A lot changes between seasons of “The White Lotus,” but some things never do. So it is that the premiere of “The White Lotus” Season 3 begins with a glimpse of future death and mayhem.
The season’s prologue follows Zion (Nicholas Duvernay), a stressed-out college student we eventually learn is the son of returning “White Lotus” Season 1 spa manager Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), as the tranquil quiet of his meditation session at the White Lotus Thailand’s wellness center is shattered first by the chirping of jungle monkeys and then by the sound of nearby gunshots. Fearing for his mother’s life, Zion prays for her safety to both Jesus and a nearby Buddha statue.
As he hides in a waist-high lagoon, he watches a dead body float into view. Before we get the chance to determine the corpse’s identity, “White Lotus” creator, writer and director Mike White takes us underwater and back into the past by one week. It’s a shockingly visceral prologue, despite most of the violence taking place offscreen, and it brings Zion’s open-hearted attempt at “quieting his chattering mind” to an abrupt end. It’s also the perfect intro to a season of “The White Lotus” that looks to be about, among other things, the impossibility of finding peace both within ourselves and in the outside world. Sticking to its established murder mystery format, “The White Lotus” introduces us to its newest tourists.
These include the Ratliffs: wealthy businessman Timothy (Jason Isaacs), his jet-lagged wife Victoria (Parker Posey), their eldest son Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) and youngest son Lochlan (Sam Nivola). On the boat to their Thai retreat, the Ratliffs ask Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins), a middle-aged grump with a chip on his shoulder, to stop blowing his cigarette smoke toward them. He starts to argue — previewing his combative nature — until Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), his much younger girlfriend, calms him down. All the while, Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Laurie (Carrie Coon) and Kate (Leslie Bibb), a trio of longtime friends vacationing together for the first time in years, watch from the other side of the boat.
New Arrivals
The tourists are greeted upon arrival by Sritala (Lek Patravadi), an unabashed diva and one of the resort’s owners. Rick bristles at the forced hospitality; Victoria and Timothy quickly begin bragging about their lives until they’re unsubtly rushed away; and Jaclyn and her friends are more than happy to be welcomed so warmly. (Sritala, notably, doesn’t hide her admiration for Jaclyn, a successful Hollywood actress whose fame makes her recognizable even on the other side of the planet.)
The only guest not greeted by Sritala is Belinda, who instead meets with the resort’s well-respected spa therapist, Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul). Belinda is introduced to the center’s customs and expresses her excitement to bring Pornchai’s methods back to the White Lotus in Hawaii. Rick, meanwhile, uses a moment of privacy with his and Chelsea’s wellness expert, Mook (Lalisa Manobal), to ask whether Sritala’s husband, Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), is presently at the resort. He reacts in anger and frustration when he learns Hollinger just left for Bangkok, and “The White Lotus” implies that finding Jim may be — for whatever reason — partly, if not entirely, why Rick decided to travel to Thailand instead of Bali. (It may be too early to start theory-crafting, but considering that Hollinger’s bodyguards are later seen carrying guns outside the resort, it’s possible that whatever sour business Rick has with Jim may be responsible for the gunshots that start “The White Lotus” Season 3.)
White spends a big portion of the episode’s second act with the Ratliffs, whom we learn only traveled to Thailand so Piper could finish her religious studies thesis about Buddhism by interviewing a monk at a local monastery. Tim makes it clear that he has no interest in the wellness center’s unplugging self-care routine, and Schwarzenegger’s Saxon quickly reveals himself to be a porn-obsessed guy who is desperate to get laid, despite the fact that he has no apparent idea how to actually talk to women. His comments about how “hot” Piper is are disconcerting, to say the least, and only further confuse Lochlan, a high school senior who still hasn’t figured out who he is yet and seems torn between learning from his sister and taking his older brother’s oh-so-confidently-provided advice.
Cracks in the Veneer
Problems in the Ratliffs’ life of leisurely wealth begin to show in the episode’s final 20 minutes, when Timothy accepts a call from a reporter who questions him about a fund he helped set up with Kenneth Nguyen. Tim claims he hasn’t spoken to “Kenny” in four years, but he calls him shortly after hanging up on the reporter, whose story revolves around Nguyen’s “relationship to the government of Brunei.” It’s an unsettling development that leaves Timothy rattled, and he isn’t the only character dealing with more than they let on.
While drinking in their room together, Bibb’s Kate and Monaghan’s Jaclyn remark that they are all “so lucky,” but Laurie doesn’t echo the sentiment. When Kate later tells her that her daughter is “turning into a really cool girl,” Laurie asks, “Yeah?” These hints at an underlying unhappiness culminate when Laurie excuses herself to her room only to start crying when she’s finally alone. In case her work on “The Leftovers” hadn’t already done so, this “White Lotus” scene proves that Coon is a master at communicating an entire story in a single sob. She might have, as Jaclyn implies, successfully climbed her way up the corporate ladder, but Laurie’s brief existential wail tells us everything we need to know about the pain and uncertainty plaguing her life right now.
A Lot of Bald White Guys in Thailand
The biggest scene of “The White Lotus” Season 3 premiere comes around the 45 minute mark. After being left in the middle of dinner by Rick, Chelsea meets Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon), a former runway model. The latter reveals that she lives near the resort with her grumpy boyfriend, who turns out to be none other than Greg Hunt (Jon Gries), the man who successfully conspired to kill his wife Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) and acquire all of her money in “The White Lotus” Season 2. “You’ll notice a lot of bald white guys in Thailand,” Chloe remarks. “The locals call them LBHs. Losers back home.”
Based on the glimpse we get of him, it doesn’t look like Greg’s any happier now than he was the last time viewers saw him, despite being significantly richer. Unfortunately for him (but thankfully for all of us), things may get a lot worse for Greg now that Tanya’s former friend and confidant, Belinda, has arrived in the same place where he has hidden himself away. It’s impossible to say how Greg and Belinda’s destined-to-cross storylines will play out, but all you #JusticeForTanya fans out there should nonetheless rejoice! After two years of waiting, a reason for hope has finally emerged.
Identity is a Prison
“The White Lotus” Season 3 ends its premiere with a montage of its main characters all preparing for a night of thorough unrest. The sequence is narrated partly by an audiobook Piper is listening to, in which the author notes, “Identity is a prison. No one is spared this prison. Rich man, poor man, success or failure. We build the prison, lock ourselves inside, then throw away the key.” It’s a sentiment echoed in many of the episode’s closing moments, whether it be Laurie’s private breakdown or when Chelsea tells an unhappy Rick, “This is so on-brand for you. To be a victim of your own decisions.” It’s even there when Lochlan tries to broach the subject of going to a different college than Duke, his parents’ alma mater, only to be met with fierce opposition from both.
And the feeling is particularly present in the episode’s last scene, in which Victoria tells Tim that they really do “have it good.” “It’s all because of you. You did it. Everyone tells me what a great man you are,” she says, unaware that her words carry a double-meaning now that one of Tim’s past decisions has potentially come back to haunt him. While Tim tries to ignore his growing fear, Isaacs’ long looks into the distance tell us that he just can’t shake the feeling that this “great man” identity he’s built for himself is on the brink of ruin. From this moment, White cuts to a shot framing Victoria and Tim through their bedroom window.
As the camera drifts back, the window becomes smaller and smaller, and Tim’s lingering discomfort transforms it from a portal into a life of happy domesticity into something more akin to a jail cell window. It’s amazing, isn’t it? How quickly the lives we build for ourselves can go from feeling expansive and free to suffocating? No matter who we are, how much money we have, or where we go, the one thing we can’t escape is ourselves. We are victims of our own decisions. Identity isn’t just a prison. It’s inescapable, and no vacation to Thailand may be able to change that.
“The White Lotus” airs Sundays on HBO and Max.
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