The White Lotus, season 3, once again entices viewers with a murder in the first episode that isn’t revealed until the finale, a set of rich vacationers at a resort, a group of locals to keep things grounded, and a beautiful location. This season is set in Thailand.
In this season of The White Lotus two characters from previous seasons appear. They are Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), who worked in the spa in season 1. She was promised money by Jennifer Coolidge’s character Tanya to open her own spa. Also returning was Greg Hunt (Jon Gries) who was married to Tanya and is now living big in Thailand off his dead wife’s money. (She drowned at the end of season 2.) He even has a gorgeous young thing named Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) to keep him company.
Belinda is there to make a lateral move within the company and work in Thailand in the spa. Finding Greg there makes her a little nervous.
The Other Characters
The Ratliff family included dad Tim (Jason Isaacs), mom Victoria (Parker Posey), oldest son Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), middle child Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and barely 18 year old Lochlan (Sam Nivola).
There was lots of drama from the Ratliff clan. Some of it was surprising, some of it was the standard rich bigot shtick. Saxon thinks he’s god’s gift to women. Piper wants to stay in Thailand and become a Buddhist. Tim has money troubles happening at home. The children are looking for something to give their lives direction, maybe spiritually, maybe sexually.
The three women pictured up at the top are Kate (Leslie Bibb), Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), and Laurie (Carrie Coon). They are lifelong friends, now middle aged, and out for adventure and maybe a little truth telling / backstabbing.
Again, lots of drama from these three. They get involved with some Russians including Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius) who works at the spa. Valentin has some very sketchy friends.
Finally, there’s Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and her fella Rick (Walton Goggins) as the guests. Chelsea makes friends with Chloe, which means the assorted resort guests get invited to party on Greg’s yacht and at his big house on the hill. Rick doesn’t want to attend these things because he has an agenda of his own. It involves the husband of the woman who owns the spa, Sritala (Patravadi Mejudhon).
Mook (Lalisa Manobal) and Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) work at the spa. Gaitok is a guard who is told to learn to use a gun, even though he is the gentlest of Buddhists you can imagine. But you know what they say about introducing a gun into the plot early on. Watch where it is at the end.
Everyone of the characters faces some sort of moral dilemma. A choice. A chance to change their lives in one way or another. Are they courageous or cowardly? Can they face their own demons? Are they leaders or followers, heroes or villains?
These are all very good actors. It’s hard to single out one performance from so many excellent ones. I might say Parker Posey for being the absolute ugly American, but really everyone was outstanding. The series made a star out of Natasha Rothwell and gave Aimee Lou Wood the visibility to expand after Sex Education.
I loved the judgemental monkeys. Every time something dramatic happened, we saw monkeys in the trees outside watching the human antics like observers at a human zoo.
It was a beautiful place. The jungle, the monkeys, the snakes, and the lizards were all part of the plot. The ocean trip on the yacht was gorgeous. The party scenes were wild and hallucinatory. Every bit of it was beautifully photographed. I’ve seen all three seasons of The White Lotus now and every time the characters are interesting, the mystery is intriguing, and the setting is lovely.
If you’re really into this series, there are podcasts about each episode on Spotify and/or Apple podcasts.
Mike White wrote and directed. I wish he’d stop killing off the characters I like, but hey, it’s his story. The series is streaming on Max. Season 4 has already been approved. Have you watched season 3? What did you think of it?
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My sense is that the good acting is often wasted, because of defects in the writing, perhaps especially the shallow treatment of potentially interesting characters, and a failure to go deep in conversations. And the pace seems intolerably slow, wasted time. The bacchanalian party scene made its point quickly, and then just went on and on and on, in my thinking.
A good playwright would not have spared the three women friends the frightening, revealing, risky, life-changing confrontations that their potentially complex experiences and potentially conflicted relation ships seemed urgently to want to come out, in my opinion. Rich potential, not realized.
Jason Isaacs (Tim) has too many minutes on screen merely looking anguished. If he is as good an actor as I have read that he is, this is a total waste. Audiences do not just want to see from facial expressions that a character is shocked, or despairing, or startled, they want to know why, and how.
Shakespeare would have given Tim a soliloquy or two, and most contemporary screenwriters would have found someone or something for Tim to speak aloud to.
Walton Goggins has too many minutes on screen looking inexplicably annoyed and angry, and he must have been frustrated at his character’s having no serious lines while listening to his old friend’s bizarre sexual confession (which, like the brothers’ sexual encounter, seemed designed more to generate media buzz than to contribute to theme or character. What can we do to shock? Is a prosthetic penis enough?
If American TV audiences had seen plays like Long Days Journey into Night, or A Delicate Balance, I think, they would demand more from television. The White Lotus season three was surely designed and written by people who know far more than I do about theater and film, but if so they were people who wrote for a particular commercial market in a particular time.
I hope you can find something to enjoy that’s more to your liking.
I find lots. Adolescence is, in my opinion, an excellent streaming series. It addresses a serious and complex topic, with great artistry and craft. It is certainly enjoyable as art, despite the grim inciting incident, I think. Excellent writing and acting. The second episode is probably a serious contribution to our understanding of social media effects on young men, parent-child disjuncture, and femicide.
The male violence in Adolescence seems to me more thought-worthy than the male violence in The White Lotus (e.g. Rick’s revenge quest might be more apt for an action movie).
I thought Rick’s revenge quest was a search for spiritual redemption, but I understand what you mean about Adolescence being outstanding.