This article contains spoilers.
The third season of “The White Lotus” premiered on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025, continuing the show’s portrayal of bourgeois lifestyles and the wildly different personalities that inhabit them. This writer is here to review some of the biggest plot lines and voice some critiques that fans may have.
Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and Greg (or Gary?) (Jon Gries) return this season, with Belinda visiting the White Lotus in Thailand for a wellness research retreat and Greg moving into a house in Thailand. When Belinda isn’t exchanging ideas with her wellness expert liaison, Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul), she’s off worrying that Greg is going to have her killed because she recognized him last season at a resort in Hawaii. In the end, Belinda gets what she wanted from the first season: to have her own wellness spa. How she acquired five million dollars to accomplish this feat is nobody’s business….
While Greg is busy negotiating this hush money deal, his girlfriend, Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon), is out partying and having threesomes with a pair of brothers, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lochlan Ratliff (Sam Nivola). However, this in no way takes away from her commitment to Greg (and his yacht). After befriending Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and the Ratliff brothers, she throws an extravagant party on Greg’s yacht, bringing everyone out for a full moon party. But while Chloe is having fun, Saxon and Lochlan definitely have an experience they don’t want to remember.
Saxon, the protein shake–drinking finance bro, is determined to give Lochlan, the unsure-of-himself high school kid, the chance to become a man. Obviously, when you’re offered sex on a yacht, it’s hard to pass up the opportunity, yet he definitely could have passed up on including his brother in the fun.
On the whole, the Ratliffs have a lot going on for them during their stay at the White Lotus. From patriarch Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) being exposed for money laundering to middle child Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) thinking of converting to Buddhism, the family is always going through something. Thankfully, they all make it out alive despite Timothy trying to kill his entire family, a last-ditch effort to stop them from finding out about his crime and nearly going bankrupt. Unfortunately, lorazepam is not enough to solve their problems, though matriarch and southern belle Victoria (Parker Posey) certainly seems to think so. She goes through immense stress trying to convince Piper to take advantage of being rich, but this only causes her husband to spiral further, who is burdened by the thought of Victoria living an uncomfortable life.
Next, there is the group of three supposed best friends, Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb), and Laurie (Carrie Coon), who spend their time gossiping about each other and hanging out with the three men who robbed the hotel: Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius), Aleksei (Julian Kostov), and Vlad (Yuri Kolokolnikov). And though Jaclyn never admits to sleeping with Valentin, Laurie still forgives her and delivers a powerful monologue professing her love for her friends.
Frankly, this was all a bit iffy to me, as nothing about their friendships actually changed for Laurie to say any of this. They will all continue to talk about each other behind their backs, and, as we all know, Jaclyn and Laurie are never going to visit Kate in Texas. In my opinion, their plot line served to display the fakeness typical in female friendships. This is not to say that all female friendships are fake; however, in this case, their fakeness is the only reason that they remain friends.
A less-discussed plot line is the one between Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and Mook (Lalisa Manobal), two of the resort staff. Gaitok, the White Lotus’ gate guard, is determined to redeem himself after letting a robbery happen at the hotel. This becomes very difficult, however, when his gun is stolen by Timothy Ratliff. However, he ultimately gets what he wants when he shoots the man who killed hotel owner Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn) and becomes a security guard for Stritala (Lek Patravadi), Hollinger’s wife and a famous actress. More importantly for Gaitok, he finally wins over Mook, which proves that she was only interested in him for his position. Whether she wanted a man who had more ambition or just anybody with a better job than hotel security, she evidently didn’t feel the same personal connection to Gaitok that he felt for her.
Unfortunately, not everyone can make it out alive—this is “The White Lotus,” after all. In the opening scene of the season, we hear gunshots firing in the background as a dead body floats in front of Belinda’s son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay). By the end of the season, we learn that Chelsea and her boyfriend Rick (Walton Goggins) were the ones who, unfortunately, did not make it. Rick had come to the White Lotus in search of Jim Hollinger, who he believes has killed Rick’s father. However, after ultimately shooting Hollinger to avenge his father, Rick finds out that the hotel owner was his father all along. At the same time that he’s learning this gut-wrenching truth, Chelsea is shot in the crossfire, and as Rick is tending to her, he is shot by Gaitok. Ultimately, Rick and Chelsea die together, marking the end of a very tumultuous season.
While this season was most definitely entertaining, some have said that it was too jam-packed with different plot lines. The sheer number of plot twists and events, moreover, may have caused a lack of cohesion within the flow of the show. But, all in all, White Lotus never ceases to disappoint with its ultra-rich antics.
Lara Anlar can be reached at lanlar@wesleyan.edu.
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