Third Verse Same as the First

The third season of HBO’s Emmy-winning satire The White Lotus takes place at yet another location of the titular fictional hotel chain, with Thailand following Hawaii and Sicily. In the opening scene of the season premiere, a character who has spent a lot of time at the Hawaii resort considers this new location and suggests, “It’s actually really similar. Except there’s no monkeys in Hawaii.” 

This is, perhaps, a bit of a meta confession by White Lotus writer-director Mike White. If the Sicily season at times evoked various plot and character arcs from the first, then this new batch of episodes feels even more like White is trying to mix and match ideas he used in the two previous settings. The end result is still extremely entertaining, thanks to White again assembling a top-notch cast that includes Walton Goggins, Parker Posey, and Carrie Coon, among many others, and thanks to White’s knack for finding creative ways to depict the oblivious entitlement of the hotel’s obscenely wealthy guests. But there’s a clear formula by this point that takes away the thrill of discovery the series had when it debuted back in 2021 with Jennifer Coolidge and friends. Transitions between scenes are often accompanied by shots of monkeys, lizards, and other wildlife roaming the grounds of the hotel, but The White Lotus itself feels fairly tame by now. 

Coolidge’s Tanya died at the end of Season Two — ironically, right after foiling an attempt on her life arranged by her bitter husband Greg (Jonathan Gries) as a way to get around a prenup. So the connective tissue from the other seasons this time around is Coolidge’s primary Season One scene partner: Natasha Rothwell as Belinda, a massage therapist from the Maui resort who has come to the Thai hotel for a workplace exchange program — and for a much-needed getaway to recover from the depressing events she dealt with at the end of that first season. (RIP, Armond.) 

Meanwhile, we get the now-traditional three groups of guests. Goggins is the colorfully named Rick Hatchett, who has no interest in any of the hotel’s famous spa treatments, nor in having fun with his much younger girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood from Sex Education), and is only there to settle an old score. Lifelong friends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Laurie (Coon), and Kate (Leslie Bibb) are having a girls trip to catch up, all paid for by TV star Jaclyn. And successful finance exec Tim (Jason Isaacs) has brought his wife Victoria (Posey) and their kids Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and Lochlan (Sam Nivola) all the way from North Carolina, because Piper wants to visit a nearby monastery for her college senior thesis. We also get to know several hotel employees, including security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong), who is smitten with co-worker Mook (Lalisa Manobal, a.k.a. Lisa from Blackpink), fussy resort manager Fabian (Christian Friedel), and actress turned hotelier Sritala (Lek Patravadi).

Some of these characters feel like direct descendants of ones from seasons past. Saxon, for instance, is filling the same spoiled, arrogant space as Jake Lacy’s Shane from Season One. Piper’s preference for the local culture over her family’s insular wealth evokes Fred Hechinger’s Quinn from that same year, and both Rick and Victoria come across in different ways as stand-ins for Tanya.    

That said, nobody is giving a performance nearly as big, bold, and mesmerizingly weird as Coolidge’s. Goggins is playing at the most understated end of his range, as Rick is for the most part emotionally closed off and tight-lipped. And being part of a larger family subplot keeps Posey relatively grounded, even as she’s leaning into a North Carolina accent(*) and coming across as the most blinkered character in the season. (Among other things, she keeps forgetting what country they’re in.) 

(*) She is more successful at it than Jason Isaacs, who at times sounds Southern, and at other times sounds as if he is trying to sound either Australian or like he’s in Mare of Easttown.  

But if there’s no one character quite as gonzo as Tanya, there also aren’t any outright duds like there were in Season Two with Michael Imperioli and F. Murray Abraham trying and failing to outgrow their different kinds of toxic masculinity. You can see where certain stories are heading — though critics weren’t given the final two episodes, there seems to be a very obvious twist coming in the Rick plot — but the guests are all a colorful and interesting bunch. Though the three friends subplot at times echoes the passive-aggressive manipulations and resentments of the two couples traveling together in Sicily, on the whole it feels like the most novel of the season, and Monaghan, Bibb, and especially Coon (as the member of the trio who has always felt overshadowed by the other two) all give crackling performances. 

The staffer subplots feel less rich. Manobal has obvious screen presence, but isn’t given much to do but show Mook smiling and giggling at Gaitok’s unguarded attentions. Gaitok deals with a series of escalating messes that could threaten his employment, but they all seem to be primarily his own fault. And most of what’s interesting about Belinda comes from Rothwell’s performance rather than anything revealed about her as a person now that she’s away from Tanya. 

As with the first two seasons, this one begins with a flash-forward where a dead body is discovered, followed by the action jumping back a week so we can find out how this unfortunate soul wound up that way. Though the two previous payoffs, with Armond and Tanya, were fun when we got there, this is the first time the mystery itself feels engaging, in part because White has seeded many more possibilities for who might be the victim, and why. 

In that way, the biggest difference between Thailand and the series’ previous locales is the fact that much more shady business gets done there. When Belinda alerts Fabian that a frequent guest of the hotel might be a criminal, he dismisses her concern by telling her, “Some people here have colorful pasts. It’s really not wise to stir anything up.” Forget the monkeys; this is the most dangerous part of our new destination, and the one with the greatest potential to surprise at season’s end. 

The third season of White Lotus debuts Feb. 16 on HBO and Max, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen the first six of eight episodes. 

From Rolling Stone US.