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This article contains spoilers for the finale of the third season of \u201cThe White Lotus.\u201d Unless you\u2019re an employee or a guest at a White Lotus resort, in which case it appears that it is impossible for your day to be truly spoiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe White Lotus\u201d is a show about vacation. It deals with the dos and don\u2019ts of vacationing: Do go out to party! (Do not engage in incestuous relations while partying.)<\/em> Do sample the local cuisine! (Unless the fruit is poisonous, in which case please do not give it to your family.)<\/em><\/p>\n And it is a show about murders.<\/p>\n And apparently, based on Sunday\u2019s season finale, no one is traumatized by them. Hours after a mass shooting takes place at the pristine White Lotus resort in Thailand, characters who have just witnessed intense tragedy hop on a boat and seem to sail happily into the sunset, or simply show up for work as if nothing happened.<\/p>\n \u201cOnly in Hollywood,\u201d Tracey Musarra Marchese, a professor at Syracuse University who specializes in trauma, said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But some of the characters\u2019 reactions, which raised questions about their plausibility and prompted admiration for one character\u2019s athletic sprint<\/a>, might be completely normal in the face of trauma, experts say.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>Sometimes what happens is in the moment because your system \u2014 physically, mentally, emotionally \u2014 you\u2019ve been so overwhelmed that you might dissociate,\u201d <\/em>Marchese said.<\/p>\n Not everyone experiences acute stress, such as flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety or apprehension, after a traumatic event, Marchese said. Acute stress disorder, a precursor to post-traumatic stress disorder, is often diagnosed within days of a stressful event. A PTSD diagnosis comes weeks later at a minimum.<\/p>\n Trauma responses can include denial, fear, anger, confusion and anxiety, said Dr. Lorenzo Norris, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral health at George Washington University.<\/p>\n There is also the possibility of becoming emotionally detached as a protective mechanism in the aftermath of a traumatic situation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBasically, you start to become numb,\u201d <\/em>Norris said, adding that it could be the mind\u2019s attempt \u201cto slow things down and take you away from the emotional pain.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe that explains why the third season of \u201cThe White Lotus\u201d ends the way it does. Life goes on. Vacation continues.<\/p>\n In the finale, a brooding guest named Rick (Walton Goggins), who has traveled halfway around the world to confront the resort\u2019s owner (Scott Glenn) for killing his father, impulsively approaches him, steals his gun and fatally shoots him. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As he attempts an escape, Rick kills the resort owner\u2019s bodyguards and is then shot in the back by a security guard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The gunshots send staff members and guests, including a trio of oft-bickering friends (Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan), running away. Coon\u2019s character sprints with such urgency that it has become a meme.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n (\u201cLook, I\u2019m an American and I\u2019m a New Yorker, and if you think I don\u2019t know where the exits are in any building I\u2019m in, then you\u2019re not paying attention to the news,\u201d Coon told Variety<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Yet, minutes later, guests and resort employees appear generally undisturbed by what they have witnessed.<\/p>\n As guests leave the island by boat, only Monaghan\u2019s character, Jaclyn, seems melancholic, though the audience doesn\u2019t learn whether it\u2019s about the shooting, her devolving marriage or something else. Employees stand on the shore doing the traditional smile and wave<\/em> to a now-rich Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and her beaming son, Zion (Nicholas Duvernay). The season opened with Zion hearing the gunshots and hoping that his mother wasn\u2019t a victim. Within hours, that concern has completely disappeared. (One would think Belinda would be rushing to get out of there with her new riches \u2014 a $5 million payment to buy her silence about a murder from a previous \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d season.)<\/p>\n It might just be that Hollywood wants a happy ending. Mike White, the show\u2019s creator, thought the armchair critics were being too literal, calling them the \u201clogic police\u201d in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t a police procedural, this is a rumination-type show,\u201d he said. \u201cIt makes me want to pull my hair out. Is this how you watch movies and TV shows?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n (The logic police showed up when the \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d police apparently didn\u2019t.)<\/p>\n Experts said they would expect to see more variation in reactions to trauma.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be highly unlikely that three people would have had that same experience where they were just like: \u2018Yeah, OK. We\u2019re fine; nothing happened,\u2019\u201d <\/em>Marchese said, referring to the trio of friends, though she added that reactions can be delayed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After the shooting, the partying continues around the resort as the guests make leisurely exits. Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong), the meek security guard who spent the whole season eschewing violence before shooting Rick in the back, appears to receive a promotion as a bodyguard to Sritala (Patravadi Mejudhon), the resort\u2019s co-owner, who seems unmoved after having recently witnessed her husband\u2019s death. Like the trio, she was aghast in the moment of Rick\u2019s attack. But if she was upset in the aftermath, the audience doesn\u2019t see it.<\/p>\n The shooting wasn\u2019t the only near-death experience. Lochlan Ratliff (Sam Nivola), a teenage scion of a well-to-do family from North Carolina, narrowly survives after ingesting poisonous fruit<\/a> that his father, Tim (Jason Isaacs), unintentionally left out. Granted, Tim did almost kill his whole family the night before, but that\u2019s beside the point. On the boat ride off the resort, no one in the family seems concerned \u2014 the only tension point is Tim\u2019s oblique reference to an impending business scandal. It\u2019s almost as if the poisoning never happened. <\/p>\n This is a slight departure from previous seasons. At the end of Season 1, a hotel manager is stabbed after defecating in a guest\u2019s luggage (a spoiler of a different kind). But the audience sees glimpses of a police investigation and the staff\u2019s reactions. In Season 2, the events around the death of Tanya McQuoid-Hunt (Jennifer Coolidge) happen away from the resort, though concerned guests and staff members are briefly seen reacting to the discovery of her body.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For the most part, \u201cThe White Lotus\u201d in Thailand is not concerned with the lingering effects of trauma. Just vibes. Or maybe the lack of a response is a creative choice: Anyone who visits a White Lotus resort must know how to suppress their emotions.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have different ways of making sense of their reality,\u201d Dr. Norris said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n