Welcome back toThe White Lotus. Don’t stress, Thailand has all the amenities you’ve come to love from vacations in Maui and Taormina. There are stunning suites and magnificent vistas, an ensemble of arrivals and employees with secrets underneath the surfaces of their scowls or smiles, and all the anxious drumming and warbling moans one can take. Mike White returns to the comfortably uncomfortable hotel with an eye on health and wellness.
This isn’t any old White Lotus, this location is specifically designed around making the guests well again. Whether that’s through massages, cross-legged therapy sessions, or bottomless bottles of booze, it depends on the guest. While the rooms have gotten more splendid, the service seems to have declined, and the heavily armed guards who wander the premises meanwe and the latest Lotus Eaters to journey here are in for a particularly agitated stay at HBO’s unlikely prestige TV powerhouse.
The White Lotus Season 3 Starts With The Usual Place Setting
Violence & Confusion Once Again Opens Mike White’s Series
Season 3 begins like anyThe White Lotusseason, with an ominous flash-forward. A young man named Zion is learning the finer points of meditation when gunfire sends him running back to the resort calling for his mother. Lost in the gardens, he prays to a Buddha statue, then prays harder to Jesus, then settles on cursing the Buddha. Someone is insulted because the only response Zion receives is a dead body floating face down toward him. The scene fades out and the “One Week Earlier” subtitle fades in.
In A Cast Of Interesting New Characters, None Stand Out Just Yet
Rick & Chelsea Have The Most Intriguing Relationship Of The Newcomers
We’re introduced to this year’s castas they disembark and settle into the hotel. While I found plenty to like about the new figurines White has dropped into his dollhouse, I can’t say I found much to love.There is a sobbing, alcoholic hole left inThe White Lotusseason 3courtesy of the boat thatJennifer Coolidge’s Tanyaswan-dived head-first into in Sicily. As brilliant a curtain call as that was, her absence is palpable. There is still plenty of time for someone to step forward as a breakout star, but in episode 1, I haven’t found them yet.
The White Lotus Season 3 Review: I’m Amazed By Mike White’s Dark & Lurid Exploration Of Vacation As Purgatory After Season 2
As series creator Mike White promised, The White Lotus season 3 is much darker, a lurid and mesmerizing trip to Thailand with another stellar cast.
White has been able to reconfigure relationship dynamics like a chef repurposing the same ingredients over and over into original dishes every season. Whether it’s newlyweds Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) and Shane (Jake Lacey) in season 1 or the three generations of Di Grasso men in season 2, White knows how to arrange humans into fresh and surprising groupings.
Episode 1, “Same Spirits, New Forms”, introduces three new configurations to decipher. There’s Kate (Leslie Bibb), Laurie (Carrie Coon), and Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), childhood friends now in middle age who get along just well enough that one can’t be outright accused of ridiculing another.
There are eight episodes inThe White Lotusseason 3.
There’s the grimacing Rick (Walton Goggins) and his young, bubbly partner, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), who is wonderfully wise to Rick’s melancholy routine. The Ratliffs are a family from somewhere in the Southern US, thoughI could have sworn the patriarch Timothy (Jason Isaacs) was from Australia until late in the episode when he receives a call from a reporter asking about some shady financial dealings. Parker Posey as his wife Victoria doesn’t fare much better.
Their three children are Piper, Saxon, and Lochlan, who they call “Lochy”. Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) is ambitious but sweet, seeking to interview a Buddhist teacher. Lochy (Sam Nivola) is debating whether to go to Duke or North Carolina, and eldest Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) won’t stop talking about sex. Seriously. Like at all. I’m sure exceptionally comfortable sibling relationships exist, but I’ve yet to encounter one where the eldest brother wonders aloud to the youngest why their sister hasn’t had sex yet. I guess we’ll come back to that.
The Staff Look To Play A Bigger Role This Season
Belinda Is Back, Bridging The Gap Between The Guests & The Employees
Returning fromThe White Lotusseason 1 is Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), who now gets the chance to play the guest as she learns the secrets of Eastern medicine. Watching the White Lotus staff become a bigger part of the story has been a delight of the show’s evolution. Belinda is joined by several more employees, like Mook (Lalisa Manobal) and Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong), who guards the entrance to the hotel and has a crush on Mook.
There’s so much to discover at the hotel and like the pong-pong fruit Saxon picks up off the deck upon arrival, it may look enticing on the outside, but there’s certainly something poisonous on the inside.
There’s one more returning character, whom HBO has been careful to hide. Chelsea meets a friend at the bar, and she’s got an old melancholy boyfriend too. It’s Greg Hunt (Jon Gries), looking worse for wear. He’s what the locals call an “LBH”: Loser Back Home. They don’t know the half of it. The pieces are set inThe White Lotusseason 3 premiere. There’s so much to discover at the hotel and, like the pong-pong fruit Saxon picks up off the deck upon arrival, it may look enticing on the outside, but there’s certainly something poisonous on the inside.
The White Lotusseason 3 releases weekly episodes each Sunday at 9pm ET on HBO.
