SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus,” now streaming on Max.
In the beginning, you could almost forget “The White Lotus” was a kind of murder mystery. Back in 2021, Season 1 of the HBO drama put social farce first and deadly stakes a distant second, using a dead body as a hook only for creator Mike White to prove he didn’t need one to hold our attention. But as the series has grown from a pandemic lark into a juggernaut franchise, “The White Lotus” has leaned into the elements that define it across continents and star-studded casts. That includes the fatalities. Starting with a cold open that interrupted a meditation session with gunshots, no version of “The White Lotus” teased its violent end as aggressively as the Thailand-set Season 3, which concluded Sunday night. This motif may have aggravated audiences’ impatience with the story, the most polarizing of the show’s to date. In the end, the finale may not have entirely redeemed some pacing issues and unwieldy sprawl, but ended strongly enough to make both seem minor in retrospect.
At 90 minutes, “Amor Fati” is the longest episode of “The White Lotus” to date, capping off a season that was similarly extended at eight parts to the previous installments’ six and seven, respectively. The distension made it easier to notice that some plotlines were denser than others. I never tired of watching frenemies Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Laurie (Carrie Coon) and Kate (Leslie Bibb) bicker around the breakfast table about their respective blind spots and shortcomings. Southern patriarch Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) didn’t need nearly as much time to panic over his impending disgrace due to white-collar crime, but he got it anyway.
More space also allowed for more sustained tension, deliberately stoked by an ominous score from composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who will depart next season and be sorely missed. Timothy stole a gun and fantasized about putting his family out of their impending misery, only for embattled security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) to steal it back. Masseuse Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) ran into known wife-killer Greg (Jon Gries), even extorting him in a dangerous game. In the penultimate episode, White’s camera lingered on depressive Rick (Walton Goggins) disposing of a gun he’d meant to use on hotel owner Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), whom he blames for an unhappy, fatherless childhood.
That last bit, of course, turned out to be a red herring. Rick’s younger, New Age-y girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) had predicted that “bad things come in threes” in another one of the season’s overtly foreboding moments. Sure enough, Chelsea, Rick and Jim — revealed, in a highly predictable twist, to be Rick’s father — all lost their lives before the credits rolled. (Though Chelsea’s warning was ultimately an undercount, since Rick also takes out a bodyguard whose job goes to the once-pacifist Gaitok. Even characters on “The White Lotus” don’t have accurate theories about “The White Lotus.”) The “yin and yang” battle Chelsea described between her optimistic hope and Rick’s soul-consuming pain bore out in their corpses: hers face down, his staring up.
Eastern spirituality was a counterintuitive theme for a show as proudly luxurious as “The White Lotus,” and initially manifested in such naked plot devices as the confiscation of the Ratliffs’ phones in the name of “digital detox.” But its overall effect was to make the series’ subtext into text. When the Buddhist monk whose meditation center Ratliff siblings Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lochlan (Sam Nivola) try out says that our coping devices are “a quick fix” that “create more anxiety, more suffering,” he’s talking about every suite, room and villa every fictional resort guest has ever booked. And while Rick briefly finds relief from that suffering after confronting Jim in Bangkok and letting him live, his giving into revenge as a cheap crutch costs him dearly. Rather than do the hard work of building a life in the present undefined by his formative trauma, Rick gives a Job-like look back and gives into his demons.
“Amor Fati” isn’t all bleak. Surprisingly, the storyline that seemed furthest removed from prayer and searching sees their most successful application. Coon’s Laurie was the closest to an audience surrogate of the middle-aged trio, bitterly scoffing at the antics of vain actress Jaclyn and Texan Trumper (we think!) Kate. The show’s heart seemed to be with this hardened cynic, and thus it was deeply meaningful for Laurie to unburden herself of jealousy in a monologue worthy of Coon’s titanic abilities. “I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning,” she declared. “I’m just happy to be at the table.” In White’s world, it’s rare for a win to feel so uncomplicated.
Belinda’s successful scheme to get $5 million out of Greg, for example, instantly turns her into what she used to hate. Where unhappy heiress Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) once got Belinda’s hopes up only to abandon her, a newly flush Belinda informs the sweet, hunky Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) she’s no longer interested in opening a spa with him. And while Gaitok wins over his crush Mook (the luminous, if underutilized, pop star Lalisa Manoban), it’s by betraying the non-violence he was once sufficiently committed to he was ready to sacrifice his job. “The White Lotus” has complicated the exploitative dynamic between upstairs and downstairs; these employees are now better off materially, if less so morally.
Only Lochlan’s near-death experience, induced by a poisonous protein shake, was a truly superfluous bit of silliness, turning a Vitamix of all things into a weapon in waiting. (After Peloton’s humiliating use on “And Just Like That”, luxury appliance brands may want to think twice before saying yes to Warner Bros. Discovery.) For the most part, however, “The White Lotus” managed to convincingly weave together a disparate set of people and ideas into a treatise on the internal nature of satisfaction. Rick and Chelsea may never get to check out, and the Ratliffs sail away into an uncertain and likely penniless future. Those of us at home, however, can walk away with few regrets.