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The conversations around this \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d season have been fascinating to follow. Is the pace too slow? Is Mike White shortchanging his Thai characters? Does all the incest stuff go too far? Most important: Has White run out of things to say about fabulously wealthy, terminally dissatisfied white people?<\/p>\n
Before the season started, I made the decision to watch all six of the episodes HBO provided to critics over a two-day stretch, and by the time I got to the end of Episode 6, this season was really clicking for me. I found all the talk about whether people can ever really leave their worst selves and bad choices behind to be incredibly moving, lending a deeper, more haunting meaning to all of this show\u2019s usual kinky sex and barely contained violence.<\/p>\n
Then Episode 7 was kind of a bust. It had too many anti-climactic moments and too many blunt conversations. It was the first new episode I had watched in over a month, and it made me wonder: Had I been too forgiving of the season\u2019s lapses? Was I seduced by the binge?<\/p>\n
For better and for worse, Episode 8 brings all the climaxes Episode 7 dodged. During this 90-minute finale (a lengthy one, but never a dull one), nearly every major character faces a choice about who he or she really wants to be. Several of them make terrible decisions, and some of them are rewarded handsomely for it \u2014 so long as you consider money and security a reward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Let\u2019s start with Belinda, our connection to Season 1 of \u201cThe White Lotus\u201d \u2014 and Season 2, via Tanya and Greg. When we met Belinda in Hawaii, she was being coaxed into starting her own spa business with Tanya. Then Tanya fell for Greg and crushed the dreams that Belinda was just beginning to believe were possible. Something similar happens in the Season 3 finale as Belinda and her son, Zion, pressure Greg into giving them $5 million. Belinda immediately ditches her own plan to open a spa with her Thai lover, Pornchai.<\/p>\n
It is hard to begrudge Belinda a financial windfall, especially given that she barely knew Tanya. But the way it plays out does not put her in the best light. During the negotiations, Belinda looks very upset with Zion\u2019s casual dismissals of Greg\u2019s shady past, and she seems especially bothered when he quotes a Langston Hughes poem to prove a point. But it turns out this was all a bargaining tactic. The money is what matters to her.<\/p>\n
I have similarly mixed feelings about what happens to Gaitok, who early in the episode makes a choice to put his Buddhist faith ahead of his career ambitions. When Valentin realizes what Gaitok has figured out \u2014 that his friends Vlad and Aleksei robbed the White Lotus\u2019s luxury goods store, with Valentin\u2019s help \u2014 he begs for mercy, saying that if they are deported back to Russia, they will almost certainly be killed. Weighing his conscience as a Buddhist, Gaitok decides that if his actions might lead to someone\u2019s death, he must avoid those actions.<\/p>\n
But then, at a climactic moment in the episode, Sritala urges Gaitok to shoot and kill Rick, who is fleeing the scene after assassinating Jim Hollinger. Gaitok hesitates but eventually fires the kill shot. We see at the end of the episode that he finally lands the good job he wanted, chauffeuring and protecting Sritala with Mook cheering him on. All he had to do was betray his beliefs.<\/p>\n
This is all part of White\u2019s larger point, surely. The promise of money and success does drive people, in the real world and in fiction. These choices that Belinda and Gaitok make are not unbelievable given what we know about the characters. But they are a little depressing \u2014 especially stacked atop each other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The end for Rick and Chelsea is a bummer too, though it feels apt. When he returns from Bangkok, Rick seems ready to embrace a life of peace and ease with his perpetually positive girlfriend. But then he sees Jim again, and the old man makes the mistake of calling Rick\u2019s mother a drunk, a slut and a liar before showing Rick the gun he is carrying. It turns out that those mystery gunshots we heard in Episode 1 \u2014 at least the first ones \u2014 came from Rick, who grabs the gun when Jim is distracted and shoots him dead.<\/p>\n
There are two twists to this scene. First, Rick gets Luke Skywalker-ed when Sritala tells him Jim was actually his father. (A lot of \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d fans figured this out weeks ago.) Second, Chelsea gets caught in the crossfire between Rick and the Hollingers\u2019 bodyguards, and she dies. Last week, she told Saxon that she had \u201ca yin and yang battle\u201d going with Rick that one of them would eventually win. She was not wrong. Rick\u2019s inability to let go of his pain and anger dragged her down. (It can\u2019t be a coincidence that they die with him face up and her face down.)<\/p>\n
White leans on water imagery again in this episode, especially in that one big scene of death \u2014 and two of rebirth. Rick and Chelsea float together in the water after Gaitok shoots him. And while this is going on, Lochlan is fighting for his life elsewhere in the resort while imagining himself swimming up through a pool.<\/p>\n
The way the Ratliffs\u2019 story ends offers a modicum of sweet, balancing all the sour elsewhere in this episode. The progression of events begins with Piper\u2019s announcement that she no longer wants to live with the Buddhists. White keeps it ambiguous whether she is making this decision to keep Lochlan from following her lead or was genuinely uncomfortable at the temple, as her mother predicted. (Piper does cry some very convincing tears when she describes her night at the temple.) Either way, it rattles Tim, who was warming to the idea that the Ratliffs could learn to live with nothing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
So Tim expands his suicide plan yet again, this time by taking the poisonous seeds of a local fruit and blending them into four pi\u00f1a coladas, which he invites his family to drink with him on their last night in Thailand. He initially leaves Lochlan out of the party because his youngest son genuinely does seem able to handle being poor. Then Tim changes his mind altogether, knocks Saxon\u2019s drink out of his hand and snatches everyone else\u2019s, explaining that the coconut milk is sour. The next morning, Lochlan mixes a protein shake in the same blender as the poison seeds and nearly dies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
What I like about the Ratliffs\u2019 story is that it does not close on an entirely redemptive note. As they are leaving Thailand, they get their phones back, which means Tim\u2019s family is about to find out what he did \u2014 and what it means for them. But as he watches the water droplets splash in the wake of their boat, he is clearly thinking about what Luang Por Teera said to him about human existence as a cycle of going and returning, away from and back into a single giant consciousness.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to read too much into episode titles, treating them like titles on paintings: a way to interpret the artist\u2019s intent without having to think too hard what we are actually seeing. White certainly seems to be encouraging a reductive reading with this finale\u2019s title, \u201cAmor Fati,\u201d which refers to a concept that comes up often in philosophy and theology. As Chelsea explains, it means \u201cembrace your fate,\u201d and it is often applied to the idea that we should celebrate suffering as part of what makes us human.<\/p>\n
This episode underlines that thought with the way it begins, with all the characters waking up to another fateful day while Luang Por Teera tells his followers about how humans crave \u201csolutions\u201d that prove temporary and unsatisfying. It is, he says, \u201ceasier to be patient once we accept there is no resolution.\u201d (I hear a whisper of Mike White there, warning \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d fans that they might not like everything that is about to happen.)<\/p>\n
That is why my favorite moment in this finale is far less dramatic than the shooting or the poisoning. It comes at a dinner with the gal pals. While Jaclyn and Kate talk about what a wonderful time they have had in Thailand, Laurie breaks down crying, saying she has been sad all week, comparing her failures to her friends\u2019 seemingly perfect lives.<\/p>\n
She ends with what may be the best line of the season, saying in turn to Jaclyn and to Kate, \u201cI\u2019m glad you have a beautiful face, and I\u2019m glad you have a beautiful life, and I\u2019m just happy to be at the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe that isn\u2019t the secret to life that this \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d season seemed to promise at times, before it retreated in the finale to caution and cynicism. But it\u2019s a sentiment that resonates.<\/p>\n