck out of Sicily" and to not challenge the "powerful" people in charge of getting rid of Tanya. Portia heeds his advice.

While waiting to board her flight, Portia bumps into Albie DiGrasso (Adam DiMarco), the Stanford grad she blew off earlier in the season. Through him, she learns of Tanya's fate: "Did you hear one of the guests drowned at the hotel?" "Do you know who?" "No, it was crazy. They found a bunch of dead bodies on a yacht, too."

Salute to The White Lotus's publicity team.

As an associate editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, Chelsey keeps a finger on the pulse on all things celeb news. She also writes on social movements, connecting with activists leading the fight on workers' rights, climate justice, and more. Offline, she’s probably spending too much time on TikTok, rewatching Emma (the 2020 version, of course), or buying yet another corset. 

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Who died, who broke up, and who got their happy ending on The White Lotus season 2 finale

More than one character didn't leave Sicily alive.

Sydney Bucksbaum is a writer at Entertainment Weekly covering all things pop culture – but TV is her one true love. She currently lives in Los Angeles but grew up in Chicago so please don't make fun of her accent when it slips out.

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Sunday's season 2 finale of The White Lotus .

Tanya ( Jennifer Coolidge ) has stayed at her last White Lotus resort. During Sunday's intense season 2 finale of The White Lotus (now streaming on HBO Max), it was revealed in the last few minutes that the dead body discovered floating in the ocean in the premiere is none other than returning season 1 cast member Tanya. So what happened to the White Lotus resort chain's biggest fan, and who are the other dead bodies mentioned in the premiere?

Turns out most of EW's own theories about how season 2 ends were 100 percent accurate: Tanya's husband Greg (Jon Gries) hired Quentin (Tom Hollander) to kill her. Due to the prenup he signed when they got married, he wouldn't get any money from her if they divorced; the only way he'd get all of her money to himself is if she died. That's why he insisted on going to Italy only to leave their romantic trip early — so his old friend Quentin could swoop in and get Tanya to trust him, and eventually Niccoló (Stefano Gianino), the drug dealer Tanya slept with at the party in last week's episode, would kill her the night before she was supposed to leave Italy. Then Greg would pay Quentin using the money he inherited after Tanya's death.

However, after Jack (Leo Woodall) steals Portia's (Haley Lu Richardson) phone so she couldn't contact Tanya and ruin the plan, she becomes suspicious. Portia calls Tanya on Jack's phone while he's in the bathroom and the two of them put all the pieces together and figure out Tanya's in danger. But Jack continues to stall and doesn't take Portia back to the hotel, and when she finally confronts him about his relationship with Quentin, he just drops her off at an airport and warns her to not mess with these "powerful" people and to leave Italy. Spooked, Portia does exactly that.

Meanwhile, stuck on Quentin's yacht, the increasingly paranoid Tanya finds rope, duct tape, and a loaded gun in Niccoló's bag, and she freaks out. Using the gun, she shoots and kills him, Quentin, and one of Quentin's friends on the yacht, while the other friend jumps off the boat and swims away. Tanya tries to escape on Niccoló's boat, but falls over the yacht railing while climbing over, hits her head, and drowns in the ocean. The next morning, Daphne ( Meghann Fahy ) discovers her body in the ocean and the police investigate the deaths on the yacht.

As for the other characters, Albie (Adam DiMarco) bribes his father Dominic ( Michael Imperioli ) to pay 50,000 euros to Lucia (Simona Tabasco) in exchange for helping smooth things over with his mom, and Cameron ( Theo James ) finally pays Lucia the rest of the money he owed her. She then leaves Albie without saying goodbye and he realizes his dad was right: he was an easy mark. And Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) hires Mia (Beatrice Grannò) to play the piano at the hotel full-time and fires Giuseppe (Federico Scribiani) when he returns from the hospital, while also accepting Mia's offer to go to gay clubs to meet other lesbian women.

Things got much messier for the two couples after Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) confesses to Ethan (Will Sharpe) that Cameron did kiss her, but she regretted it immediately and nothing else happened. But he doesn't believe that's the whole story, convinced that she and Cameron had sex, so he confronts Cameron and they fight in the ocean. Then Ethan tells Daphne his fears that their spouses cheated on them together, but after pausing for a moment to process the betrayal, she just smiles and tells him you don't have to know everything about someone to love them, and that mystery is "sexy." She gives him the same advice she gave Harper: "Do what you have to do to not be a victim." It's then implied that she makes a move on him and they hook up in secret to get back at their spouses, and Ethan and Harper have sex that night after an awkward dinner with Cameron and Daphne.

The next day at the airport, a visibly shaken Portia runs into Albie, who tells her that a guest drowned at the hotel but he doesn't know who it was — and that there was a yacht with more dead bodies. She doesn't know for sure but likely assumes what happened to Tanya since she can't get ahold of her, but she and Albie just talk about how their vacation flings didn't work out and exchange numbers instead. Portia, what are you doing?! Meanwhile, Daphne & Cameron and Ethan & Harper appear better than ever, sitting at the gate with their arms around each other, but now all four of them are keeping dark secrets from each other. And Lucia and Mia happily walk through town, celebrating their good fortunes as the only two characters to get a real happy ending.

With that, another season of The White Lotus has come to an end. The series has already been renewed for a third season, but now that Tanya's dead, will Greg take her place as the only returning cast member next time? We can see it now: season 3 features Greg using Tanya's money to stay at a new White Lotus hotel ( in Scotland...where she haunts him? ) — but only if the resort chain doesn't get shut down after all these murders, of course.

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• The White Lotus stars break down episode 5's WTF ending
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• The White Lotus star Jon Gries promises Greg really does love Tanya — even though he's 'unkind'

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The Extreme Pleasures of the “White Lotus” Season 2 Finale

By Naomi Fry

At the beginning of the second season of “The White Lotus,” Mike White’s hit HBO dramedy, a bright-eyed, slim-hipped strawberry blonde named Daphne (Meghann Fahy), a guest at the White Lotus luxury resort in Sicily, decides to take one last dip in the Mediterranean before her vacation ends and she heads back home, to the U.S. But as she swims in the perfect azure waters, her dreamy immersion is shattered by the sight of a dead body, floating on the waves. She screams, and soon the police are called, and more bodies turn up. Who are they?

“The White Lotus” is peak spoiler TV (and this might be a good place to say that there will be spoilers in this piece). By starting at the end of the story and only then rewinding to the beginning, the show creates an itch that the audience must continuously scratch, and, by Sunday night’s finale, the scratching had become outright clawing. Certainly, in the course of the season, we saw no shortage of conflicts that could have yielded perpetrators and victims: there was the newly rich Ethan (Will Sharpe), seething with jealousy over a possible dalliance between his wife, Harper ( Aubrey Plaza , brittle and excellent), and his dick-swinging finance-bro friend, Cameron (the brutally handsome Theo James), who is married to Daphne; there was Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), a hapless heiress in a loveless marriage who, along with her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), had fallen in with a number of sinister, Palermo-based gay men seemingly intent on stealing her fortune by any means necessary; and there was Albie (Adam DiMarco), a wide-eyed, romantically minded Stanford grad travelling with his philandering father, Dom (Michael Imperioli), and still amorous grandfather, Bert (F. Murray Abraham). Albie had taken up with a local prostitute, Lucia (Simona Tabasco), who, unbeknownst to him, had also slept with his father, and who was being followed by her apparent pimp. And this was before we even considered the more minor characters (Giuseppe, the disgruntled hotel-bar pianist? Lucia’s friend Mia, the aspiring singer-slash-sex-worker?) It was truly anyone’s guess who the hell was going to die here.

I can’t pretend that there wasn’t something extremely pleasurable, on a plot level, in trying to crack this mystery. And yet the deaths also seemed to me like a bit of a beside-the-point hook: an easy entryway into the deeper business of considering how relationships on the series work—which is what White’s project is really about. “The White Lotus” isn’t a completely cynical show: its characters have feelings and doubts and fears that aren’t entirely subsumed by their baser, more mercenary instincts. Still, to my mind, the central point made in the series is that no relationship is detached from the transactional and that power always plays a role in how people deal with one another. Death is significant in the “White Lotus” universe, not because each season has been framed as a murder mystery but because death is the only state in which people can’t jockey for more: more sex, more money, more dominance. As long as you’re still breathing, White tells us, you’re going to keep fighting to get the upper hand, or die trying.

The first season of the show focussed on class, and the conflicts that emerged between the haves and the have-nots at the White Lotus resort in Maui. This time around, the theme was desire, with most of the battles emerging from the characters’ preoccupation with sex. (“The motivation of sex is always primary, I think,” White told me when I spoke to him, earlier in the fall for the New Yorker Radio Hour .) Ethan and Harper are experiencing bed death; Cameron and Daphne have a de-facto don’t-ask-don’t-tell cheating policy; Albie is horny but doesn’t want to be like his father, whose marriage is in ruins owing to his sex addiction. Portia, meanwhile, is drawn to Jack (Leo Woodall), the supposed nephew of Tanya’s new gay friend Quentin (Tom Hollander). Jack is an Essex boy whose touch is much less cautious than that of Albie, with whom Portia shares a couple of bland kisses early on.

Like the world’s most indulgent couples therapist, White deals with all these conflicts in satisfying yet surprising ways. Yes, Harper admits to some form of a hookup with Cameron, something that the season had been setting up since the very first episode; less expected is the response from these characters’ spouses. An aggrieved Ethan attacks Cameron while the latter is going for a swim, resulting in an underwater tussle that verges on the erotic. After a stranger breaks up the fight, preventing the two men from killing each other, Ethan reveals what he knows to Daphne. In one of the season’s more insightful—or, perhaps, depressing—moments, she responds by asserting people’s essential separateness from one another. “We never really know what goes on in people’s minds,” she tells Ethan, in a chipper but no-nonsense tone. (Fahy is fantastic in the role, but especially in this scene.) “You spend every second with somebody, and there’s still this part that’s a mystery. . . . It’s kind of sexy.” Then she and Ethan venture out on what, it is implied, is a sexual engagement of their own, to even the score. (Daphne: “You just do whatever you have to do not to feel like a victim of life.”) Later, Ethan and Harper, each recharged with the sexual attention of someone other than their spouse, finally fuck. But the congress is made possible solely through a complicated calibration whose ante will likely need to be upped.

Lucia, predictably, solicits money from Albie in a roundabout way, implying that it’s the only thing that can save her from her violent pimp. Albie asks his father to wire Lucia fifty thousand euros; in exchange, Albie agrees to put in a good word for Dom with his mother, Dom’s angry ex-wife. “I’ll tell her how sorry you are. . . . and how it seems like you’ve really changed—yada yada,” Albie promises, without much conviction; Dom, he says, should consider the money a “karmic payment” for all the hurt that he has caused his wife, his family, and maybe women in general. Giving your college-age son fifty grand to help out a prostitute might not be the most obvious form of making amends to your wife (and Dom’s main objection to the gambit seems to be animated not by any moral qualms but by the suspicion that Albie is Lucia’s “mark”). In the end, though, the deal seems to work: Dom calls his ex-wife, who agrees to talk to him when he’s back, and resolution appears close at hand. At the airport, however, we see his head—and Albie’s, and Bert’s—swivel in the wake of a pretty young woman who is passing by. Clearly, becoming a changed man might be more challenging than it looks.

Tanya and Portia’s plotline is the most delightfully twisty of the lot. In the fifth episode, we discover that Jack is hiding a secret; Tanya catches him in bed with Quentin. (This leads to what is perhaps the best line of the show, uttered by Tanya, to a horrified Portia, in the season finale: “Well, he was kinda fucking his uncle.”) When Portia asks Jack about the nature of the relationship between himself and his “uncle,” he explains that Quentin helped him out when he was “in a fucking hole.” “No one’s perfect,” he continues. “Sometimes you do things you don’t wanna do.” Even though this credo rings true of Portia’s oft-demeaning experience of working for Tanya, the idea, once articulated, seems completely unpalatable to her. Her goal in life, she told Jack earlier in the episode, is to be “satisfied,” although she’s not sure if such a thing is possible. The fact that no one is ever satisfied—that everyone endlessly tries to get the most in exchange for the least—is not just her view but also White’s. (Portia’s effective abandonment of her boss in the finale and her choice not to alert anyone to Tanya’s disappearance also suggest that she is looking out for No. 1, and that she is perhaps the worst assistant in the history of the job.)

“The prenup, the prenup, the prenup,” Tanya murmurs, recognizing that Quentin, in an attempt to raise money to refurbish his crumbling palazzo, has made a deal with her husband, Greg (Jon Gries), to kill her off. “He’s gonna pay them with my money so they can decorate their houses or some shit!” Tanya fumes. (As in Season 1, Coolidge is a comedy genius.) According to their agreement, if they divorce, Greg will get nothing of Tanya’s fortune. If she dies, however, he will finally have the upper hand, and her will to live, to win, is too strong for that. Panicked by the realization that, as she says, “these gays, they’re trying to murder me,” she goes out, gun blazing, spraying bullets willy-nilly and killing Quentin and his cohort on the yacht where they were planning to get rid of her. Tanya refuses to be what Daphne calls “a victim of life.” But that doesn’t stop her from eventually becoming a victim of fate. “You got this,” she tells herself, moments before tumbling off Quentin’s yacht, slapstick style, and hitting her head on a dinghy.

The last moments of the finale show Lucia and Mia prancing down the street, arm in arm. As Lucia stops to hug a tall, good-looking man, we realize that he is her supposed terrifying “pimp.” (Albie, after waking up in an empty hotel room to the discovery that Lucia has left without saying a word, admits to Portia, at the airport, that he was “played.”) The karmic debt has been paid, and it’s hard not to feel happy for the two girls, free of the pesky Americans who thought that they held the advantage. The song that plays in the background, however—Sam Cooke’s “The Best Things in Life Are Free”—provides an Opposite Day context to the scene. “All the moon belongs to everyone / The best things in life, they’re free,” Cooke sings. “Love can come to everyone / The best things in life, they’re free.” Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true? ♦

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This Time, the ‘White Lotus’ Season Finale Ends in Comedy

The revealed death at the end of the first season was a cruel twist of fate; Season 2’s was pure slapstick. That doesn’t make it any less effective.

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Throughout the second-season run of The White Lotus , I’ve been amused by the sheer range of responses. Some declared the Sicily-set episodes a letdown ; others pronounced them better than Season 1 , a surprise hit that went on to earn 20 Emmy nominations and 10 awards. As for myself, I knew I’d wait to make a final call. So much of what made creator Mike White’s pandemic pivot a masterpiece was its bloody conclusion , which didn’t just wrap The White Lotus up with a bow—it told us what the show was. When entitled prick Shane stabbed Maui hotel manager Armond, only to return to the mainland scot-free, it retroactively imbued the events leading up to the accident with real tragedy, cementing the story as a parable of what the elite take from the underclass. The White Lotus doesn’t snap into focus until we know how, why, and for whom a luxury vacation turns deadly. The jury would always be out until the very end.

Not that Season 2 didn’t keep itself a contender for the title of worthy follow-up. This was no Big Little Lies situation: a drop in quality so steep it even drags down the original. The White Lotus may have changed continents, but it kept the scathing humor, seething resentment, and at least one protagonist. Whatever was brewing among these unhappy couples, fractured families, and stressed-out staff, it always had promise.

With Sunday night’s finale, that promise was fulfilled. The internet may have whipped itself into a frenzy with fan theories and close reads, but it turns out that predicting plot is not the same as predicting tone. Yes, viewers had correctly divined the context for “Arrivederci,” the seventh and final installment of Season 2: Heiress Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) was the victim of a conspiracy between Greg (Jon Gries), her husband, and Quentin (Tom Hollander), the suspiciously friendly Brit who magically appeared when Greg left “for work.” Then again, White also had Tanya stumble upon a photo of two young cowboys who looked an awful lot like Quentin and Greg. This mystery box wasn’t all that hard to unlock.

It’s what happens after all this comes to light that proved harder to guess, and more thrilling to watch unfold. Tanya connects the dots with some help from her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), who’s stolen her maybe-kidnapper’s phone to call in a tip—about the only assistance Portia’s provided all season, come to think of it. When the Sicilian boy toy Quentin has secured turns up to take Tanya to shore, she steals his bag, locks herself in a cabin, and discovers a gun. She then shoots and kills almost everyone on the yacht, though not before tearfully asking Quentin if Greg is having an affair. Priorities! Having foiled the plot, Tanya falls on her face trying to climb from Quentin’s yacht into a smaller boat. Same outcome, slightly different circumstances.

If Armond’s death was a cruel twist of fate, Tanya’s is pure slapstick. This isn’t a man recovering from addiction and driven to ruin by his own need for retribution; it’s a woman of obscene wealth and blinding self-involvement making a pratfall into the ocean. Her demise is a fitting end to Tanya’s two-season arc, which saw her exploit multiple employees in what was shown to be a recurring pattern. It also recasts the rest of the season in a more comedic light. White did warn us, billing the story as a “bedroom farce with teeth.” “Arrivederci” puts the emphasis on “farce.”

After all, in the Shakespearean sense, a comedy is defined less by humor than the assurance that things will work out in the end. There’s real pathos in the plight of Harper (Aubrey Plaza) and Ethan (Will Sharpe), a couple clearly unsure their marriage will survive Ethan’s sudden wealth, or the Di Grassos, three men unwilling to admit how alike they are in their attitudes toward women. But this isn’t a season that would end with Ethan killing his college roommate Cameron (Theo James) for making a pass at his wife, a possibility that’s teased early in the finale. Nor is it one in which Albie (Adam DiMarco) would sacrifice himself to save local sex worker Lucia (Simona Tabasco) from a pimp, as some speculated he might. It’s a story in which all the Americans—save Tanya, of course—go home more chastened and compromised than when they arrived, but not much worse for wear. And it’s one in which Lucia and her friend Mia (Beatrice Granno) emerge as the true heroes of the season, almost literally laughing all the way to the bank in a euphoric final shot.

The pimp, you see, was a fiction—a friend recruited to prey on Albie’s naive, condescending, nice-guy instincts, just as Lucia scammed his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli) out of some cash by charging a luxury shopping spree to his room. When Albie asks him for 50,000 euros, Dom is well aware his son is getting fleeced. (“How are you gonna make it in life if you’re this big a mark?”) But he goes along with it anyway, because Albie makes an offer Dom can’t refuse: vouching for him with his estranged wife, who’d finally had enough of the chronic infidelity. Maybe Albie did learn something on all those Godfather tours around the island. And maybe his gullibility was starting to wear off even before he realized Lucia took the money and ran, enough to drive a hard bargain with a man he very well knows hasn’t changed. By the time he bumps into a freshly traumatized Portia at the Catania airport, Albie knows enough to settle, as does she. It’s a match made in heaven.

In a way, Albie and Portia feel like an answer to Shane and Rachel from Season 1: a couple clearly imperfect for each other who reunite after learning how much harder it is on their own. So do Harper and Ethan, who both learn the same lesson from Cameron’s wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy) about how to live with some measure of distance. In Ethan’s case, the lesson appears to be a little more hands-on. After a few episodes of opposites-attract chemistry between Harper and Cam, White pulled an ingenious switch. We never see a hookup, but Ethan becomes consumed by the idea that one happened, putting him in the audience’s obsessive shoes. It’s his paranoia, not Harper’s temptation, that brings the situation to a boil.

When Harper admits Cam kissed her, Daphne introduces Ethan to her life motto: “Do what you have to do to make yourself feel better about it.” In this case, it’s heavily implied, that means having sex with each other so everyone’s even, at least in their minds. Probably not what Harper had in mind when she got the spiel herself, but it gets Ethan to express attraction for her again, so all’s well that ends well. They’re now one step closer to becoming the couple they once scoffed at—repressing whatever secrets they have to in order to get through the day. They’re learning how to be rich and guilt-free, one act of subterfuge at a time.

A fairy-tale ending it isn’t, but it is a happy one, or at least as happy as it’s possible to be in The White Lotus ’s vision of long-term partnership. (It’s Daphne who delivers what may be the season’s thesis statement: “You don’t have to know everything to love someone.”) For a more straightforward kind of bliss, you can live like Lucia and Mia, unencumbered by obligation and clear-eyed about the true utility of sex. Mia began the season by attempting to sleep with the hotel’s piano player for a chance to sing; by dreaming bigger and going after his boss, the closeted manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), she gets his entire gig. Along with Lucia, she’s leagues ahead of where she started out, all by abandoning the false promise of romance.

In total, the ending of this trip to The White Lotus is about as good as we can feel about a miniature murder spree. Quentin got what was coming to him; Tanya could never be happy, and now she no longer has to try; everyone else has left a little more cynical than they once were, and therefore better equipped to handle hard truths. To focus on impending death over everything else is to miss out on The White Lotus ’s more subtle texture. But as it did last year, a little high drama helps bring it all together. Ciao , Sicily—now, let’s do it all again .

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The White Lotus Season-Finale Recap: Dead in the Water

The White Lotus

Finally, after weeks of speculation and theorizing, we know exactly whose body Daphne bumped into on the  last swim of her Sicilian vacation . We had to say farewell to our sole holdover from season one: Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid. But since this is  The White Lotus , her death was, of course, anything but straightforward. And because of the endlessly expanding web that Mike White weaved over the last six episodes, that was just one of the many loose ends that this finale was tasked with tying up.

When our day begins, Ethan is still haunted by the thought of Harper and Cameron sleeping together, Daphne is FaceTiming her blonde and blue-eyed children, and Dominic is staring longingly at a photo of his absent wife and daughter (the photo they use for his wife, unfortunately, is not Laura Dern, but we can just pretend). Meanwhile, their son Albie is pillow-talking with Lucia and making big plans for her to come to Los Angeles. Such big plans, in fact, that he asks his father for 50,000 euros to give her. Dominic balks at this truly insane idea until Albie calls it a karmic payment and promises to put in a good word with his mother if Dominic agrees.

Elsewhere, in Ethan and Harper’s room, Ethan finally confronts his wife about her (real or imagined) tryst with Cameron that’s been occupying his mind for every waking moment. The pair go back and forth about who’s telling the truth about each of their respective suspicions, but finally Harper caves. She admits that they drunkenly came up to the room, where Cameron latched the door, but assures him that they just kissed. “So it wasn’t for the hat?” Ethan asks, referring to Harper’s original excuse for coming up to the room. “No, it wasn’t for the hat.” It was a drunken, stupid nothing, but the real issue, Harper says, is that Ethan isn’t attracted to her. This deflection doesn’t work because Ethan still doesn’t believe that she’s telling him the full story, and he’s convinced that more happened. Either way, one thing is for sure: Cameron tried to fuck his wife.

With this hunch now confirmed, Ethan storms out of the room in search of Cameron, who he finds and confronts while taking a swim at the beach — uh-oh, the scene of the crime. Years of resentment over Cameron’s “mimetic desire” and constantly being treated as less than erupts as Ethan attacks his old roommate. The pair start brawling in the water like they’re Denise Richards and Neve Campbell in  Wild Things , taking turns holding each other down under the water and flirting with a drowning. Finally, it ends when Ethan delivers a swift punch squarely to Cameron’s face and calmly exits the ocean.

His post-fight walk eventually leads him to Daphne lounging on the beach, who asks if he’s doing okay. He tells her that he thinks something happened between their spouses, and her face drops for a moment, but in true Daphne fashion, she bounces back. She tells him that she doesn’t think he has anything to worry about, before delivering yet another ethereal take about dealing with infidelity and how it’s impossible to know what really goes on in people’s minds. “You don’t have to know everything to love someone,” she says, before echoing the same words she told Harper earlier in the trip about doing whatever you have to do to make yourself not feel like a victim. What does that entail in Ethan’s case? Well, a walk they take. just the two of them, implies that having sex themselves might be the thing that does the trick —  Trading Spouses  style.

Daphne could and should start a cult. I want to see her give spiritual advice to Oprah every week on Super Soul Sunday. She should wear flowing white gowns for healing retreats held in a field and black turtlenecks for corporate TED Talks. I want to read the book her ghostwriters put together after three stream-of-consciousness interviews over arugula salad. She should run for office. She should lead a country, for all I know! In saying good-bye to all of our guests, I’ll miss her the most.

As Tanya prepares to head back to the hotel, she suddenly remembers the picture she found last night during her cocaine-fueled sexscapades. She understandably thought it might have been a dream, so she returns to the room to find that it was, in fact, real. As she examines it, Quentin walks in and tells her that the man in the photo’s name is Steve and he worked on a dude ranch. “He looks just like Greg,” Tanya says, noting the uncanny resemblance.

Tanya has been willfully blind to every red flag that has come her way since we’ve met her — it’s a part of her charm! And she isn’t snapped out of that habit until she’s on the yacht and gets a call from Portia, who stole Jack’s phone to call her while he used the bathroom. When Portia tells her about her missing phone, Tanya finally fills her in on what she saw. “He was kinda … fuckin’ his uncle,” she says, reminding us all how lucky we are to live in a world where Jennifer Coolidge gets this kind of dialogue.

Portia thinks something bad is happening (no shit) and tells Tanya what Jack let slip the other night about Quentin not really being rich and how he’s supposed to come into a windfall. Suddenly Tanya’s rose-colored glasses are shattered and it all hits her. Greg was the one who insisted they come to Sicily, and if they were to get divorced, he’d get nothing, but if Tanya were to die … that’s another story. But when Jack returns, their call is cut short and they have to return to their respective captors.

“Can you just cut the shit? Have I been kidnapped?” Portia asks Jack outright. She tells him that she knows something is up and confronts him about fucking his “uncle.” This takes the wind out of Jack’s sails, who’s no longer in the mood to follow through with the plan of showing her around town to keep her occupied. He frighteningly tells her to just let him do his job, and Portia doesn’t understand how she’s a job to do.

Tanya, now anchored at the resort, has been informed that she won’t be leaving the yacht until later when her Mafia-connected one-night stand, Nicolo, comes to fetch her via dinghy. Absolutely panicked, she scurries around the yacht attempting to call for help but drops her phone overboard: The sea’s first casualty. But ah! She spots the captain in his little knit cap; maybe he can help her. “Do you know these gays? Do you know these gays?” she urgently asks him, explaining everything and begging to be brought to shore. But of course, he doesn’t speak English, and the language barrier makes this whole conversation completely unfruitful. Worst of all, here comes Nicolo, who Tanya is convinced is her soon-to-be assassin.

A much different scene is playing out over dinner in the hotel restaurant, where all loose ends are tied up in neat little ribbons. Cameron finally slips Lucia the money he owes her before toasting his travel companions as if he wasn’t just pummeled in the ocean. Mia excitedly tells her No. 1 fan, Bert, that she got the job as the pianist. And Dominic tells Albie that he made the karmic payment, and he goes to excitedly tell Lucia to check her bank account. For his part, a good word has been put in with his mother, so much so that when Dominic calls her that night, she actually answers (more Dern!).

Back in their room, Harper asks Ethan what’s going to happen to them, and suddenly they start having sex (finally!). Lifting her up onto the table, they knock over and shatter the  teste di moro  vase that, as a symbolic omen of infidelity, has been haunting them the whole trip. Did Dr. Daphne’s advice and/or services actually work?

Things look bright for a moment, until we return to the yacht and remember that poor Tanya is being held captive. She’s haunted by Nicolo’s duffel bag, knowing from last night that it contains a gun — and now she’s trying to stall. She wants another glass of wine first, until the thought of it being poisoned seems to cross her mind.

Even though the paranoia is completely warranted, it’s such a great emotion to watch Jennifer Coolidge play with. It makes me mourn the never-made Mike White–Jennifer Coolidge project,  Saint Patsy . Coolidge would have played a paranoid actress who begins to spiral when she starts to believe an awards ceremony is really a ruse from an ex-boyfriend trying to kill her. It seems like we’re getting notes of that concept this season, but I hope that doesn’t stop White from eventually making it happen one day.

Meanwhile, Jack has driven Portia to some creepy, abandoned locale. “Why have we stopped?” Portia asks before he gets out and lights up a cigarette. “Where are we?” Instead of going to the resort, Jack brought her to the airport, advising her not to return to the White Lotus and get right on a plane. He warns her not to mess with these powerful people and tosses her missing phone out the window as he drives away.

While Portia has been miraculously spared from her grim situation, Tanya is still in the thick of it, excusing herself to use the bathroom and snatching Nicolo’s duffel on the way. She locks herself in a room and empties the contents on a bed to discover rope, duct tape, and a revolver — like this is some kind of life-size Clue board. Soon enough, the men are all pounding on Tanya’s door. Sobbing, she points the gun at the door. She’s been cornered. They break down the door, and she begins shooting her way through the yacht.

Bloodied bodies sprawled about, she sees that a wounded Quentin is still alive. “Is Greg having an affair? Tell me, I know you know,” she asks. Even in a world where Greg has orchestrated her murder, the thought of him cheating on her still consumes her. It’s so brilliant and classically Tanya. What happens next is also classically Tanya.

All she has to do is board the dinghy and escape to land, but as she heaves herself over the yacht railing, she loses her balance, plummeting onto the side of the boat and into the sea. Drawing one last parallel to Madame Butterfly, booming opera music plays as Tanya McQuoid drowns off the coast of Italy. Of course her downfall, no pun intended, would be her own doing.

Morning comes, and we see our guests one last time before checkout time. Lucia leaves Albie, taking the money and running. Daphne bids our  Survivor  contestants farewell before discovering Tanya’s body. The police swarm. At the airport, the Di Grasso men gawk at a passing woman, each more like the other than ever. Our now-happy couples sit at their gate wrapped in each other’s arms. Portia buys an elaborate disguise that somehow makes her look less insane than her real clothes.

Despite her airport gift-shop hat and sunglasses, Albie recognizes her as they wait for their flight and these two crazy kids reunite, bonding over their misguided rendezvous. Albie breaks the news that somebody died, all but confirming Tanya’s fate to Portia, who doesn’t let the bad news stop her from finally making a good decision and exchanging numbers with him. Another happy ending? Lucia and Mia joyously galavanting through the streets of Sicily, having had the best week out of everyone staying at the resort.

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Quentin Is the Most Chilling Character in 'The White Lotus' Season 2 Finale

Quentin’s nonplussed, casual nature makes him a pretty disturbing character.

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for The White Lotus: Sicily.

Critical award ceremonies that create categories honoring the “Best Ensemble Cast” were made for shows like The White Lotus . It’s hard to single out just one standout performance from a series that balances so many great characters at once, as each is equally important to the complex narrative that Mike White has strung together; we saw evidence of this at the last Primetime Emmy Awards when eight members of the first season’s cast were recognized, including nominations for Jake Lacy, Alexandra Dadarrio, Sydney Sweeney, Steve Zahn, Connie Britton, Natasha Rothwell, and wins for Murray Bartlett and Jennifer Coolidge .

Somehow, The White Lotus: Sicily managed to top its predecessor with an ensemble just as strong, and it was apparent during the series premiere, “Ciao,” that this cast was set to both infuriate and enthrall us in the same way. However, one of the most dynamic characters in the series didn’t even show up until halfway through. Tom Hollander ’s Quentin doesn’t begin flirting with Tanya (Coolidge) until midway through the season, but immediately adds a sense of playfulness, mystery, and darkly comic wit to the storyline. Quentin’s true motivations and agenda remain a mystery until the very end, where they beautifully paid off in the finale, “Arrivederci.”

Of all the shocking moments in “Arrivederci,” Quentin’s cold, seemingly impenetrable demeanor stands out as the most chilling. He doesn’t start emulating a James Bond villain and launch into a monologue explaining his evil plan, nor does he give a half-hearted explanation of all the mistakes in his life that have led him to this point. We’re no less mystified by Quentin at the end of the series than we were when he first gazed at Tanya in the restaurant, and the deliberately ambiguous nature of the character is among the show’s most interesting decisions. “Arrivederci” is an instantly classic episode of modern television that will likely linger in viewers’ minds for quite some time, but it’s Quentin’s nonplussed, casual nature that is most disturbing.

RELATED: All the Winners and Losers of 'The White Lotus' Season 2

An Unraveling Enigma

It seems as if each interaction we have with Quentin earlier in the season both revealed a new layer to his personality and raised even more questions. He’s clearly interested in Tanya, but why? He’s not interested in her romantically, so why does he seem to enjoy taking her out on his luxurious trips? Perhaps his “targeting” of Tanya should have raised our suspicions from the very beginning, but at the same time, he was giving her everything that she seemingly ever wanted. If Tanya only found heartbreak and disappointment from her relationship with Greg ( Jon Gries ), then Quentin is the exact opposite of her blank-faced husband; he’s charming, unapologetic for his wealth, and unashamed of his passions.

The brilliance of how “Arrivederci” handles Quentin’s character arc is that we learn more about this mysterious man through other characters’ revelations than we do from Quentin himself. While Quentin has contained Tanya on a seemingly delightful cruise at night, the tension is all in the interactions between Portia ( Zoey Deutch ) and Quentin’s “nephew,” Jack ( Leo Woodall ). After a critical message from Tanya warns Portia of Jack’s mysterious motivations, we get the revelation that Quentin has taken advantage of Jack and essentially has turned him into his personal servant. While Hollander may not be that physically imposing on his own, Jack’s terror about confronting his mysterious benefactor speaks volumes about the power he has.

An Aura Of Menace

While Tanya turns into a bit of a sleuth as she begins to deduce that Greg and Quentin have worked out a plan to kill her and take her fortune (as Greg would not be given his due of her wealth in the case of a divorce), Quentin’s behavior remains consistent. Even when Tanya makes obvious signs that she is uncomfortable, and perhaps knows what his intentions are, he does not break from the charming character that he may just be pretending to be. His enthusiasm about taking the trip as she expresses her distrust feels like a coded message that tells Tanya that she has no other options.

We’re forced to question how much of Quentin’s self-presentation is performative when we realize that he might actually be broke, and desperate to attain the money from Tanya’s death. If his entire persona is that of a pretentious, wealthy traveler, then have all of his actions been preordained as part of a plot? We’re forced to think back on every passing remark, comment, and joke that Quentin has made throughout the entire series, back to his first gazes at Tanya. Has he been sincere at any point in the entire series?

A Chilling Conclusion

During the climactic sequence in which Tanya uncovers her intended murder weapons (which turn out to be literal game pieces from Clue ), Quentin is still as calm and relaxed as ever. When Tanya finally breaks out of the trap and shoots down Quentin and his men, she’s clearly so traumatized that she’s not even able to deliver a satisfying one-liner. Her only question to Quentin at the very end is whether Greg ever truly cared for her, and his lack of a straight answer is his last act of cruelty. While Tanya may have Quentin’s blood on her hands, he still has power over her.

Quentin’s dying actions are just as mystifying as the rest of his behavior. Riddled with blood and clinging to his life, Quentin can only cock his head, slightly bemused that the only question Tanya has for him is whether or not her husband was being faithful? It’s another chilling sign of how Quentin’s mind operates; either he still seems to feel superior to those who care for others, or maybe he would have enjoyed giving a villainous monologue in the style of a classic movie villain. In a bit of cruel irony, Quentin gets to accept his death, but Tanya’s demise takes her by surprise.

Based on the loose connections between the first two seasons, it seemed like Coolidge’s character would have been able to fluidly move between each season of the show as a spiritual link, since HBO has already renewed The White Lotus for a third season. Tanya was perhaps the most iconic character in the first installment, and killing her off in such a brutal and heartbreaking fashion was certainly a bold move. It takes a truly terrific villain to make that decision effective, and Quentin certainly qualifies. He’s the type of character who has enough layers to lead his own sequel series; sadly, it’s one we’ll now obviously never see.

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The White Lotus Recap: Who Checked Out for Good in the Season 2 Finale?

Dave nemetz, west coast bureau chief.

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The White Lotus wrapped up its sophomore run with a twist-filled finale — and as we know, not everyone survived.

Valentina wakes up next to Mia, who commends her on her performance the night before: “You’re good.” A fed-up Harper finally tells Cameron at breakfast, “You’re an idiot.” (Guess they’re not having a secret romance.) Albie, meanwhile, tells his dad he needs fifty thousand euros — to buy Lucia’s freedom, we guess? Dom refuses at first, but then Albie offers that in exchange, “I’ll help you out with Mom.” Now we’re negotiating! Valentina — sporting some serious sex hair — agrees to bring Rocco back to the front desk, much to Isabella’s delight. Tanya wanders back into that bedroom and looks at the photo of Quentin and young Greg again… and Quentin catches her! He says the cowboy’s name is Steve, even though Tanya insists he looks just like Greg, and he hustles her out the door before she can inquire further.

Portia still can’t find her phone and is confused when Jack tells her Tanya is already on a boat back to the hotel, but Jack just tells her to get a drink and relax. On the boat back, Quentin and his friends tell Tanya how hard they have to work to keep up their old palazzos, but they’re interrupted when Portia calls her on Jack’s phone. Tanya tells Portia about what she saw Jack doing (“He was kinda f–king his uncle”), and Portia spills what Jack said about Quentin needing money. Suddenly, Tanya’s piecing it together with the photo of Greg — and according to their pre-nup, if she dies, Greg gets everything. “We gotta get the f–k outta here,” Tanya decides, just as Jack pulls his phone out of Portia’s hand. She wants to get back to the hotel, but Jack assures her there’s no rush, and Quentin tells Tanya they’ll still be at sea for a couple more hours. Why does this feel like a horror movie all of a sudden?

Portia confronts Jack with the truth — including what Tanya saw him doing with Quentin. He sulks and offers to drive her straight back (“Just let me do my job”) and then snaps at her when she keeps pushing. To make matters worse, Tanya drops her phone in the water! (Oh, Tanya.) She tries to confide in the boat captain (“These gays! They’re trying to murder me!”), but he doesn’t speak a word of English. Oh, and he’s gay, too! Niccolo arrives in the dinghy, and back at the bar, Cameron subtly slips Lucia an envelope full of cash. He and Daphne sit next to Ethan and Harper like nothing happened, and it’s awkward as hell, as Dom tells Albie he made the payment for Lucia. Albie has already vouched for him with his mom, but Bert brings down the mood when he says he got a little excited when Mia hugged him just now. (Gross.) Cameron offers a toast “to friendship” to Ethan and Harper, and they all reluctantly clink glasses on it.

Tanya grabs Niccolo’s bag and locks herself in a bedroom, finding rope, duct tape and a gun (!) inside it. As Niccolo bursts in, she shoots him dead and emerges sobbing, firing wildly and leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. When a mortally wounded Quentin rolls over, she can only ask him: “Is Greg having an affair?” One of Quentin’s friends escapes when Tanya finds she’s out of bullets, and Tanya psyches herself up to shimmy down to the dinghy… only she slips and slams against the dinghy before falling into the water. We see her lifeless body floating in the water as grandly operatic music plays. Well, that’s quite a few bodies for Daphne to find.

Lucia wakes up in the morning and leaves Albie’s room without a word. (Did she ditch him for good?) Daphne bumps up against Tanya’s dead body, and we’re all caught up with the flash-forward. At the airport, all three Di Grasso men check out a beautiful young Italian woman while Cameron comforts a shaky Daphne with a kiss and Harper and Ethan bask in their newly rekindled passion. Portia runs into Albie, who tells her they found a bunch of dead bodies in the water and on a yacht. What happened with Jack, he asks? “He’s deranged.” What happened with Lucia, she asks? “Oh, she played me.” They exchange numbers as, back in Sicily, a sunny (and newly wealthy) Lucia and Mia walk arm-in-arm — and greet Alessio, who was an employee at the hotel the whole time! Arrivederci!

Before you check out, give the finale — and Season 2 as a whole — a grade in our polls below, and then hit the comments to share all your post-finale thoughts. (Plus, see what creator Mike White has to say about killing off Tanya in the finale.) 

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I am GAGGED. I knew the gays were attempting to kill her but never in a million years did I think Mike White would actually kill Tanya. Insanely hilarious! …I am annoyed that Greg ended up becoming a millionaire, but still absolutely thrilled to see all the locals ending up securing their bag this season! A terrific season indeed!

Why is it hilarious that Tanya died?

The way in which she died was very Tanya… I am sure Greg will be in another season and probably won’t survive it.

I’m so heated! RIP TANYA

Nooooo… I thought Tonya would be the common thread to all seasons. So, is Greg now rich? That kinda sucks!

Could always do prequels

I really thought we were about to get an underwater fantasy sequence with Tanya. I kept waiting for her eyes to open and some dance number unfold.

I’m glad annoying Tanya can’t pollute Season 3.

Thank you though we seem to begin the minority.

WTaF!!!! My heart was pumping these last 15 minutes

Tanya and Albie deserve each other. Both dummies

I think you mean Portia

Maybe Greg was secretly the thread all along between all 3 seasons. Maybe in Season 3, The White Lotus offers him a all expenses paid stay at another location, due to his loss.

Yes! He’s the only one remaining who’s been in both seasons and I doubt we’ve seen the last of him

No… F you mike white..

Please please please put “These gays! They’re trying to murder me!” On 2022s end of year best lines

Don’t forget “These are some high-end gays.” from an earlier episode. Too funny!

Mike White said the police will probably suspect Greg of having something to do with Tanya’s death. Portia could answer all their questions, but wisely fled the scene. Season 2 rocked!

Wowowowowowow what an ending!!

Hoping Greg is found guilty and doesn’t inherit .. good finale but not great. Great season.

I thought this was a poor season. So many unanswered questions. Where was Greg this whole time? Was he in cahoots with Quentin, or did Tanya imagine it? Was Nicolo really going to kill her, or did she imagine that, too?

Why didn’t Tanya stay on the boat and call for help instead of trying to jump into the dinghy?

What did Jack mean when he told Portia that “these people are dangerous?” Who are “these people?”

It seemed fairly clear to me..

1) of course Greg was in cahoots with Quentin. Quentin was on the other end of Greg’s secretive, romantic phone call.

2) of course Niccolo was going to kill her. I’m not sure how much more they could have done to telegraph that.

3) because Tanya is a ditz, but she also wasn’t sure if the captain was in on it, and panic was hindering her ability to think clearly.

4) “these people” are the desperate and entitled, yet powerful, crowd Quentin ran with, with a sprinkling of mafia.

She tried to call for help and dropped her phone. Quentin and Gregg plotted this from the outset – including the trip to Sicily. And that’s why he was so pissed that Portia was there at all. A witness. So Jack was tasked with “disposing” of her- which he couldn’t manage. The Mafia – they were all connected and deeply in debt.

Did you even pay attention to what you were watching? Lol It’s pretty much common sense. People who need to have everything spelled out to them need to just stick with NCIS.

Just because you don’t understand what the whole world sees, does not make a show poor.

Disagree. Great season! All those questions were obvious. How can you not put those together. A 3rd grader could answer all those questions. Who are these people? Uhh…the gays with the power and money. Was Niccolò going to kill her too? Yes. Was Greg really in cohoots? Really? The phone saying how she’s oblivious and saying he loves you to another guy over the phone, how he insisted they go to Sicily and left so he had an alibi, the picture with his lover from when they were young, etc, etc. weren’t enough for you. I don’t mean to be a a-hole but again, these were questions a 3rd grader could figure out. Both seasons have been great!

Fabulous ending! Fabulous season!! Here’s to another Emmy for Jennifer.

Meghann Fahy is getting an Emmy nom after this right??

She better!!

I suspect Jennifer Coolidge will win again though, specifically for her performance in this episode. The whole cast has been excellent.

Meghann was just amazing – and Daphne was the Boss – She won the White Lotus

Meghann Fahy Deserves the EMMY

A Star is Born! White Lotus is the sum of its parts. I loved how the ensemble really just shined. Everything was so good. So sad about Tanya though. I hope she has a twin sister in season 3.

Cameron totally knows that’s not his son! Great episode but too much time spent with Jack & Portia. Kind of like how everything’s not black & white & keeps you guessing a little at the end.

I think you’re right about the son not being his. In a previous episode his wife spoke about a blond hair blue eyed “trainer”. Good catch!

I might be in the minority here, but I disliked the Tanya character. Glad she’s out the picture and this won’t become the White Lotus with Tanya McQuoid-Hunt show.

Tanya IS annoying, but she has some of the best lines. Very sad to lose her.

She was annoying but I’m surprised she was actually killed off.

I agree with you about Tanya.

I agree with you!

You’re definitely not alone. I don’t get all the Tanya love. She was my least favorite character.

I didn’t mind Tanya in the first season. But she was ridiculous in the second. Making Portia sit on the couch while she napped because she couldn’t be alone. Really. It was quite obvious that Greg was not into her.

Another great season has come to a close, and this finale in particular was a dandy. Considering her popularity, and that a third season had already been announced which figured to include her, Jennifer Coolidge’s demise was pretty unexpected. As a result, a truly surprising ending. And while she ended up departing to that great “White Lotus in the sky,” it was pretty neat seeing Tanya doing her best Dirty Harry impression as she dispatched the bad guys before her ammo ran out. Thumbs up ! 👍🏻

Before watching the finale I rewatched Greg’s scenes from season 1. I was thinking it was all a long con. He just happens to get the room next to hers and he is so incredibly nice to her even when she is acting bananas. He acts nothing at all like he behaves in s2.

Did Ethan sleep with Daphne? It was sort of insinuated by the looks they were giving each other, etc. as they walked to the island

YES‼️ That’s how he gets his mojo back

My feeling – Harper actually came on to Cameron after their drinking/flirting. Not sure what actually happened between them, but Camerson finally did a selfless thing by not telling Ethan, but rather taking the fall.

He’s basically gaslighting Ethan & laughing in the water after their fight.

🤩 WoW, im happy Portia, Mia, Lucia, Harper, Daphne, Valentina & Isabella survived❣️. Sad about Tanya, but at least she got Niccoló, Quentin & the other guy before they got her. Cannot wait til Mike White presents season 3 White Lotus🪷

I think Daphne’s character should come back next season. She’s on a trip to get a way from Cameron as they are getting a divorce because their 3rd child has some Asian features :P

Cam already knows he’s not the father of Daphne’s son & that she cheats too.

I said 3rd son…they only have two blondes not one that is slightly Asian.

I know what you meant. My point was that he already knows she cheats. Their daughter has brown hair & looks more like him unlike the boy. Judging by Cam’s reaction while flossing, he knows that’s not his son & they haven’t divorced yet.

Yea, but if she had Ethan’s it would be flagrantly not his and I don’t think his Ego could take it.

And what if Harper has a baby that doesn’t look part Asian at all. But we don’t actually know if either couple even had sex because Mike White seems to love loose ends!

Dream casting for next season: Parker Posey

I second that, I love Parker.

Yes, she would be great! Also just to bring back other Best In Show, A Mighty Wind cast members, Catherine O’Hara and or Jane Lynch

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The White Lotus season 2 ending explained: Who dies in the finale?

Your biggest questions answered about The White Lotus season 2

The White Lotus season 2 finale has exploded onto our screens, and things certainly went out with a bang rather than a whimper. We finally found out which hotel guests met tragic ends and, in typical White Lotus fashion, there were plenty of surprises in store, too. Each storyline was neatly wrapped up while still leaving us with plenty of questions, but we wouldn't expect anything less from series creator, writer, and director Mike White. This isn't the end for the hit comedy-drama, either – The White Lotus season 3 has already been confirmed, but, for now, let's break down what exactly what happened in season 2's dramatic conclusion. 

It goes without saying, of course, that there are major spoilers for The White Lotus season 2 finale ahead. Proceed with caution if you haven't seen the episode yet and don't want to know what happens! 

Who dies in The White Lotus season 2? 

In The White Lotus season 2 finale, we finally learn the identity of the dead body discovered in the ocean by Daphne (Meghann Fahy) in episode 1. It's Tanya, played by Jennifer Coolidge, who dies. The other bodies found belong to Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his associates.

Earlier in the episode, Quentin and his friends take Tanya back to the hotel from the palazzo in Palermo on their yacht. The yacht drops anchor a little way from the shore, but Quentin assures Tanya that Niccolo, Quentin's drug dealer and potential mafia connection, will take her back to the hotel on a smaller boat after they all have dinner. Tanya is suspicious and pretends to use the bathroom so she can investigate what's in Niccolo's duffel bag. It's the gun from episode 6, plus some rope and tape – a textbook kill kit. She locks herself in a bedroom and, when Quentin and co. start trying to open the door, she begins to shoot the gun at random with her eyes closed.

She emerges from the room to find Didier and Niccolo dead. Hugo is still alive, but runs away and jumps off the yacht into the water. Quentin is bleeding out but still conscious, and Tanya asks him whether her husband Greg (Jon Gries) was having an affair. He's too weak to answer, and gives her one last withering look in his final moments. 

With the threat to her life eliminated, Tanya attempts to get off the yacht and into the dinghy so she can make her way back to the hotel. She jumps from the deck of the yacht, but misses the dinghy, hits her head, and drowns in the ocean.

What happened to Portia?

Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) gets increasingly desperate to get back to the hotel and confronts Jack (Leo Woodall) about his relationship with Quentin. Jack says it's his "job" to take Portia back to the White Lotus, but he ends up dropping her at the airport instead and warns her not to return to the hotel.

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She reunites with brief former fling Albie (Adam DiMarco) at the airport. Albie asks if she heard that a guest drowned at the hotel and that other bodies were found on a yacht, which makes Portia realize it must be Tanya. Her response? To ask Albie for his number. 

Did Harper cheat on Ethan?

Ethan (Will Sharpe) is convinced that his wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) had sex with Cameron (Theo James). When he accosts her about it, she says that they kissed in their hotel room, but that was it. Ethan doesn't believe her and he confronts Cameron on the beach – the two get into a physical fight in the ocean until a stranger breaks them up.  

Ethan then finds Daphne and tells her of his suspicions. Daphne tells him that he needs to do whatever he needs in order to "not feel like a victim," and the two of them go for a walk to a secluded area of the beach. When they return, the two couples reunite for their last dinner, and both pairs seem at ease with each other. When Ethan and Harper go back to their room, Ethan seems energized and full of renewed passion for his wife. While we don't know exactly what happened while Ethan and Daphne were alone, it's possible that they had sex to get back at their respective (supposedly) cheating spouses. 

What happened to Lucia and Mia?

Believing that Lucia (Simona Tabasco) is in danger from a pimp named Alessio, Albie convinces his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli) to send €‎50,000 to her by promising to put in a good word for Dominic with his mother. Albie and Lucia sleep together again one last time on Albie's last night at the White Lotus, but she sneaks away before Albie wakes up, leading him to realize he got played. 

As for Mia, she gets a permanent gig playing the piano and singing in the White Lotus restaurant after sleeping with hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore). The pair have seemingly formed a real friendship, and Mia promises that her and Lucia will take Valentina to Sicily's gay clubs and introduce her to some "hot girls."

With €‎50,000 to their name, along with the money finally paid to them by Cameron, Lucia and Mia are set financially. Lucia previously stated that she wanted to open her own boutique, and she's certainly in a position to do that now.

If you're up to date with The White Lotus, fill out your watch list with our picks of the best new TV shows coming our way in the next few months.

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism. 

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The White Lotus: Season 2

7 EPISODES | TV-MA

Taking place over one tumultuous week, this social satire follows the exploits of various guests and employees at an exclusive resort.

Two couples navigate awkwardness, an Italian American family deals with a conspicuous absence, and Tanya arrives with her new assistant.

2 . Italian Dream

Tanya enlists Greg to help her live out her perfect Sicilian day. Harper questions Cameron and Daphne’s claims about their marriage.

3 . Bull Elephants

While Daphne loops Harper into an off-resort excursion, Ethan and Cameron get in some bro time. Tanya seeks advice from a tarot reader.

4 . In the Sandbox

Tanya and Portia spend a day with charming ex-pats Quentin and Jack. Harper is blindsided by shocking evidence from Ethan’s night out.

5 . That's Amore

Tanya and Portia embark on a whirlwind excursion with Quentin and Jack. Unsure what to believe, Harper gets real with Cam and Daphne.

6 . Abductions

Ethan grows suspicious of Cam. Tanya gives Portia an opaque warning about Jack. Lucia helps the Di Grassos search for long-lost relatives.

7 . Arrivederci

Albie asks Dominic for a karmic payment to help Lucia. Tanya grows wary of Quentin’s motives. Ethan confronts Cam.

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HBO in November 2022 announced a third season for The White Lotus , which will bring a new installment of the Mike White -created anthology series to screens.

The first installment, which premiered July 2021 and was set in Hawaii, was nominated for 20 Emmy Awards and won a leading 10, including for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. Season 2, set in Sicily, debuted October 30, 2022 and won five Emmys , including a repeat for Jennifer Coolidge .

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When will the white lotus season 3 premiere, who’s in the cast.

The loaded cast for Season 3 is set with Season 1 standout Natasha Rothwell returning along with newomers Leslie Bibb, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon, Parker Posey, Dom Hetrakul, Tayme Thapthimthong, Christian Friedel, Morgana O’Reilly, Lek Patravadi, Shalini Peiris, Walton Goggins , Aimee Lou Wood, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sarah Catherine Hook, Sam Nivola, Nicholas Duvernay, Arnas Fedaravičius, Scott Glenn and Blackpink’s Lisa Manobal .

Miloš Biković, who was cast in the new season for what is believed to be a small recurring role of a Russian named Valentin, a flirtatious yogi and the White Lotus hotel’s Life Enhancement Mentor, exited the role February 2 . That came a month after Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs  called out HBO  over the casting of the Serbian-Russian actor who the ministry said supported Russia in the war against Ukraine. He was replaced by Julian Kostov , whose credits include Shadow and Bone .

In March, there was a second recasting: Charlotte Le Bon replaced the originally cast Francesca Corney . Details on the character are not known, but sources said the producers felt they needed someone who played older.

What do we know about Season 3 plot?

Other than the action centered at another White Lotus resort property … not much. But we do know the multi-generational group involved this season includes a patriarch, a female corporate executive, an actress, a couple of mothers including a country club wife, a misfit and a yogi.

White has promised it would “be a supersized  White Lotus ,” telling EW , “It’s going to be longer, bigger, crazier. I don’t know what people will think, but I am super excited, so at least for my own barometer, that’s a good thing … I’m super excited about the content of the season.”

By “longer,” that could mean more episodes. Season 1 featured six episodes, and Season 2 had seven.

For his part, HBO’s Bloys said his reaction to the new scripts was similar to that of Rothwell’s. “I think Natasha Rothwell was saying in an interview that every script she read, she just gasped out loud. I would concur with that,” he said after the Emmys in January, adding that he plans to visit the Thailand set in the spring. “Mike is a really unique and singular voice, and I’m excited for people to see what he has in store.”

At January’s Sundance Film Festival, Meghann Fahy, who played Daphne Sullivan in Season 2, did say White has an idea for a future episode involving the Sullivans (Fahy and Theo James’ Cameron Sullivan) and Season 1’s newlywed couple the Pattons, played by Alexandra Daddario and Jake Lacy.

Fahy told Deadline: “He (Mike White) did once say that he’d like to do an episode with Theo, me and the couple from the first season – Alex and Jake; the four of us on a boat. Just one episode of that, which would be kinda psychotic. But I’m down.”

How to watch the series

Like the first two seasons, The White Lotus airs on HBO and streams on Max, which offers a plans including With Ads ($9.99/month or $99.99/year), Ad-Free ($15.99/month or $149.99/year) and Ultimate Ad-Free ($19.99/month or $199.99/year). Expect the same platforms for Season 3.

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'White Lotus' Star Leslie Bibb Teases Season 3: Everything We Know

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The White Lotus is gearing up for season 3 -- and franchise newcomer Leslie Bibb could not be more excited to check in.

"I don't know what I've done but I feel so grateful," Bibb gushed to ET in an interview  while promoting her new AppleTV+ series, Palm Royale . "To get to play these women who are so complicated and strange and funny and scared and complex, I just hope that I do them justice."

She joked, "I just want to shoot it so nobody can change their mind!" 

The Emmy-winning social satire kicked off filming in Thailand in mid-February, sharing a stunning shot from their tropical set.

"Unforgettable experiences are in the making at #TheWhiteLotus. We are eager to welcome new guests to our resort in Thailand," the show's Instagram account captioned the picturesque shot, which also includes a clapboard showing off the logo for the fictional resorts, as well as the names of White and cinematographer Ben Kutchins.

Like the first two seasons, the new installment will take place at another one of the luxury hotel's exotic locations, where a new group of guests and employees will find their lives clashing in unexpected ways. 

In anticipation, ET is exploring everything we know so far about the cast, location and plot   -- including White's latest hints and what many of the sprawling ensemble have previously said about returning. 

The Cast 

In early February, it was announced that BLACKPINK 's Lisa would be joining the cast. ET confirmed that the 26-year-old singer, who also goes by Lalisa Manobal, will officially make her acting debut in the hit HBO anthology series in an undisclosed role.  Variety   was the first to report the casting news. 

Then, ET confirmed that Survivor stars Natalie Cole and Carl Boudreux had also been cast in undisclosed roles for the upcoming season. Both starred alongside White on season 37 of Survivor: David vs. Goliath.   Evan Ross Katz was first to report the news.

This isn't the first time White has cast some of his fellow David vs. Goliath stars. Alec Merlino was featured in The White Lotus season 1 and and Angelina Keeley and Kara Kay appeared in season 2.

The upcoming third season also includes Patrick Schwarzenegger, Walter Goggins, Sarah Catherine Hook, Sam Nivola and Aimee Lou Wood. HBO had previously announced that  Leslie Bibb , Dom Hetrakul, Jason Isaacs , Michelle Monaghan , Parker Posey and Tayme Thapthimthong were all set to join the series, alongside previously announced returning cast member Natasha Rothwell , who reprises her role as spa manager Belinda Lindsey from the inaugural Hawaii-set season.

"I can't say anything. I literally can't," Rothwell told ET in December.  "I will say I've read all of the scripts and people are in for a treat. It's bigger than ever. Buckle up."

Many fans previously wondered whether Jennifer Coolidge  would return as Tanya McQuiod, the grief-stricken guest who found solace in Greg Hunt (Jon Gries) in season 1 before the two's romance started to fall apart in season 2. The 62-year-old actress won her first Primetime Emmy for season 1 and was nominated again for reprisal. 

In an interview with Deadline , White said that he couldn't imagine doing another installment without her. "Jennifer is my friend and everybody loved her in the first season, and I was like, 'I can’t go to Italy without Jennifer.' And maybe that’s still the case. Like, maybe you can’t go to Japan without Jennifer, either." 

And Coolidge seemed to be open for more. "Yes, yes. Of course," she told ET when asked about returning, before adding, "I mean, I don't know what Mike has in mind. But yes, I would love [to come back]." 

However, based on the season 2 finale , Coolidge's involvement with the series has come to an end. 

While Rothwell is the only returning star tapped for this season, there are still plenty of other White Lotus alums who would jump at the chance to check in again. White previously told  Deadline , "There are so many fun actors we’ve worked with so far, so it’s just kind of like who’s available."

Prior to the announcement of her role reprisal, Rothwell previously gushed, "I will follow Mike White to the ends of the earth." Her upcoming material could be a way to tie up loose ends involving Tanya's storyline, which may need some closure following the events of season 2. 

Of the season 1 ensemble, several have told ET that they are willing to come back for another stay at the White Lotus. 

"I would do anything with Mike White. Like, White Lotus season 3 [or] something totally different. You know, help him move boxes into a new house. Like, whatever he wants. I absolutely adore him and think he’s a genius. So, if he’s got something going and I get a call, I will be there," Jake Lacy said, confirming that he's "100 percent" in if White wants him to reprise his role as demanding guest Shane Patton. 

Alexandra Daddario, who played Shane's wife Rachel, is also down to come back. "If he had a great idea, then of course," she said. "I would do anything... Just being a small part of the series is amazing."

As for other season 1 stars,  Connie Britton , who played mother and businesswoman Nicole Mossbacher, said, "With any luck, maybe I’ll be in another season." 

After the finale, Britton's onscreen daughter,  Sydney Sweeney , said there had been conversations with the show about the possibility of returning, with the Euphoria star revealing that she's open to whatever direction the creator decides to take things in the future. "I’m just so excited for Mike," she said. "Mike’s writing is just so much fun and so incredible."

As for the season 2 cast, there are just as many who want to come back -- especially now that audiences know  who made it out of Sicily alive. 

When asked if she could be back as the uptight Harper Spiller, Aubrey Plaza said, "I hope so. It depends on if I'm, like, a fan favorite. I think, you know, it just depends on who people want [to see again]." F. Murray Abraham, who plays aging patriarch Bert Di Grasso, said he wants to return for season 3 as well as seasons 4 through 6 -- if there are that many. "But I'm really happy to have been in this one," he shared. 

One guest fans know is alive and well is Daphne Babcock ( Meghann Fahy ), who found herself vacationing with Harper and their two husbands at the Sicilian property before discovering a mysterious body in the water. "Oh my God, of course," Fahy said of returning. "I mean, I would pass out water on the third season. It's such an amazing set to be on. Like, just to witness everybody working. The cast is so amazing and watching Mike work is so cool. I mean, I would totally be there, of course." 

Sadly, one other person who cannot return is Murray Bartlett as season 1's hotel manager Armand . That is, unless "we, like, go back in time or something," he offered. And that seems like an unlikely turn for the series.

The Location  

The White Lotus season 3 will be set in Thailand, with filming taking place in and around Koh Samui, Phuket and Bangkok. HBO announced in January 2024 that it was working directly with the Tourism Authority of Thailand to support the filming and production of the show. 

"We are honored to have Amazing Thailand featured as the filming location for the highly anticipated upcoming season of The White Lotus," said Thapanee Kiatphaibool, Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand. " The kingdom’s exotic natural beauty, rich historical sites and diverse landscapes are the perfect settings to share our fascinating culture, fantastic cuisine, top-notch wellness and luxury offerings, and most importantly our people and Thai hospitality. Thailand has long been considered one of the world’s favorite filming locations. The White Lotus project will certainly strengthen the kingdom’s status as a preferred filming destination and a beacon of experience-based tourism, inspiring even more visitors to Amazing Thailand."

The destination lines up perfectly with White's plans for the newest installment. "The first season we highlighted money and then the second season is sex and I think the third season, it would be maybe a kind of satirical and funny look at death in Eastern religion and spirituality," he said in a making-of-season 2 video. "It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus."

Not only that but the Four Seasons, which has served as the filming location in the first two seasons, has multiple luxury hotels in the country. (In season 1, the Four Seasons Maui served as the White Lotus property while Four Seasons San Domenico Palace was stand-in for the property in season 2.) 

While White is keeping mum about the storyline for now, he did tell EW , "It's going to be a supersized White Lotus . It's going to be longer, bigger, crazier. I don't know what people will think, but I am super excited, so at least for my own barometer, that's a good thing ... I'm super excited about the content of the season."

The White Lotus seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Max.

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Screen Rant

The white lotus season 3 recasts another role.

HBO's The White Lotus season 3 recasts a second major character while production on the popular anthology dramedy continues in Thailand.

• The White Lotus season 3 has made further cast changes after Miloš Biković's firing.
• Francesca Corney is being replaced by Charlotte Le Bon.
• Reportedly, producers were looking for a star who could play older.

The White Lotus season 3 has experienced a new cast shakeup. The anthology dramedy spins tales of murder and mayhem at a different location of the titular, fictional, luxury resort every season, moving from Hawai'i in season 1 to Italy in season 2 to Thailand in the upcoming season 3. The cast of the new season, which includes Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell, and Patrick Schwarzenegger, recently saw Miloš Biković replaced with Julian Kotsov after Biković made comments supporting Vladimir Putin.

Per Deadline , The White Lotus season 3 has recast another major role as production continues in Thailand. The Buccaneers star Francesca Corney will be replaced by Charlotte Le Bon in a role that is as-yet unnamed, just like every character in the season save Rothwell's as she is reprising her season 1 role as staff member Belinda Lindsey. Reportedly, Corney was replaced because producers sought a star who could convincingly play older.

Everywhere You've Seen Charlotte Le Bon

Before joining the White Lotus season 3 cast , Le Bon held quite a few roles in both movies and television. The French Canadian actor has been in a wide variety of international projects in multiple languages since making her French-language feature debut as Ophélia in 2012's Astérix and Obélix: God Save Britannia . She followed that by co-starring in the romantic comedy The Stroller Strategy the same year. She continued starring in many French-language projects through the early 2010s including the 2014 biopic Yves Saint Laurent .

10 Best Murder Mystery Shows To Watch While Waiting For The White Lotus Season 3

She made her English-language feature debut in 2014 as well, starring as Marguerite opposite Helen Mirren and Manish Dayal in The Hundred-Foot Journey . Since then, she has occasionally returned to French-language roles, including playing Lola in the crime show Cheyenne & Lola , but she has primarily taken on more and more roles in English-language movies opposite major stars including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Idris Elba, Cillian Murphy, Oscar Isaac, Richard Madden, Jamie Dornan, and Sebastian Stan . Below, see some of her most prominent English-language roles since 2014:

It remains to be seen how important her character will be to the storyline of the new season of the HBO hit. However, The White Lotus will likely offer Le Bon an even bigger chance for English-language audiences to take notice of her talent. Even though she has already held major roles in prominent movies, the ensemble-driven nature of the show tends to allow every member to shine in one way or another.

Source: Deadline

The White Lotus

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The White Lotus is a sharp social satire following the exploits of various employees and guests at an exclusive Hawaiian resort over the span of one highly transformative week. As darker dynamics emerge each day, this series gradually reveals the complex truths of the seemingly picture-perfect travelers, cheerful hotel employees, and idyllic locale itself.​ Each season follows a new cast of characters with a greater mystery lying at the center of each new location.