The ‘White Lotus’ Season 3 Premiere Recap: Monkey Business
HBO’s hit semi-anthology series comes back with a bang—a bunch of bangs, actually
Imagine me smiling broadly on a beach, saying sawatdee khrap, and waving as I welcome you to the first of our weekly White Lotus recaps. Season 3 of the HBO almost-anthology show contains an expanded eight episodes and promises to be not only longer but both “bigger” and “crazier.” So accept your malai, pick your villa, and get unpacked—but don’t opt for the digital detox, take a nap, or pop a lorazepam until after you’re finished reading. This time we’re traveling to the Thai island of Koh Samui, site of this season’s White Lotus—the resort chain where no one ever vacations unless they’re dealing with deep-seated, unprocessed problems and where guests and those in their orbit tend to have a high mortality rate.
Aside from the opening scene, the strike-delayed third season starts slowly. But it’s good to be back in creator/writer/director/showrunner Mike White’s world, with another stacked cast assigned to this season’s entitled, dysfunctional families and frenemies. The writing is still astute, the scenery is still luscious, and the tone still fluctuates between funny and foreboding. Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) is gone, but the show must go on, even if, inevitably, the setup is starting to feel formulaic: three main groups of guests, a new locale, and the reveal of a death (or deaths), followed by a rewind to one week earlier. Speaking of which, let’s proceed to the first section—and the first scene.
Who’s the Dead Body?
“It’s such a trope at this point,” White said of his series’ murder-mystery framing in 2021. “All of these limited series where there’s a dead body at the beginning. I was like, ‘You want your dead body? Here’s your dead body.’”
Yes, The White Lotus’s corpses are what Severance’s Ricken would call a “Trojan’s horse”: a means of sneaking the series onto more screens on Sunday nights than a sophisticated interpersonal drama without a clear hook might manage otherwise. And sure, focusing on whodunit, and who had it done to them, might make one miss the forest for the palm trees. But without the elevated body count—both kinds—perhaps The White Lotus would have been another well-reviewed, little-watched, and short-lived White creation, like Enlightened before it. (Enlightened lasted for two seasons; White Lotus has already been renewed for a fourth.) So if corpses are the cost of keeping the show on the air and in the zeitgeist, then bring on the stiffs, I say. (And, thanks to Patrick Schwarzenegger’s Saxon, the stiffies.)
As in Season 2, the dead body we glimpse in the premiere is floating in the water—and, in another commonality, there may well be more than one victim. (Maybe many more.) This time, the cause of death seems strongly implied, though that may be a misdirect: We hear Chekhov’s gunfire but haven’t seen Chekhov’s gun. Whoever the victim is, and however they died, it’s clear that an active shooter has shattered the superficial peace of the world’s leading wellness resort—and that White has upped the ante with the series’ boldest beginning yet. It’s a fitting start to the season’s descent into darkness.
We won’t know until April who was on either end of these establishing shots, but we can contemplate a few candidates. Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) fears for his mom, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), but after the “rough couple years” Belinda alludes to, a violent end seems too cruel a fate for her, even on a show that isn’t always kind to its characters. (Even if she does slightly jostle an offering on the protective spirits’ shrine.) The most obvious instigator, Rick (Walton Goggins), has a score to settle with the husband of resort owner Sritala (Lek Patravadi), Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), whose bodyguards are strapped. Maybe they’re the ones firing (or returning fire). Or maybe Rick, depressed and resentful, took his frustrations out on Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) in a final attempt to silence her. “You’re like a fuckin’ machine gun,” he tells her while she assures him, “I’m gonna help you get your joy back, even if it kills me.” If that’s foreshadowing, it’s not exactly subtle. Then again, neither were the hints about Tanya’s demise.
Might Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) sacrifice himself for his princess, Mook (Lalisa Manobal, a.k.a. Lisa from Blackpink), and suffer a watery death two years after saving someone from one? (There’s no love lost between him and the bodyguards.) Could some shady business entanglements come back to bite Timothy (Jason Isaacs)?
Let’s hope the floater is Greg (Jon Gries), who makes a surprise appearance in the premiere, joining Belinda as the lone holdovers so far from previous seasons. In Season 2, Tanya’s husband got away with his scheme to have his wife killed, and he presumably put his inheritance toward a new house in Thailand (and a former-model wife, whom the serial divorcé is already alienating). But maybe his lies and crimes will catch up to him. “The fact that all of those guys die on the boat, it feels like there’s gotta be somebody who’s gonna track it down to Greg,” White said after the Season 2 finale. “But maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens.” The wait will likely end soon; perhaps this “Loser Back Home” will lose his life in this season’s finale.
As Rick snaps to Chelsea, “Enough with the questions.” Let’s review what we’ve actually learned about Season 3’s sad sacks, playboys, cougars, and crooks.
A Wellness Check on the Guests
“They’re all in some kind of hurt,” White told Time about the White Lotus’s latest guests. “Like, they’re all dead, but they don’t know it.” Sounds ominous, in light of the live fire, but White probably doesn’t mean that all of his new characters have a week to live. (This is The White Lotus, not Rogue One.) If Season 1 was about money and Season 2 was about sex, then Season 3 seems to be about “death and Eastern religion and spirituality.” So White might mean that these folks have forgotten (or failed to figure out) how to live. They’re out of touch with themselves, each other, and what it takes to feel fulfilled. The cell tower looming over the nearby temple’s spire seems like a thinly veiled commentary on misplaced priorities.
The premiere is mostly a dramatis personae that introduces the new arrivals and teases their traumas, so let’s do the same in this section. The Ratliffs are Season 3’s answer to Season 1’s wealthy Mossbachers. The new clan consists of couple Timothy and Victoria (Parker Posey) and their almost-grown-up kids, Saxon (Schwarzenegger), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and Lochlan (Sam Nivola). Tim appears to be a paragon of business and a model (albeit demanding) dad, but he isn’t quite the great guy everyone tells Victoria he is, which won’t be a shocker if you’ve seen Isaacs in, well, almost anything else. (Isaacs was far from heroic even when he was a Starfleet captain.) He’s dodging questions from a Wall Street Journal reporter, Bart Nixon, who wants to know about an associate of Tim’s named Kenneth Nguyen.
Tim seems to have started a fund called Sho-Kel with Nguyen, whom the Journal is investigating because of his alleged ties to the government of Brunei. Tim claims not to have talked to Nguyen for a long time, but the nervous voicemail he leaves Nguyen immediately after hanging up on Nixon doesn’t sound like their first contact in years. Although Tim professes ignorance of any wrongdoing, he looks like a man whose comfortable world is about to be blown up. Even if he doesn’t die this week, his career could, along with his family’s insulation from hardship. “You’re always right,” Saxon says to Tim, but we’ll see how long that idolization lasts. Surely it’s not a concern that the ground around the Ratliffs’ villa is littered with the literal fruit of the poisonous tree.
(The callback number Nixon gives Ratliff doesn’t follow the standard 555 format from most movies and TV shows, so I dialed it, expecting to hear a fake voicemail. Instead, I got the main menu for the Federal Labor Relations Authority, whose chairwoman recently found herself in Donald Trump’s sights. Make of that what you will.)
Victoria is Tim’s devoted, slightly scatterbrained wife, the mint julep to his straight bourbon. She spends much of the episode either naturally or chemically sedated (if not both), so we don’t learn a lot about her as an independent person; her focus is on her family, which makes her the only Ratliff who’s into the digital detox idea. (Sorry, Pam, but I’m with Tim and Saxon on this one; a wellness worker would have to pry my devices out of my cold, dead hands.) Although Victoria comes off as a free spirit, she and Tim seem repressed on a physical level; Tim swears when she gets a second wind before bedtime, and in the boudoir, they chastely hold hands. (She also believes “genitals” is “a bad word.”) “We have it good,” Tim tells Victoria. “No doubt.” Possibly some doubt! (I’m not sure which is more distracting, Isaacs’s slight but inconsistent Southern accent or Posey’s more stable but almost comically pronounced one, which is only slightly less noticeable than Benoit Blanc’s.)
Saxon certainly isn’t sexually inhibited; he works hard, plays hard, and has followed in his father’s professional footsteps. (Which could be bad news for Saxon.) Head half-submerged in the pool, lurking like a predator, he cruises for cougars—or Chelsea, if she’ll have him. (He’s not picky; those long plane rides are a real aphrodisiac.) Piper’s thesis on Buddhism prompted the trip; she looks like Saxon, but there the resemblance ends. Lochlan may not have any homework, but he has choices to make: between ways of life (Saxon’s or Piper’s), between colleges (Duke or UNC), between recreation destinations (temple or pool), between postures (slouching or sitting up straight), between bedrooms (Saxon’s or Piper’s), between bukkake and hot teacher porn.
The junior Ratliffs are more than a little Lannister-like. “Brothers and sisters don’t sleep together after they have full-grown genitals,” Saxon protests (too much?), just before getting handsy with his sister. Saxon seems jealous when Piper suggests that she’ll room with Lochlan and when Lochlan chooses to escort Piper to the temple before joining Saxon at the pool. Later, Saxon and Lochlan pillow-talk about life; Saxon tells his younger brother that their sister is “pretty hot” and frets, “I don’t think she's ever been laid before.” Then he segues to “So what kind of porn do you like?” before musing aloud about how he’ll jerk off with Lochlan lying a few feet away from him. (No wonder Saxon wasn’t so keen on rooming with Piper … though maybe that depends on how Lannister-like they are.) Folks with siblings: Is it unusual for an older brother to lock eyes with a younger one as the former, hanging dong, browses his iPad in preparation for a pre-announced bathroom masturbation sesh? I’m an only child, so I wouldn’t know.
Lochlan has hardly embarked on his pursuit of “pussy, money, freedom, respect” (in that order, Saxon says). Just judging by how the Duke and UNC sides of the family turned out, I’d tell Lochlan to choose Chapel Hill. (Or, better yet, to attend a different school instead of breaking the tie between the male and female members of his family.) “We’re a normal family,” Victoria tells the Ratliffs’ wellness mentor. “You’ll see.” Will we?
On The White Lotus, normality is relative. Tim and Victoria seem like an ideal love match compared to Rick and Chelsea, an “opposites attract” twosome if ever there was one. (Though there doesn’t seem to be much attraction on Rick’s part.) Rick arranged the trip to get closer to Hollinger, and he’s none too pleased to learn that the man recently left for Bangkok. Nor is he pleased about anything else. Rick, who “barely works,” has what Chelsea understatedly terms “issues,” whereas Rick thinks Chelsea is the “crazy” one. The magnetic Goggins has rarely been so brooding; it’s almost a relief when his cigarette breaks spark confrontations with Tim.
The most intriguing group of guests is the trio of Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb), and Laurie (Carrie Coon), childhood friends full of simmering resentments. I don’t envy casting director Meredith Tucker’s task of finding actors who could credibly make a character played by Coon feel inadequate, but the statuesque duo of Monaghan and Bibb seem quite capable of embodying unwitting mean girls. The 40-somethings have history dating back to before high school, and Kate and Laurie are still the supporting actors in TV celebrity Jaclyn’s life, as they were when they played the hands and feet behind her head in a long-ago skit that Jaclyn can hardly remember. Laurie, who’s neither as famous nor as wealthy as her friends, is relegated to a room—paid for by Jaclyn—that’s “tucked away” from the other two. She guzzles wine to cope with insecurity. “We’re all lucky,” Jaclyn says, and Kate confirms, “We’re so lucky.” Do they believe that, or are they trying to persuade themselves? And even if they’re sincere, are the three friends all equally lucky?
Amid all of the sniping and backbiting, thank goodness for the grounding provided by Belinda, who hasn’t started her own spa—Tanya’s bad—but is largely living her best life in Thailand, aside from the monitor lizards and unseen snakes in trees. She has three months to relax and learn from her colleagues on this company-sponsored sojourn—“In time, lizards will become your friends,” Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) promises her—and she’ll soon be joined by her son, whom she happily tells about her sighting of a rarity at her home resort: Black guests. The Thailand-based White Lotus staffers’ stories haven’t coalesced yet: General manager Fabian (Christian Friedel) makes much less of an impression than Season 1’s Armond, and it’s not yet clear where we’re going with Gaitok and his unrequited adoration for Mook, wellness expert Sritala, or, in place of Season 2’s Valentina, Season 3’s hunky Valentin (played by Arnas Fedaravicius from the ever-underrated The Last Kingdom), who channels Claude from Along Came Polly.
Victoria supplies some of the missing Tanya energy (what with her pill popping, anxiety about a biometric test, and request that Piper “scratch [her] arm” because it “feels so good”), though Rick also seems like a blend between Greg and Tanya’s depressive side. Brothers Saxon and Lochlan have sort of a Season 2 Cameron-Ethan dynamic, and on an individual level, Saxon, Lochlan, and Piper also remind me of Season 1’s Shane, Season 2’s Albie, and Season 1’s Quinn, respectively. Maybe White is winking at these parallels. The premiere’s title, “Same Spirits, New Forms,” seems like a meta-commentary on the guests’ recycled archetypes, as does Zion’s comparison of Thailand to Hawaii: “It’s actually really similar. Except there’s no monkeys in Hawaii.”
Despite the guests’ reprehensible behavior and the show’s best efforts to instill a sense of creeping dread, I still find watching The White Lotus a soothing experience. Credit the comic relief, the catchy soundtrack, and the sumptuous, slow-motion cinematography, as White intersperses glimpses of the island’s natural splendor with the underwater photography he’s leaned on since Enlightened. Sure, maybe those angles are meant to convey how close his characters are to drowning, but water can be cleansing, too.
Microaggression of the Week
“When we were little, people would always mix us up,” Laurie recalls. “Couldn’t tell us apart.” Then Jaclyn and Kate got tall, glamorous, and rich, and Jaclyn got famous; Laurie says she wouldn’t want the red carpet rolled out for her wherever she goes, but her anguished sob as she gazes from afar at her friends says otherwise. Laurie seemingly lacks “beautiful homes” and “the man of [her] dreams”; Kate’s kids are “gorgeous,” Jaclyn says, whereas Laurie’s daughter “seems like she is turning into a really cool girl.” Maybe Laurie is less “winning life” than fighting it to a draw.
Almost immediately, Laurie feels like a third wheel, as Jaclyn and Kate say the same things in unison, compliment each other’s minor nips and tucks, and echo each other as they affirm how amazing and incredible they look. The other guests’ cultural insensitivities aside, there’s no more memorable microaggression than when Jaclyn tells Kate she looks incredible and then—belatedly including Laurie—unconvincingly concludes, “You both do.”
Ouch. Laurie’s comeback has some bite: “Yeah, but you look like you just got pushed out of a birth canal” could be a compliment, but it sounds like a slam.
“I look at you two, it’s like I’m looking in a mirror,” Laurie pointedly tells her two companions, but she doesn’t really like what she sees. This “victory” tour may be more of a midlife-crisis trip than Laurie would like to let on.
The Nicest Mean Thing Uttered in Episode 1
It’s hard to choose just one, but I’ll go with Jaclyn’s backhanded compliment to Laurie in a later scene: “Oh, and Laurie. You just … everything you do is so hard.” I suspect that the three ostensible besties will be the richest sources of fodder for these middle sections in the episodes ahead.
What Are the Monkeys Trying to Tell Us?
“Let us calm our chattering monkey minds and find in the silence what is timeless,” meditation leader Amrita (Shalini Peiris) tells Zion before the bullets start flying. Good luck with that. Maybe the presence of our primate relatives, the successors to Season 2’s head-shaped vases, is meant to remind us that humans aren’t as highly evolved as we like to think. Saxon, for one, is all id, always at the ready with his hand on his junk. “Just don’t feed them,” Kate cautions Laurie. “Monkeys can be aggressive.” So can guests at luxury resorts. As Saxon says, “Get laid. Get everything.”Until next time: To Thailand. To monkeys. To self-care. Khop khun khrap.
