By Riley Dauber
Editor-in-Chief
After a three year wait, fans of the HBO satire “The White Lotus” are now eagerly tuning in each Sunday to watch the third season.
Unlike the first two seasons, which were set in Hawaii and Italy, respectively, this season takes place at a health and wellness-themed version of The White Lotus resort chain in Thailand. Despite the location switch, the show still offers plenty of over-the-top characters and killer performances.
According to Time, “The underlying comedy of ‘The White Lotus’ stems from [creator Mike] White’s holding a fun-house mirror to rich, entitled Westerners vacationing amid an alien culture from which they’re really detached.”
Although the show has an anthology format, with a new cast of characters joining each season, some familiar faces do return. Masseuse Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) is back from season one with hopes of learning some new wellness skills.
The rest of the staff includes Mook (Lalisa Manobal), bodyguard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong), owner Sritala (Lek Patravadi), wellness expert Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul), and hotel manager Fabian (Christian Friedel). Their storylines revolve around serving the kooky guests but also include some romantic entanglements and dangerous secrets.
Among this season’s guests are the wealthy — and slightly incestuous — Ratliff family. Patriarch Timothy (Jason Isaacs) cannot seem to stop taking phone calls from insistent reporters — and even his awful Southern accent cannot scare them away. His wife, Victoria, played expertly by a campy Parker Posey, never seems to quite know what is going on. Their three children, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and Lochlan (Sam Nivola), are all successful in their own right but still have a strange relationship. Saxon bugs his sister about her sex life and asks his brother about his pornography preference.
“The relations between the Ratliff siblings is stressing me out! I need to know what’s happening there NOW,” X user @TiffanyLuv24 said.
While they do not have the most engaging plotlines — as previously mentioned, the first two episodes have consisted of Timothy answering phone calls — the tension between each member of the family continues to build.
The resort also serves as a destination for a girls trip; Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb), and Laurie (Carrie Coon) are childhood friends looking forward to relaxing and catching up. Their scenes perfectly capture messy female friendships.
At the end of episode one, Laurie bursts into drunken tears when she sees Jaclyn and Kate talking without her — and, most likely, about her. Episode two then picks up with Jaclyn and Kate’s conversation; what starts out as praise soon turns into concern and criticism of Laurie, despite how much they seem to care about her when she is in the room.
At the end of the episode, Jaclyn is the one left out, but the conversation between Kate and Laurie has the same dynamic as the one that started the episode. These three are full of dramatic moments, which are sure to continue thanks to their attractive wellness guru, Valentin (Arnas Fedaravičius).
Age-gap couple Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and Rick (Walton Goggins) round out the cast and play off of each other perfectly thanks to their performances and different personalities. While Chelsea would much rather lounge by the pool, Rick seems worried about the hotel owner’s husband — a plotline that, like Timothy’s phone calls, continues to build each episode.
Despite the variety of characters, the first two episodes are reminiscent of the first season: focused on conversations and awkward moments instead of sexual encounters and commentary like the second season. Money and sex were the themes of the first two seasons, respectively, but this season seems to be dragging out the plotlines to build tension.
“[The guests are] all in some kind of hurt. They’re all dead, but they don’t know it…because it’s dealing with these existential tropes of facing into the nothingness of self [and] Buddhist themes that have life and death and ethical aspects, [the season] just got more heavy,” White said in an interview with Time.
The health and wellness aspects of the resort also prove to be an interesting crux that allows viewers to understand the characters. For example, when hotel employee Pam (Morgana O’Reilly) tells the Ratliff family they will take a biometrics test to determine their schedule for the week, Victoria says, “I don’t want to take a test.”
These small moments are when the show really shines. In episode two, an awkward scene between Victoria and Kate is deliciously painful, and viewers cannot look away when Piper and Lochlan are relaxing on some hammocks, dare they miss any conversational slights.
Each new episode releases Sunday at 9 p.m., so viewers have to wait for plotlines to continue and cliffhangers to be resolved. What is going on with Timothy and all these phone calls? Who is Rick looking for? Even though episodes come out on a weekly basis instead of dropping all at once, viewership has been increasing, with 3.4 million people tuning in to watch the second episode, according to Variety.
Season three consists of eight episodes releasing until April 6. “The White Lotus” is currently available to stream on Max.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo Caption: Lalisa Manobal, also known as Lisa, plays Mook on this season of “The White Lotus.”