APRIL 10, 2025 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | By Posy Vogt
Disclaimer: This article has almost every spoiler.
“Sometimes we wake with anxiety, an edgy energy. What will happen today? What is in store for me? So many questions. We want resolution, solid earth under our feet, so we take life into our own hands. We take action. Our solutions are temporary. They are quick fixes. They create more anxiety, more suffering. There is no resolution to life’s questions. It is easier to be patient once we finally accept that there is no resolution.”
This is how the eighth and final episode of season three of HBOs “White Lotus” started. And despite how much suffering it will apparently bring me, I need answers. What happened to so many crucial plotlines? What happened to those Russians who robbed the hotel? Why was the shooting in the opener never explained, Zion left in complete peace? What was with all of the Tsunami imagery? What was with the incest plot? It’s not that I don’t think taboos are intriguing in the media, but they didn’t move any plots forward.
Every season has the theme of a different type of power. The first was largely about money and the second about sex, although all seasons poke fun at the out of touch uber-wealthy. This season incorporated a lot of themes of karma, death, rebirth and redemption; I can’t yet figure out what the single theme is that encompasses all the strange goings-on. Because I have not yet found a sufficient analysis of this season online, I am going to attempt one.
The most clearly foreshadowed plots were between Lochy and his brother, and Chelsea and Rick. Chelsea clearly adores Rick, and with the pervasive theme of Buddhism, she seemed to be the closest to reaching Nirvana or enlightenment. Nothing you want to happen happens. She dies, Rick, who seemed close to ending his cycle of pain about his father, dies. Her prophetic declaration—“what happens to you happens to me,” and that they will be together forever, a fate he accepts and tragically fulfills—only underscores their amor fati, making it all the more poignant and exasperating. Rick ended up killing his father by trying to avenge his father’s murder. He is the embodiment of the fact that you cannot, at the end of the day, change people. Chelsea was right, they are in a fight of love and pain and someone someday is going to win. It was Rick.
This is the most death we have seen of our beloved characters in all of “White Lotus.” A monk at the monastery tells Timothy Ratliff “You descend back down. You die. You land back into the water, become one with the ocean again. No more separation. No more suffering. Death is a happy return, like coming home.” This makes me think that Mike White, the show’s director, may have intentionally killed everyone’s favorite characters.
Then there is the plot between the three women, Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate. Laurie’s final catharsis—an awakened appreciation for life—feels like the resolution every character was meant to reach. At least this is the general attitude I have heard from people who have watched it. I did not think this. Actually, despite being an amazing performance by actress Carrie Coon, this felt deceitful to me. After everything that happened between the women, it felt untrue that this friendship illuminated the beauty of life. Of course this is a very cynical take and it was so relieving to finally just see people leaving the White Lotus Hotel happy and alive.
The dialectical relationship between Buddhism and all of these unsatisfied rich people lies in the tenet that suffering comes from infatuation and insistence. When we cling to certain ideas, desires, hopes of what people, including ourselves, can be, we are destroyed. All of the rich people in this season are either redeemed in some way or die, and differently from previous seasons, all of the poor characters make some sort of Faustian bargain. Belinda becomes what she despised (see her reading the book “Surrounded By Narcissists”) after getting what she always wanted ($5 million). Gaitok sacrifices his staunchest beliefs about the world to be with his love, Mook. The theme for this season appears to be the balance between good and evil and all of the character foils express this tension. If there is no foil to a character, the theme seems to be death and rebirth, or redemption.
I don’t have the answers to what this season meant. But, please find me and tell me if you caught something I missed.