White Lotus

The British actor dishes on the thrilling finale of HBO's anthology satire, Cameron's fetish for “dominating” Ethan, and why that kid may not be his.

That’s how he operates in the world, in his work, and how he tries to operate in his marriage. You got a taste of fame early on in your career with the Divergent series, but then that underperformed and fizzled out. Cameron and Daphne are deeply in love but there’s an open element to their relationship, and that may work for them, and who are we to judge that? We got some dinners and drinks because Ethan and Cameron are supposed to be old friends, and Cameron and Meghann have to be in love and have an ease about them. He wants to isolate Ethan and control Ethan, and one of the best ways he can is to try to manipulate his wife sexually. It’s gently touched upon—the suggestion that perhaps the coloring of the second child is completely different from Cameron’s and identical to that of the trainer. With Will and with Meghann, over the first few weeks I was trying to pack in as much time to get to know each other as possible. He wants to dominate him, he wants to control him, and he wants to win. The way he handles Ethan, his wife, the people around them—he physically holds them and is dominant in conversations—but in the end, it’s an emotional manipulation with the gaslighting. Daphne’s ultimate manipulation of that is a commentary on that type of masculinity being defunct because Cameron loses in the end. He loves his wife wholeheartedly, but he’s also so privileged and toxic that he thinks he should be allowed to do these things because of how successful he is. Their Four Seasons Taormina getaway ends with the most awkward of dinners wherein Cameron rubs everyone’s noses in his misdeeds one last time, toasting, “And Harper, it has been fantastic to finally get to know you properly.”

Season two of Mike White's brilliant satire concludes with happy endings, deadly payoffs, and more than a few loose ends.

In the end, just like in the first season, the body count is racked up largely out of self-defence and a dollop of paranoia. Even if the script lacks the organic freshness of the resolution to the first instalment, the work of the casting department has been as impeccable as ever. Jennifer Coolidge has been the anchor holding these two series together, and it’s a shame to see her written out – not least because her panicked slaughter of a boatful of dodgy Eurotrash was vintage Coolidge. “It’s kind of sexy.” And in the end, this dysfunctional ménage à quatre adds little to the finale, other than looking good in swimwear. The cast was an unassuming mix of actors who were big in the Nineties and B-movie pin-ups, and the show’s creator, [Mike White](/topic/mike-white), was best known as the real Ned Schneebly from School of Rock. [The White Lotus](/topic/the-white-lotus) first aired in 2021, it was something of a sleeper hit.

The most pressing issue is, of course, who the dead body is that washes up on the coast and is happened upon by Daphne Sullivan (Meghann Fahy). So ...

For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the [Radio Times View From My Sofa podcast](https://www.radiotimes.com/audio/podcasts/). [NOW](https://www.radiotimes.com/streaming/now-tv/). In the end, Albie gives Lucia the money and they go their separate ways. Check out more of our [Drama](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/) coverage or visit our [TV Guide](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/tv-listings/) and [Streaming Guide](https://www.radiotimes.com/streaming-guide/) to find out what's on. Find out more about [how to sign up for Sky TV](https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?id=489797&clickref=radiotimes-1753981&awinmid=11005&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sky.com%2Ftv). [subscribe now](https://www.radiotimes.com/magazine-subscription/). [terms and conditions](https://www.immediate.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/) and [privacy policy](https://policies.immediate.co.uk/privacy/). So, who dies? Who lives? [The White Lotus.](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/white-lotus-season-3-release-date/) [learn more](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/commercial-links-on-radiotimes-com/)) [cast of the second season](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/the-white-lotus-season-2-cast/) gathers for the show's final episode set in Sicily, Italy and there are many plotlines to resolve.

In one of the most shocking scenes on TV in recent years, Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya died after shooting her way through a yacht when she realized Quentin, Greg, ...

“In the end of last season, Tanya is sitting with Greg in the last episode, and he’s talking about his health issues. "I think the third season would be maybe a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality," White added. White felt Tanya dying “at the hands of someone else felt too tragic,” and that 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.”

When audiences were reintroduced to Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) this season, they saw her in an unstable marriage, and as events transpired, viewers were ...

He wanted to see her win, in some sense, by not allowing her to be killed by another character, and alludes to the possible return of Greg (Jon Gries) and Portia (Haley Lu Richardson). Initially, when Coolidge was confirmed to be starring in season 2, many figured Tanya would become a recurring character within the series, especially given the recognition her performance garnered. He adds that "maybe that’s the journey for her: a journey to death," and that he did not necessarily want to end her story. [who died in The White Lotus season 2](https://screenrant.com/who-are-the-dead-victims-in-the-white-lotus-season-2/) has kept viewers guessing for weeks, but no one could have predicted that White would kill off Coolidge's character. In a post-finale featurette, the showrunner reflects on Tanya's season 1 remark that she had experienced everything but death, as reported by [TV Line](https://tvline.com/2022/12/11/the-white-lotus-season-2-finale-ending-explained-tanya-dies-mike-white-interview/). [The White Lotus](https://screenrant.com/tag/white-lotus/) was fitting.

This second season brought back water-cooler television. We'll be left debating whether Albie (Adam DiMarco) and Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) will come together ...

Lucia wants Cameron to pay her, Cameron wants Ethan to invest in him, Ethan wants his wife to want him, and his wife wants to not want the money at all. There’s a distance between life as you experience it, and life as you desire it to be. The other American men are still tethered to boyhood games and gestures of jet skis, drugs, and chasing skirts. And if you can’t bridge that gap – you have to learn to bear it. In the world of The White Lotus, money doesn’t talk, it hisses. The Harper (Aubry Plaza)/Ethan (Will Sharpe), Daphne (Meghann Fahy)/Cameron (Theo James) quartet might have all had their sparks renewed – it was just a bad case of mimetic desire after all. Blinded by her need to be loved until the very end, by firing the gun back, she finally took action for herself. But The White Lotus was never a murder mystery. Is Albie aware that he’s attracted to “wounded birds” to cover up his own shortcomings, or does he believe himself truly heroic? For the rest of our ultra-wealthy elite, they fail to recognise that money made them targets. In the end, it was always going to be Tanya. We’ll hope Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) finds love on her small island.

The second series of Mike White's savage satire, set in Sicily, came to an end with a brutal and hilarious finale - warning: spoilers.

White’s ability to write scenes that are simultaneously unspeakable and frothy remained remarkable as he got to the spoilery climax of the instalment. [White Lotus in a bespoke nutshell](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/real-white-lotus-what-like-cater-every-whim-super-rich/). How stunningly bleak – as was the resolution of the storyline of naïve Albie (Adam DiMarco) and sad-eyed sex worker Lucia (Simona Tabasco), who had of course been stringing him along all this time. Morally-questionable sex was again to the fore in the finale. Relocating from Hawaii to Sicily and with an all-new cast – with one significant exception – the mood was less frenzied, but also more withering. Or was at least hinted at as emotionally impotent nerd Ethan (Will Sharpe) drove himself into a neurotic frenzy over his suspicion that wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) had been unfaithful with Ethan's toxic frenemy, Cameron (Theo James), during their couples getaway at the Sicilian resort.

In a tense finale, who emerged as the doomed (and clumsiest) hotel guest?

She imagines Greg and Quentin are in cahoots, and there are plenty of dilapidated European mansions to do up. Quentin (Tom Hollander) catches her looking at the photo of a young Greg, and passes it off as a picture of a random, unconnected man with whom he once dropped acid. [Testa Di Moro](https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/tv/a41978904/the-white-lotus-ancient-myths/), the lingering symbol of infidelity planted in the hotel rooms? She doesn’t go down without a fight: locking herself in a bedroom, retrieving Niccolo’s gun, before shooting most of the crew. [Will Sharpe](https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/tv/a41776658/will-sharpe-interview-white-lotus-season-2/)) confronts Harper (Aubrey Plaza) about her hotel room incident in [last week’s episode](https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/tv/a42150514/the-white-lotus-episode-six-recap/), and learns the truth: Harper and Cameron (Theo James) kissed (an indiscretion she labels “a drunk, dumb nothing"), but nothing more. Albie (Adam DiMarco) is trying to bribe his father, Dominic (Michael Imperioli). As she tells Ethan: “You do what you have to do not to feel like a victim of life, you know?” If The White Lotus resorts needs a couples therapist – and given its guests’ history, that would be a bad idea – Daphne should be top of their lists. The pair walk to Isola Bella, a picturesque Sicilian islet, and maybe have sex. Fahy, with a masterful look that captures both Daphne’s surprise and hurt (surely it must be Harper’s potential betrayal that cut her), finds instant resolve. [sustaining her status as this season’s MVP](https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/tv/a42166689/daphne-the-white-lotus/), calls Ethan over to her beach lounger. That the most captivating moments revolve around the characters’ blossoming relationships and quieter exchanges is a credit to creator Mike White’s writing. If this season of The White Lotus began in a languorous state, happy to examine our guests’ relationships under the Sicilian sun, the finale proved an altogether more explosive affair.

While some complained that season two of 'The White Lotus' spent far too long setting things up rather than having things actually happen, ...

And lo and behold, it's all the internet can talk about today. And surprising everyone, Daphne turned out to be the one who has it all figured out (and if Meghann Fahy doesn't end up with an Emmy after this, we riot). [epic](https://entertainment.ie/tv-news/meaghann-fahy-the-white-lotus-finale-549389/)", rounding out all the character arcs but still leaving some things unsolved to keep us thinking about after.

Season finale revealed the identities of the dead bodies teased in the first episode.

Meanwhile, others appreciated the fact that Tanya ended up being her own killer, rather than dying at the hands of those who were trying to play her. the only person who could take Tanya out was herself. Finally, Tanya attempts to escape the bloodbath she’s created by taking a leap from the yacht’s high deck, onto the speedboat. It’s a matter of kill or be killed – and when Niccoló bursts through the door to find her, Tanya tearfully shoots him dead. However, Tanya notices the black bag he’s carrying with him and swipes it on a run to the bathroom. Sadly, she botches the jump and hits herself on the edge of the speedboat, and falls into the water to her death.

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. Adam DiMarco and Haley ...

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. [White Lotus season 2](https://time.com/6223583/the-white-lotus-season-2-review/) finale, when he runs into Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) at the airport on their way out of Italy. Jealous Ethan (Will Sharpe) and exasperated Harper ( Not only does he inherit Tanya’s hundreds of millions, but he doesn’t even have to share them with Quentin and company. The latter couple is no worse for the wear because their marriage has always been a farce. That’s not to say there aren’t characters who come out of the season better off than they were going into it. 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. 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. He might never have let Lucia (Simona Tabasco) con him—or his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), the original mark—into giving her €50,000. Sebastian](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-white-lotus-artwork), 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. Even though she’s yet to have her worst fears about Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) confirmed, it’s an understatement for the ages.

After weeks of fervent speculation and close examination of costumes and props, The White Lotus season 2 viewers finally got their answer.

But even though The White Lotus isn’t about death, it was about Jennifer Coolidge—and with a [third season officially coming](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/the-white-lotus-season-3-everything-we-know-so-far), it’s time to start reimagining exactly what that might look like. White has been frank that the dead body conspicuously placed at the beginning of each White Lotus season is a tool for luring in audiences. [wild theories about bloody endings](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/who-will-die-in-the-white-lotus-season-2-finale) (Cameron and Ethan jet ski accident? The rich and privileged are, once again, escaping with all their privileges intact, and the spirit of Tanya lives on in Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), who escaped whatever role was intended for her in the murder plot and wears a very Tanya-worthy head scarf for her flight home. The season ends, just as the first one did, with all the major players in the airport and on their way home. The body count began on Quentin’s yacht, where Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) sussed out what viewers had suspected: those gays, as she told the boat captain, were trying to kill her.

The White Lotus has blossomed into a truly massive hit for HBO, as gripping each week as any episode of Game of Thrones ever was, and now after last night?

While we have no direct link between them and Greg, I do wonder if there is literally some sort of evil Legion of Doom being built behind the scenes of The White Lotus with Greg at the apex, which does not seem like such a wild theory after last night. Also, we still don’t know who Greg was talking to on the phone, saying he loved them. Portia, however, was the wrench thrown into the plan, as you’ll recall Greg was agitated that he brought her assistant along. But we do know he’s either somewhat wealthy himself or has wealthy-appearing friends, given his past relationship with Quentin, which was revealed in the past two episodes. These friends, in theory, could have been the group of gays from season 2. In season 1, Greg says he’s in Hawaii on a fishing trip with friends, rich friends, you would imagine, if they can afford to go fishing in Hawaii.

Though his character Christopher Moltisani died a few episodes before the finale, producer David Chase told the actor how it would all end, that it would just ...

When Imperioli and I spoke in November, he was preparing to go the next day to the funeral for Abraham’s wife of 60 years who died earlier that month. “Maybe it's good because it keeps you honest and keeps you from phoning it in because you still have a drive to be good.” [a new series](https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/michael-imperioli-alec-berg-hbo-1234898249/) with [Barry](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a40322202/barry-season-4/) and [Curb Your Enthusiasm](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a30731009/curb-your-enthusiasm-better-with-larry-david-ex-wife-cheryl/) writer Alec Berg for HBO—they just got back notes on their second draft and he hopes the momentum of White Lotus will help move it along. The practices helped and the cast became close—particularly Imperioli and Abraham, who often went out to dinner with Imperioli and his wife during filming. Imperioli was in his early 30s when he was cast as Christopher Moltisani, the pugnacious nephew figure to mafia boss Tony Soprano; the actor is 56 now and his signature coiffed hair is silver, but he is recognized for that role more than ever thanks to a new generation [he first season of ](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36973013/white-lotus-hbo-review/) [White Lotus](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36973013/white-lotus-hbo-review/), which was an instant sensation in 2021—until his manager insisted he binge it after seeing the actor’s first attempt at his audition tape. “I needed to find someone who is a great actor and grounded, credible, and honest, and, at the same time, likable to men and to women, who is somebody that you're gonna want to be in his company, even though you know these things about him. “I don’t get why people want to know—why they want to have you spoil the whole thing,” he says with a shrug. “I tend to take a while before I look at stuff that I do know, like maybe a long time,” he says. But at the same time, I think what [writer and director] Mike [White] is saying is that you can't deny sexual attraction, but that doesn't mean you have to act on it all the time. He was privy to the end of the most talked-about, most polarizing finale in television history: [The Sopranos](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a38145579/sopranos-ending-tony-fate-explained-david-chase-interview/). [the finale of The White Lotus](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a42166307/white-lotus-season-2-finale-theories-killer-predictions/) and Imperioli will absolutely not budge, no matter how I try to coax him, into giving me a clue about who ends up dead in the final episode.

Creating a season finale for an anthology is often a lot more difficult than for a serial. The last episode of an anthology resembles the makings of a series ...

There is one item that requires no interpreting, though: The White Lotus is a hell of a ride, and we can’t wait for the next group of rich misfits to arrive at the hotel chain! We can see from a mile away that everyone involved is being played like a piano by Lucia, and it’s great to see someone outside of the elites get a win in this show. Jack won’t confirm Portia’s suspicions or let on what he was going to do to her, but he has the decency to let her go on her merry way, advising her to skip a reunion with her now-dead boss and go straight to the airport. One storyline that was quite a bit more blunt in its approach, but still wasn’t completely resolved, is that of Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) and Quentin (Tom Hollander). Her penchant for vengeance leads to what we can assume is the two of them hiding under the Italian sun, getting it on without the knowledge of their spouses ever becoming tangible. Series creator Mike White went with the latter choice for most of his characters in the second season of his hit dramedy.

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, ...

But here, all along, Daphne defied the odds and found a way. 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. [ biggest shift this season](https://www.vox.com/culture/23425402/white-lotus-review-credits-explained-murder) 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. 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. When she tells Daphne as much as she can without spelling out all the details, Daphne doesn’t even flinch. When Cameron and Daphne tell her they don’t read or watch the news, she’s shocked at their incuriosity about the world. 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. (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. 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. And as a result of accidentally drugging the resident pianist, Mia convinces hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) to fire him. Tanya is convinced Niccolò and the gays are going to kill her (“These gays are trying to kill me,” she whisper-hisses, perfectly). And speaking of sex workers, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) got a real happily ever after.

It also reminded us that not all subplots are created equal, and that the sophomore season of Mike White's hit show was destined to run out of steam.

But even a memorably violent and sexy finale can’t entirely cover for the rest of the season’s flaws. Quentin and two of his friends die, and while Greg may inherit Tanya’s fortune, the manner in which she died was messy enough to warrant a further investigation than if the killing had gone as planned. Murray Abraham) proudly talks about how the family’s “Achilles Heel is an Achilles Cock.” Dom (Michael Imperioli) again tries to recommit to his wife, but can’t stop himself from gawking at a younger woman at the airport. It remained a highlight in the finale, creating more questions than answers, but in a way that perfectly fit the themes of that subplot about the compromises that go into any relationship, even when you’re impossibly rich. And Daphne and Cameron’s unspoken agreements about their marriage — coupled with hints of pure sociopathy from Cameron — allow them to power through infidelities, brawls in the Ionian Sea, and whatever other bumps they hit. Do a murder-for-hire plot and a burst of gun violence entirely fit the tone of this show? But as a set piece, it was bravura in a way that much of this Sicilian jaunt had proven to be before now — simultaneously a thriller parody and the genuine article. Though Dern had cameoed in this season as the voice of Dom’s wife on the phone, when we see him in the finale looking at an image of the whole family, his wife looks nothing like Dern. (Or, at least, it made us understand them.) In a similar fashion, this whole set-up, where Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his pals are planning to murder Tanya on behalf of her garbage husband Greg as a way around his prenup, is kind of ridiculous. Though both finales featured the death of a central character — last year it was Armond the contempt-filled resort manager, this time it’s Tanya the narcissistic heiress — and the bloody end of Jennifer Coolidge’s character was played much more for suspense than the Lotus employee’s excremental escapade in the Pineapple Suite. Once “Departures” had revealed her apparent depths as affectations to be cast aside along with the people she uses, there was simply nothing more to be said about her as a character. If anything, it sent her out as even more of a joke, since she dies of a head injury after foolishly trying to jump from Quentin’s yacht onto a dinghy, rather than looking for the ladder or stairs(*).

Now that HBO's second season of 'The White Lotus' has wrapped up, here are some TV shows and movies to watch next, including ones starring Jennifer Coolidge ...

If you only knew Mike White pre-Lotus as “that guy from The Amazing Race” or “that guy from School of Rock,” you’re in for a real treat. [Nine Perfect Strangers](https://www.vulture.com/article/nine-perfect-strangers-hulu-series-review.html) for you, the 2018 miniseries from David E. It has all the chaos of a typical teen show (sex, drugs, the occasional murder), but a smart, nuanced script helps it stand above the rest. With its nonstop twists and turns, the series is far more plot-driven than Lotus but just as entertaining. Although Succession follows a family and not a group of vacationing strangers, there’s still plenty of overlap, particularly in the biting dialogue, excessive spending, and intergenerational tensions. Consider the films Lotus Lite and enjoy attempting to figure out their secrets before the characters do. The titular resort in The White Lotus is a satirical dramedy about a group of very wealthy people on an isolated resort. Triangle of Sadness is a satirical dramedy about a group of very wealthy people on an isolated boat. The second year of Mike White’s anthology series lived up to the excellence of the first, offering a new round of compellingly flawed characters, razor-shop writing, and Jennifer Coolidge whisper-sighs. Here are 13 movies and shows to check out now that the credits have rolled on Lotus season two. And, of course, there was murder afoot, hinted at in the premiere and fully revealed in last night’s finale as — spoiler alert — our beloved Tanya finally unraveled, taking out the “gays trying to kill me” before falling overboard to her watery grave.

The highly anticipated season two finale of The White Lotus aired in the US on Sunday night. Irish fans can catch the finale on Sky Atlantic tonight at 9pm, ...

Jennifer Coolidge was outstanding. A third penned: “The White Lotus finale left me with my jaw open. This is the best show on TV right now.” The White Lotus finale left me with my jaw open. [December 12, 2022] One fan wrote: “All I want to talk about is The White Lotus season finale and nothing else.

Theo James on what he thinks really happened between Cameron and Harper in season two of 'The White Lotus' and whether his children with Daphne are actually ...

There are videos making the rounds of you all dancing behind the scenes and generally having a good time. We wanted to make you think, Is it just a combination of Ethan’s paranoia and jealousy? But then I even forgot about the yogurt, so when you just said that, I was like, Jesus Christ, he’s unapologetically such a bad person. That’s why we ultimately wanted that fight to come from a place where Cameron gets confronted and is like, No, what the fuck? They’ve evolved away from each other as friends and now have basically polar opposite visions of the world in front of them. I haven’t seen the episode yet, but Cameron doesn’t give a shit. We did that scene toward the end of the shoot, and we did different versions. He does love his friend, even though he’s competitive with him and wants to dominate him, and he does love his wife. He’s trying to own his friend and own his wife in a search for control. Is that why Cameron was pushing Ethan to get with Mia and Lucia? Although Cameron has elements of being controlling and domineering, he is also loving in his own way, which, for me, made him compelling. “When you do a character, you have to find some way to identify with them,” he tells Vulture.

In an interview with NPR's Fresh Air last week, the writer and director Mike White suggested that his hit HBO series The White Lotus had less in common with ...

The impulse to follow in the footsteps of high-status people, emulating their experiences and then, by sharing, being emulated in turn? Week by week, The White Lotus achieved what only HBO series, [Taylor Swift ](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/taylor-swift-midnights-album-review/671811/) [album drops](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/taylor-swift-midnights-album-review/671811/), and Florence Pugh’s Instagram seem to be able to manage these days: taking over the discourse and leaving very few unsatisfied. (Even Mia and Lucia walked down a busy shopping street arm in arm, jubilant in floral dresses, waving at the notably nonviolent Alessio, just as they had in the first episode.) Meanwhile, Jack, the muscle-bound Essex boy charged with distracting (and possibly doing away with) Portia while Tanya was being dealt with, dropped her on an empty street by the airport instead, his COCK baseball cap seeming to linger unnervingly in one’s memory like the Cheshire Cat’s smile. [Season 2](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/white-lotus-season-2-review/671938/), including the questions of why Lucia and Mia, the sex worker and the wannabe pianist, seemed physically stuck at the hotel, sleeping on sun loungers instead of going home; why every guest at the White Lotus went to Sicily—Sicily!—only to eat all their meals in the same anemic on-site restaurant; and what happened to Tanya in the finale. Season 2 of The White Lotus, in particular, felt like an aggregation of different source materials, many as fascinatingly cerebral as they were delightfully familiar.

Early in the episode, Ethan accuses Harper of cheating on him with Cameron. After confronting Cameron—and nearly drowning him in the process!—he finds Daphne to ...

Maybe just the thought of Harper sleeping with his friend (which, for the record, she swears didn’t happen) was enough to reignite the flame. Do Ethan and Daphne go there to decompress, or do they sleep with each other in a fit of revenge? The camera cuts away before we see what happens next, but boy, do they leave a lot to the imagination. Maybe she simply feels for Etha—who is experiencing that level of betrayal for the first time? After confronting Cameron—and nearly drowning him in the process!—he finds Daphne to deliver the news. Early in the episode, Ethan accuses Harper of cheating on him with Cameron.

Other times, they seem to warn people to stop talking. In the season finale, when she speaks to Ethan (Will Sharpe) about their respective partners, her eyes ...

[the show.](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-white-lotus-season-2-deaths-ranking) She doesn't need to say much, but when she does, the subtext is loud. [The White Lotus](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-white-lotus-season-3). In the [season finale](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/white-lotus-season-2-finale-who-dies), when she speaks to Ethan (Will Sharpe) about their respective partners, her eyes appear to calculate a situation in real time and covertly offer him a [slice of revenge](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-white-lotus-season-2-reviews). In the final episode she tells Ethan there's a part of her husband she'll never know, but rather than become consumed by paranoia she acknowledges this is key to her attraction to him. At points, they appear to [observe](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-white-lotus-books-season-2) more than she lets on. Inviting him into her philosophy, she then walks off with him to a deserted bay across the water. The inference is that they slept with each other, and, if appearances are to be believed, her school of thinking saves Harper and Ethan's marriage. Has Mike White pulled the rug on us again? [Theo James is done being put in a box](/culture/article/theo-james-the-white-lotus-interview) Rather than fight these truths, Daphne has opted for finding her own happiness and version of justice. [good time](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-white-lotus-season-2-horny-old-man-2022). But the only fool in writing her off was us.

Will Sharpe, who plays Ethan, sat down with Variety to reflect on the season.

I’ve written a film script, which is a love story set against a period of American history that I think is slightly underexplored and that I wanted to write about for a while. I think he realizes that he wants to fight for the marriage, and that he has to fight for the marriage. I think there is a sort of innate competitiveness in Ethan, and he probably tells himself that he’s someone wants to have status because he’s earned it, and not to sort of go around demanding it. This fear of infidelity and the consequences have sort of hung over this — particularly Ethan and Harper, but all four of them — in different ways across the series. I do find that so funny that after the day that they’ve had, they just come over and sit down with Ethan and Harper. And so I was mindful of that, in the playing of him through the series, always having an eye on the endgame, which for me was that ultimately, all of his actions, whether they’re kind of questionable or laudable, are kind of motivated by love and wanting to get back to a place with Harper that he thinks they should be in. The friendship he has with Cameron is so interesting and fraught. We choreographed it a day or two before with the stunt coordinators, and had a lot of fun trying to work out what’s the best sort of level of trying to make this feel real, and exciting, but also, kind of like two people who don’t really know how to fight going at each other. Ethan seemed to be bubbling up all season, and finally snapped in the finale. And I guess initially, Harper is the one who, as you say, is kind of a little bit judgmental of them. It was such a pleasure to be a part of that. That is exacerbated by the company of Daphne and Cameron, and all the different ways in which that matrix kind of interacts with itself.

First, the plot. In L'Avventura, Vitti plays Claudia, who joins her friend Anna and Anna's boyfriend on a yachting jaunt in the Mediterranean. During a brief ...

And while we don’t know if Greg is cheating on her, we know that Tanya’s preoccupied with that question even after she’s discovered he hired people to kill her for her money—tragically, they are too full of the bullets she’s just pumped into them to answer—which does seem like a kind of madness, perhaps even enough to distract her when she makes her slip-and-fall plunge off the boat and kills herself. You don’t have to let your partner sleep with someone else, but you can’t expect them not to want to, and if you can’t handle the answers, there’s nothing wrong with not asking the questions. In the finale, tensions between the season’s two married couples come to a head as Ethan, whom Harper suspects of having had sex with a prostitute while she was away for the night with Daphne, comes to suspect Harper of having had sex with Cameron. [Eros is sick](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/100-lavventura-cannes-statement)” and humanity was in the grip of a “rigid and stereotyped morality.” For all of their intellectual ideas and formal majesty, Antonioni’s movies have endured in part because of—not to put too fine a point on it—the extreme hotness of their leading actors. Daphne has some experience in these matters, and she gives Ethan the same advice she gave Harper: Do whatever you need to do to feel as if you’re even. But the shift from her customary passive aggression to open hostility—she calls Cameron “an idiot” over dinner—sets Ethan on edge, and he presses Harper until she confesses: The two did get drunk, and they did go back to their rooms, and they did kiss. (Tanya, as well as a bunch of “these gays.”) We find out that Lucia (Simona Tabasco) was definitely playing Albie (Adam DiMarco) and the man who played the part of the pimp she needed 50,000 Euros to escape is just a doorman at a nearby hotel. [hot to trot](https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/white-lotus-season-2-aubrey-plaza-jennifer-coolidge.html), but they can’t seem to get on the same page, sexually speaking. Uncertain whether their spouses have had sex but knowing for sure that they came close, Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) walk across the low-tide sand to Isola Bella, disappearing into the forest as the camera watches from a distance. It’s Plaza’s Harper who gets the charged looks in that L’Avventura pastiche and Tanya who ends up disappearing off a boat, even if it doesn’t take that long for her body to be found. The scene in which a woman walks through a Sicilian courtyard and is menacingly leered at by a gathering crowd of men was re-created in the same location and reenacted shot for shot, with Aubrey Plaza standing in for the iconic Monica Vitti. As she and Anna’s boyfriend search for Anna, who it’s speculated may have died by suicide, they develop an attraction to each other and eventually have sex, although Claudia is consumed with feelings of betrayal toward her missing friend.

Who died in the "White Lotus" finale? What mysteries were left lingering from the Sicilian escapade? What do we already know about Season 3?

“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. “Did they have some kind of dalliance on the island?” White said of Ethan and Daphne. “It is somewhat of a happy ending, although there’s dark clouds on the horizon, too.” Albie eventually realizes he got played, as Lucia silently slips away from his room in the morning, but he still thanks his father and puts in a good word to Abby, his mother and Dominic’s estranged wife. After dwelling on his “blond hair and big blue eyes,” she shares a photo of her two kids in which her older child sports, you guessed it, blond hair and blue eyes that very much do not resemble her husband’s darker features. After a devastating moment of introspection from Daphne, in which she processes the betrayal in real time and promptly calculates her retribution, she leads Ethan to the isolated island of Isola Bella before the scene cuts away. 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. Even if Portia is rattled enough to stay quiet, Italian police quickly came across the blood-soaked yacht, and White hinted that the fallout of that investigation could find its way into a future season. “I think probably that’s just all that happened,” White said. “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.” Sensing the danger aboard Quentin’s yacht, as she wined and dined with his band of accomplices off the coast of Taormina, Tanya grabbed a bag meant to bring about her demise — filled with rope, duct tape and a pistol — and shot Quentin, Didier (Bruno Gouery) and Niccoló (Stefano Gianino) in a teary-eyed rampage. Having seemingly escaped the assassination attempt, she gets spooked by the yacht’s fleeing captain, then slips while trying to jump to a smaller boat below, knocking her head on the railing and drowning under the Sicilian moonlight.

Jennifer Coolidge sits on ornate bench by luggage. Jennifer Coolidge plays Tanya, a hapless heiress in a loveless marriage. As in Season 1, Coolidge is a comedy ...

1, and that she is perhaps the worst assistant in the history of the job.) 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. (“The motivation of sex is always primary, I think,” White told me when I spoke to him, earlier in the fall for the (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. In the fifth episode, we discover that Jack is hiding a secret; Tanya catches him in bed with Quentin. 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. (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. 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. [New Yorker Radio Hour](https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/russell-moore-on-christian-nationalism).) 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. [the second season](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/more-deadly-decadence-in-the-white-lotus) 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. 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. 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.

After 'The White Lotus' finale, “Arrivederci,” we know who died and who killed, but all the guests behaved badly during this Sicily vacation.

How guilty is she? How guilty is he? Her dress is awful. Of kidnapping/abducting Portia, aiding and abetting Tanya’s murder-that-turned-out-to-be-an-accidental-suicide, of “uncle”-fucking, and also of running out on that check that time, which is rude. Is Bert slipping her a $50 for that hug? Well, according to Dominic, Bert is guilty of setting the mold of womanizing and delinquent husbandry that has doomed generations of men in this family to misery. I guess it’s good for her that she gets to be the piano girl at what is apparently the only hotel in all of Sicily? Is he guilty? And I could’ve happily gone my whole life without hearing the phrase “Achilles cock.” He seemed to have a really lovely time on this trip, didn’t he? The speed with which Albie transferred the money to Lucia’s account is totally implausible (he just had her routing number??) but the fact that he was so eager to do it, and not even in installments, made me write “He actually deserves to die for the crime of being such an idiot.” It’s also funny that he is so bent on being a good person who helps a damsel in distress that he could not recognize the actual vulnerability of Portia (going to an island with her psychotic boss and a drunk she’d never met) because he was too distracted by the over-the-top performance of helplessness Lucia put on for his benefit. [It was only a kiss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGdGFtwCNBE)” confession, do you?) But I have a hard time with this whole thing where Ethan, with very little evidence, gets to have the moral high ground, while Harper, who found the condom wrapper, is scrambling to regain his trust. Like, I don’t want to tell someone how to be abducted, but I sure wouldn’t do my big confrontation after I was trapped in a car with my assailant.

As riveting as it's been to tune into The White Lotus and keep up with its twistier-than-the-Italian-coast plot updates every Sunday night, ...

To honor your privacy preferences, this content can only be viewed on the site it There was certainly plenty to talk about after the White Lotus Season 2 finale aired on Sunday; I’ll refrain from going too deep into plot synopsis here for the sake of those who are still catching up, but consider this a spoiler warning (unless, of course, you’ve already been brave enough to log on to Twitter today). Twitter content

Warning: contains spoilers for the finale of The White Lotus 2 (and a vague allusion to events in The Glass Onion). For the last seven weeks, Mike White has ...

It somewhat brings to mind the brilliance of Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion, in terms of hiding a murderer in plain sight, for the death to ultimately be straightforward and a bit embarrassing in how unintelligent a scheme it is. But no, the very final conclusion sees Tanya try to get off the yacht these ‘high-end gays’ (including Tom Hollander in a wonderfully acerbic and conniving turn) had seemingly trapped her on – but what’s a girl to do in her best dress and heels? White teased in this season’s very first scene, before flashing back to a week prior, that yummy mummy Daphne (Meghann Fahy, the standout actor this season) went for one final dip in the Ionian Sea and grimly bumped into the floating body of one of the other hotel guests. And it’s only after she’s gunned down three of the four men she was convinced were trying to murder her – which would have made for an anticlimactic, but again, supremely just and fair, conclusion to this whodunnit. It is an uncomfortable, often sadistic satire, but it’s miraculous that by the end of 2022 we are left with a crumb of hope for the intelligent, hardworking people in the world. Throughout the season you keep thinking that things might not end well, that her job is too risky, that Albie’s “I can fix her” demeanour will ultimately turn violent as it so often does in situations onscreen and off where men and power become the two most threatening things in the world.

If you've been part of the cultural moment that is "The White Lotus," you've most probably inhaled this weekend's Season 2 finale already and are eager for ...

“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. You know, we did Europe, and maybe Asia, something crazy like that, that would be fun,” White told But maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens,” he teased. [staggering events of the finale](https://www.cnn.com/videos/entertainment/2022/12/12/white-lotus-season-finale-cprog-cnntm-vpx.cnn), creator Mike White – who shepherded the at-first one-off limited series to a multiple Emmy-winning show that’s captured the zeitgeist and created [cringeworthy moments aplenty](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/10/entertainment/white-lotus-cringeworthy-moments) – gave a post-credits interview that unpacked the episode. (CNN and HBO are both part of the same parent company, Warner Bros. It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at ‘White Lotus.’” (Season 1 of the show took place in Hawaii, followed by this season’s bawdy action set in Sicily.)

For the season finale of “The White Lotus,” Meghann Fahy stops by the “Still Watching” podcast to discuss her big final monologue, the evolution of Harper ...

I never felt like we rushed through something and didn't really get a chance to sort of sit with it. What do you think pains Daphne more—the potential Cameron betrayal or the Harper betrayal? For me, it was really exciting to see how it ended up cutting together, because I didn't really know what he was gonna choose—which sort of vibe he was maybe gonna pick of the ones that we played with. Listen below, and find a partial transcript of the Fahy interview as well. Meghann Fahy: Well, I think we knew going into it that it was a pretty important moment, so we really took our time with it. “I don’t have Twitter or TikTok, so I only really see what my friends send me and it just cracks me up,” she tells Vanity Fair.

The show has experienced a ratings boom since its Oct. 30 Season 2 premiere, which garnered just over 1.5 million viewers across HBO and HBO Max on its debut ...

For Season 2 Episode 6 of “The That’s up a whopping 46% from the series’ previous best, which was the sixth and penultimate episode of the Sicily-set second season on Dec. The first season of “The White Lotus” closed with 1.9 million multiplatform viewers for its August 2021 finale. Discovery’s proprietary viewership data for streaming on HBO Max. Mike White’s dark comedy has experienced a ratings boom since its Oct. 30 Season 2 premiere, which garnered just over 1.5 million viewers across HBO and HBO Max on its debut night, up 63% in comparison to the “White Lotus” series premiere’s audience in July 2021, which also aired on HBO and HBO Max.

Jennifer Coolidge sits on ornate bench by luggage. Jennifer Coolidge plays Tanya, a hapless heiress in a loveless marriage. As in Season 1, Coolidge is a comedy ...

1, and that she is perhaps the worst assistant in the history of the job.) 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. (“The motivation of sex is always primary, I think,” White told me when I spoke to him, earlier in the fall for the (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. In the fifth episode, we discover that Jack is hiding a secret; Tanya catches him in bed with Quentin. 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. (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. 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. [New Yorker Radio Hour](https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/russell-moore-on-christian-nationalism).) 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. [the second season](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/more-deadly-decadence-in-the-white-lotus) 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. 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. 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.

Yet again, this show has proved that it is possible to make outstanding TV that both plays to the crowd and refuses to sing the classics.

Jack became the villain he was always going to be, and it was frightening and tense, though perhaps his warning to Portia, to flee and not ask questions, was a sort of kindness. The marriages of Ethan and Harper and Daphne and Cameron found their way towards a sort of chosen and hard-won contentment in the end. It is surprisingly invigorating to watch a drama and know that it is not going to end in easy resolution or happiness. They’re trying to murder me!” – but it was a chef’s kiss to have her almost get away, having shot her way through her enemies, only to be undone by her own poor aim, and possibly the fact that she didn’t take off her heels before jumping. It wrapped up its storylines with decreasing levels of subtlety, from Albie being “played” by Lucia, moving through the resilience of Daphne’s determined denial, ramping all the way up to Tanya the destroyer, and ultimately the destroyed. Wanting to preserve the magic for another season, it ekes it out just enough to satisfy while dangling a carrot for the next go around.

Jennifer Coolidge breaks down the shocking 'White Lotus' Season 2 finale and weighs in on those Tanya memes.

Read a recap of the season finale [here](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/white-lotus-finale-recap-who-dies-1235457287/), and its series-high ratings [here](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/white-lotus-finale-ratings-season-2-1235457986/)! “White Lotus” has opened a world of opportunities, and Mike White will be my friend forever, of course. I know Mike White’s a genius and all that, but I never had the thought that “White Lotus” was going to be a huge deal. And staying on “White Lotus” Season 2 — it was a life-changing thing. I remember thinking, “This is good,” but there’s a lot of good stuff on television that never gets any recognition. That was one of the last scenes I filmed for the show, and I was seasick and stuff. It was sort of the beginning of good times for me, coming out of COVID and making “White Lotus” Season 1. One of my favorite lines, which Mike came up with, is “These are some high-end gays.” I liked when Tanya was excited about something, because she was so depressed for most of Season 1 and the beginning of 2. I improvised a lot of things, some made it in and some didn’t. It’s that sort of inability to believe something until you’re in way too deep, because the possibility of it is too hard for people to admit to themselves that there’s that type of evil in the world. There’s one line that I told Mike about that he put in the script. I was kind of bummed, but Mike knows how to tell a story better than anyone I know, so I knew I just had to trust it.

In the first-season finale of The White Lotus, Tanya McQuoid tells Belinda, the manager of the spa at the show's titular hotel, that she's determined to ...

Instead of getting played or demeaned like the staff and locals in season one, the locals team up with White Lotus staff to stick it to the Establishment. Only those who understand that they could be a mark as well as a beneficiary in their own transactional relationships get to live to see another day and, presumably, another stay at a White Lotus. Then there’s the person who doesn’t emerge at all from the events that happen in Sicily: Tanya McQuoid, whose story is evidence all by itself of the importance of understanding the transactional nature of relationships. The characters who enjoy the most notable moment of triumph in the finale are Mia and Lucia, and it’s not an accident that they also happen to engage in the most blatantly transactional relationships. They both get what they came for, so to speak, and stroll happily through the streets of Italy as if their cares have completely dissolved, which, for now, they have. Ethan was never really friends with Cam in the first place; he was just engaged in a yearslong competition to prove his own worth. But it also signals that these men are on the same page now, incapable of hiding their sexual desires but also more comfortable with their similarities in that regard. And when we last see the two couples in the airport, they are sitting separate from each other as if they are two sides of the same dysfunctional marital coin. White communicates the idea that Harper and Ethan have something akin to real intimacy through visual language. While one might assume naïve Albie still doesn’t grasp that Lucia took advantage of him, he disabuses us of that notion when he reconnects with Portia at the airport and tells her that he got played. But when you consider which of the guests comes out of that weeklong experience unscathed — you know, relatively speaking — it’s the ones that have accepted that partnerships involve negotiation and are honest with themselves about that. “The Best Things in Life Are Free” is the song we hear as the season-two finale concludes, and it is definitely deployed ironically.

Leo Woodall talks about the life-changing moment he found out he landed the role of Jack in Mike White's award-winning series 'The White Lotus.

“He did the right thing, but he’s not that nice of a guy. Woodall also explained that Jack's decision not to kill Portia is about who he is as a person, more than his feelings for her. Though Jack decided not to kill Portia, he dropped her off in a deserted and dangerous area. The series will return for a third installment following a new group of guests at another White Lotus property. The fans don’t know much of his backstory other than Quentin helped him when he was in a dark place. He does the right thing in the end.” He gives you just enough so that you are fulfilled and satisfied.” When it got to that bit, I started to think about his backstory, but there’s something so genius about Mike’s writing that I didn’t want to compromise what he’d done.” In one scene, he told Haley Lu Richardson’s Portia that she was his “job.” It was terrifying for her; she even asked if she’d been kidnapped. White doesn’t spoonfeed his audience, and though he answers many questions, he still leaves some things unsaid and undone. For Leo Woodall, who portrayed Jack in the second season, landing this role was life-changing. He had been through a few rounds of Zoom auditions and had battled Covid more than once.

Season 2 of The White Lotus is rich with visual art references that provide clues and symbolism to the deeper meanings of the show.

Clues to her fate are linked to the tragedy of Madame Butterfly. Her tears are symbolised in the painting of a hunched over weeping woman grasping a dagger. It’s clear the artworks personify the characters in the show, serving as an entry point into their inner turbulent worlds. The placement of art in the show is both masterful and purposeful. She is the drama’s ultimate tragedy and her vulnerability and mortality connect most powerfully with art historical references. We see the painting in the background of a scene where Albie is being brought to orgasm by a woman, Lucia, who he doesn’t know is a sex worker. As Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) says to Quentin in the final arresting episode, “What a life you have. The legend is amplified in a scene when Harper’s husband, Ethan believes his wife to have cheated on him in revenge for his own close encounter with sex workers. While there has been intense focus on the Renaissance art in the show, there are also filmic and literary references. There are also references to Elena Ferrante’s novels adapted to television show, [My Brilliant Friend (2018)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7278862/), through the “escorts” Lucia and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) who bear striking resemblance to the “good” and “bad” girl characters, Lenù and Lila. While packing her bag to leave, she notices her namesake, Saint Lucy in a painting by Domenico Beccafumi (1521). In season 2, it’s the artworks that have drawn attention.

Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore, in a pink suit) and her staff turn out to greet guests in the second season of HBO's “The White Lotus.” (Fabio Lovino / HBO).

And it depends as much on the open-mindedness of the traveler as on the magic embedded in any given location. And the second season wastes the talents of Impacciatore as the tough Valentina, a sexually frustrated woman who takes out her anger on everyone around her — until she comes to terms with her lesbian desires in the arms of a kindly prostitute. The protagonist in this stage play, of course, is the traveler. [her review](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-07-18/the-white-lotus-hbo-tourism-colonialism) of the show, “The White Lotus” does a far better job managing the storylines around the resort’s guests than it does with the staff members who must serve them. expat once summarized the country’s appeal to me over a beer and a stuffed ashtray: “It’s all about fishing and f—ing.” And what “The White Lotus” gets right is that tourism is theater, the ultimate immersive experience in which everyone and everything has a role to play. The travel industry contrives all manner of ways to objectify the locals for the benefit of tourists on a quest for the extraordinary or the “authentic.” In Belize, I once wrote about a hotel on a private island where I was greeted on a boat dock by smiling staff members all decked out in matching pith helmets — so colonial! The country is regularly billed as one of the happiest places on Earth, based on [studies](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/sun-sea-and-stable-democracy-what-s-the-secret-to-costa-rica-s-success/) that purport to rank national contentedness. Functioning as stage is the locale — which the travel industry set-designs into a hyper-quaint version of itself for the purpose of tourist appeal. “Across the United States, towns devastated by capital flight, technological shifts, or union-busting make spectacles of themselves desperately framing and reinventing their histories to make the picture appealing to those who might buy a hamburger, T-shirt, suntan lotion, Indian jewelry, a plastic sea gull, a shell ashtray, or a boat ride.” But I have been intrigued by the ways it depicts tourism — especially the high-end part of the business. “Greet them together,” she commands, “with the same right hand.”

The resort: While you can find four-figure-a-night accommodation dotted along the entire length of the Great Barrier Reef, only Orpheus Island has inbuilt ...

Instead, the “premium” “resort-style” setting we’ve come to expect could be found at the shiny new [Marriott](https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/meldl-melbourne-marriott-hotel-docklands/overview/), where the white lounger-lined infinity pool has views over … [Jackalope](https://jackalopehotels.com/), but their emphasis on art and wine feels a bit too niche for the world White Lotus has been building. Add to that the very real economic issues facing the region and you’ve got a perfect upstairs-downstairs situation, but the manor is a yoga shambala. When the newly minted Greg (Jon Gries) checks in to deal with a pesky cancer recurrence, is there a chance she’ll uncover the dark secret behind his fortune? The premise: Rugged and astonishing, Australia’s far north-west is as remote as you can get. So I’ve assessed five possible candidates based on the existence of a suitably six-star set (sorry Qualia, you’ve been banned from competition after Ticket to Paradise); narrative and thematic potential; and which characters would work best in the setting. There’s also a fair bit of erotic potential in couples feeding each other oysters straight from the sea. And at over $3,000 per person, per night, it’s right in that White Lotus sweet spot. Suitability: A cold, dark destination is not what an international audience would anticipate from an Australian vacation, which could make for a very White Lotus exercise in thwarted expectations. The second season of Mike White’s auteur anthology White Lotus came to its perfectly sticky end on Monday, and like a 1%er who can never be happy no matter how much I take and consume, I’m already ready for season three. The mood: This is Tasmania. The clear White Lotus winner.

The question of whose body is floating in the water turned out not to be the biggest rug-pull of season 2 of The White Lotus. Instead Mike White left a ...

[How Daphne won The White Lotus](/culture/article/daphne-white-lotus-winner) [being disgustingly horny](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-white-lotus-season-2-horny-old-man-2022). Being stinking rich for the most part makes you miserable, we were repeatedly reminded, and watching from the sensory deprivation chambers of our homes in the (second?) lockdown of 2020, that was reassuring. Instead, the biggest surprise is that at the end of a week around the shared buffet of misery, most of the guests are checking out somewhat happy. This totally avoidable suffering is the little chocolate on our TV pillow at the end of a long day. That money doesn't make you happy has always been the bottom line on Mike White's HBO and Sky Atlantic miniseries, The White Lotus.

While we still try to process that super stressful season finale, the series creator unpacks everything that went down - and teases what's next for the ...

'The White Lotus' has been renewed for season three at HBO, but some actors from season one have already expressed interest in returning to the series. Turning his attention to 'The White Lotus' season three very briefly, White touches on the gays and the conspiracy she unwittingly became wrapped up in. As you can see in the video below, White wanted Tanya to go out in "derpy" style that was "just so Tanya", and her self-plop into the Ionian sea felt like the most fitting end to the heiress' journey. [still in shock to be honest](https://entertainment.ie/tv-news/the-white-lotus-season-finale-reactions-549427/). It's not that the signs weren't there all season, [they definitely were](https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/season-2-white-lotus-who-would-die), but it's always sad saying goodbye to one of your favourite characters. Series creator Mike White unpacked the season finale with HBO this week, breaking down the episode and all of the memorable (i.e.

The mystery of The White Lotus was there from its start. In the second series opener, Daphne, the slender, freckled trophy wife, tells new arrivals on the beach ...

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The actor's performance as the deceptively cynical, perennially zen housewife was the standout of the dark comedy's second season.

Instead, Fahy performs Daphne as both seemingly open and guileless and the most opaque of all the characters. An over-the-shoulder smize, as she leads Ethan to an isolated peninsula, of someone getting what she wants. [The White Lotus](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/the-white-lotus) where Daphne is a milder side character or a complement to Plaza’s Harper instead of the most intriguing of the bunch. It’s not just because her incarnation of Daphne is fascinating to watch – bubbly and seemingly aloof, inner calculations briefly rippling beneath her smooth-brained surface. The season finale, which aired this week (spoilers ahead), stuck the landing and [confirmed](https://www.theringer.com/tv/2022/12/12/23505968/the-white-lotus-season-2-finale-recap-review-analysis) creator, writer and director Mike White’s vision of “ [a bedroom farce with teeth](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-white-lotus-season-2-set-visit.html)”. [best (and horniest) examinations of sexual politics](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/the-white-lotus-season-two-sex) on TV.

'The White Lotus' star Will Sharpe has reflected on whether his character Ethan slept with Daphne (Meghann Fahy) in the finale.

Sharpe went on: “In that moment, he just feels like he has to get the truth from Harper and maybe he does get it from her or maybe he doesn’t, we don’t know. HBO Max is not currently available in the UK. “What’s fuelling the temperature in those scenes is a kind of realisation that he really wants to fight for this marriage, and he’s realised that he needs to fight for it. From a performance point of view, with Harper and Cameron, I felt like I didn’t need to know what had happened because Ethan doesn’t know.” And this is, rightly or wrongly, his way of doing it.” NME is supported by you.