What Does Laurie’s “Epiphany” Really Mean for the Blond Blob?
In the Season 3 finale of ‘The White Lotus,’ Carrie Coon’s character, Laurie, gives an epic speech. But whether it’ll actually change her childhood friendships is another question.
Back in the Season 3 premiere of The White Lotus, childhood friends Kate, Jaclyn, and Laurie (played by Leslie Bibb, Michelle Monaghan, and Carrie Coon, respectively) reminisce over dinner about some sort of school performance from back in the day. “We were all one person,” says Kate, “and Jaclyn, of course, was the face, and we hid behind you, and I had my hands in some shoes, and I was your feet.”
“And I was the arms!” adds Laurie, laughing. “And I put lipstick on—I got it all over your face? And I brushed your teeth? Remember?”
It’s an evocative vignette: palpable, blurry, beckoning, like gazing into an old Polaroid picture and feeling bereft that you can’t squeeze inside. It’s also one of the few glimpses we get into the schoolgirl glory days of the trio that creator Mike White refers to as the big, blond blob. Kate, Jaclyn, and Laurie are 40-somethings who first became friends when they were 9, meaning they’ve known one another for about as long as or longer than most of the other guests staying at the White Lotus in Thailand (depending on when Ma and Pa Ratliff first met.)
Which is, of course, their problem.
Over the course of Season 3 of The White Lotus, Kate, Jaclyn, and Laurie fight old battles and unearth ancient grudges. “Old friends, they know you better,” Bibb told The Ringer in a February interview. “You can’t sort of reinvent yourself.” They yell at one another, “We’re still the same people we were in the 10th grade!” They storm off in huffs but come home for dinner. They talk relentlessly about one another behind their backs. (White’s inspiration for the group was an actual trio he encountered who immediately started gossiping about one of the gals when she went to the bathroom.)
And in “Amor Fati,” the Season 3 finale, their decades of for-better-or-worse friendship are the subject of a final-night speech from Laurie that is equal parts bitter, grateful, and nostalgic.
“I had this epiphany today,” Laurie says (after running through a litany of her failures). “I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning. Because time gives it meaning. We, we started this life together. I mean, we’re going through it apart, but we’re still together, and I—I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful. And I can’t explain it, but even when we’re sitting around the pool talking about whatever inane shit, it feels very fucking deep.”
In a finale that earned mixed reactions, Laurie’s scene was widely considered a standout. For some viewers, it resonated on a personal level. “Everybody has been forced to confront their own life choices when sitting with friends who are more successful than they are, or less successful, and they are trying to figure out how to talk about their lives,” Coon told The Ringer in February. Others were just glad it got the women back on solid footing after what had become a pretty big yikes of a girls trip. Will Laurie's statement change everything for these women going forward? Doubtful, but I don’t think it needs to, either. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to spend some time living in the past.
When we meet Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie in the season premiere, it doesn’t take long to see that one of these things is not like the others. Jaclyn is a TV star. “I’m always bragging that I know you,” Kate gushes. Kate is married to some Austin-area rainmaker named Dave. “Your kids are gorgeous, your beautiful homes—you’re totally winning life,” Jaclyn enthuses. And Laurie? “You just … everything you do is just so hard!” Jaclyn says, her voice rising several notes as she says it. “You’ve always been so impressive!”
Oooh, the octave change of insincerity! I know that tone shift well. Some of my longtime friends and I are what you might even call scholars of the form, having listened for instances of it in the wild ever since we went to a baby shower and were treated to both the mom-to-be’s and her mom’s previously unknown vocal range. (The more off-registry the gift, the more glass breaking the awww.)
In The White Lotus, as in life, characters routinely raise the volume of their voices when they need to communicate something—the coconut milk is off, perhaps?—loud and clear. But when they elevate their pitch? That’s usually a sign that they want to get away with declaring nothing at all.
The Episode 1 pivot from “Laurie looks great!” to “No wonder she looks defeated” is like something out of the GOAT “She knows Kelly” reel. Kate’s description of what she told Dave about this vacation—no, it’s not a midlife-crisis trip with the girlfriends, silly, “it’s a victory tour”—sounds like a Fox News broadcaster trying to rebrand, like, tariffs. And while Laurie tends to keep things real, she’s not immune to fakin’ it: Watching Episode 3, I was extremely rattled when she and Jaclyn so smoothly parroted empty lines they’ve certainly said dozens of times before about visiting their bestie in Austin. (“I can’t waaaaait to get down there!” “I reeeallly wanna come!!!”)
But it’s in the finale, as the gals sit down for their last supper following a week of boning Russian criminals, reading one another to filth, wearing so many different outfits, and drinking hella rosé, that the discourse gets even more unsettling, following initial eruptions in Episodes 6 and 7.
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“I’m so glad we did this,” chirps Kate. “Me too!” responds Jaclyn, matching Kate’s neon-bright tone. They must be sick of this resort restaurant by now, but they’d never say so. “Are you sure we can’t help pay?” Kate asks, clearly not soliciting a real answer at all. “No, no, it was my total pleasure,” Jaclyn insists. The conversation is cheerful and polite and soprano—which suggests that it’s all bullshit. It feels like watching two AI agents telling each other exaaaacctly.
“You’re saying, like, I’m sooo worried—but really you’re not worried,” Bibb told The Ringer in February, describing how she nailed this sort of tone. On the page, the lines don’t always appear clear right away, she said. “When you read it, it seems like it’s well-meaning or something, but …”
“It’s basic bitches,” Coon jumped in.
One of Laurie’s primary issues in this friend group is that she’ll never be a basic bitch. She’s too skeptical, too prideful, too unable to lie like Jaclyn that “I’ve just been on cloud nine all week!” (I actually kind of believe that Kate means it when she prattles on about everyone’s flowers being in bloom in the finale. Don’t forget: This is the same person who explains, in Episode 2, “I used to hate beans, but now I eat a lot of beans. One day, I just decided to trick my mind into liking beans, and now I do!” Impressive grindset, tbh.) And so as Laurie’s friends veer into NPC territory at their final dinner, it’s not that surprising when she snatches the controller.
In the spirit of Laurie’s speech, though, I must be honest. I don’t know whether I’m as optimistic as others seem to be that this trip helped these ladies emerge as better friends. Or that this “victory tour” was some win.
Sure, what Laurie said was moving. But much of it came from the same mindset that her friends had already challenged in an earlier episode. (Jaclyn: “If you’re not happy with your life, Laurie, I don’t know, fucking change it.” Kate: “It’s like, the source of your disappointment changes, but the constant is you’re always disappointed.”) There’s no reason to believe that Laurie getting vulnerable will cause Kate to loosen up or Jaclyn to cut the crap. (It also hasn’t seemed to inspire Laurie herself to consider mixing in a water.) When nothing changes, nothing changes.
Put another way, riddle me this:
- When the friends first convene in the Season 3 premiere, Jaclyn says that she doesn’t think she’s seen Laurie in “like, four years.” (Whereas Kate and Jaclyn “have dinner twice a year.”)
True or false: Jaclyn will next see Laurie sometime within the four years after their trip. - As discussed, Kate wants her friends to visit her Austin empire, and they “can’t wait to get down there.”
True or false: Laurie and/or Jaclyn will visit Kate in Austin at any point in, I don’t know, the next decade.
Sorry, gals, but F that—twice! It’s not that I think the blond blob is breaking up, per se, or that they’ll never speak again. (Although I do think that if Laurie hadn’t come to dinner, that kind of thing was on the table.) It’s just that I most clearly see these three settling right back into their same distant status quo. There’s comfort in returning to that path of least resistance, where you can kick the can the farthest down the road.
The way I see it, their group chat will totally be active at first (“Hey, ladies, is it weird that no police ever tried to talk to us that time we saw a murder? xoxo”), then taper off quickly once any two people start sidebarring about the third. Kate will dutifully holler at Jaclyn when she’s in L.A. twice a year, and at the end of every dinner, Kate will say: “We need another trip! MY treat this time!” and Jaclyn will agree—then they’ll never speak of it again. Jaclyn will ask Kate whether she’s seen Laurie, and Kate will answer, “We texted the other day! It sounds like she’s doing great!” and her voice will reach the octave marked “Mariah Carey sings ‘Emotions.’”
Laurie will see an item in the New York Post about Jaclyn’s hot man cheating on and/or dumping her for some other starlet. Unfortunately, her first thought will be: “Good.” Maybe she’ll pour a glass of wine to take the edge off the resentment, but probably the wine will only hone it. She’ll text Kate something uncharitable about the news but accidentally send it to the dormant group chat. Jaclyn, post-op and groggy after some desperate new procedure, thankfully won’t remember ever seeing it. (Is it too dark for me to make a reference here about how she’ll be too busy texting Dave anyway?)
And thus shall the blond blob universe return once again to its steady state of equilibrium, the one foretold way back in the season premiere.
Jaclyn: Seriously, you’ll never know how much I love you.
Kate: I feel the exact same way.
Laurie: I look at you two, it’s like I’m looking in the mirror.
Read with a certain emphasis, there’s a crushing sadness to this exchange. The first two gals are too withholding to properly express love. The third is too self-loathing to properly receive it. But when you revisit it after the finale, to quote Laurie, there’s something “very fucking deep” about how familiar the pattern is—profound defects and all. Their dynamic has existed ever since they were three little girls stacked in a trench coat, and it will continue to exist whether they like it or not.
Jaclyn serving (and saving) face. Kate always doing the legwork. And Laurie, armed with her messy makeup, creating a scene and stealing the show.
