white lotus season 2 yacht

White Lotus Fans Are Convinced That Greg Was on the Boat

You might want to sit down for this take on the finale.

On Sunday night, HBO released the explosive finale of The White Lotus . By now you probably heard that Tanya McQuoid, the ditzy heiress played by Jennifer Coolidge, didn’t survive. In a devastating (... but also kind of funny) series of events, Tanya is seemingly set up by her husband Greg. His suspected lover, Quentin, kidnaps Tanya and traps her on a yacht. Before the credits roll, she manages to kill her captors—but accidentally kills herself while trying to escape.

Despite the absurdity of it all, it seemed like a fairly cut and dry scene. Tanya finds a gun and uses it to defend herself. Then, in an adrenaline-fueled exit, she jumps off the yacht, knocks herself out on a pole, and drowns. While some viewers, like myself, processed her untimely demise, others were busy asking questions—like, where the hell was Greg during all of this? Was he hiding somewhere on the yacht?!

Well, Reddit user Large-Outside-9511 seems to think so. While watching the show, they spotted Greg’s name pop up on screen, which means he could have been one of the many voices yelling at Tanya before she began shooting. Check it out:

The closed captioning said Greg yells, “Tanya,” while she is locked in the room on the yacht. Then we heard people running upstairs and a door slamming at one point. Hugo was hiding behind the couch and the other two were shot. The captain was on the top of the boat so he was one of the footsteps. I’m thinking Greg was on the boat waiting for Tanya to be taken back to the hotel so he could stay the night on the boat and celebrate with Quentin while his wife floats away to her demise.

From there, the user suspect Greg ditched the boat and swam his sorry ass to safety.

He would have had enough time to escape to shore before the morning when Tanya’s body was discovered...Absolutely furious Greg won in this situation. I’m thinking next season he will be at the next White Lotus looking for his next con but gets caught.

As wild as it sounds, I'm on board with this is a theory. First of all, the Reddit fan was right— Greg’s name does appear in the closed captions. It’s quick, sure, but maybe we have a clue for Season Three. Speaking of, if the next chapter of The White Lotus is anything like this one, we can expect one returning character. In Season Two, it was Tanya, but now that she’s dead, Greg could be the throughline for round three. After all, Greg's story is the only one without a neat little bow—and even if he did manage to escape, he has quite the mess to clean up.

Not to mention: series creator Mike White teased that Season Three will tackle death and eastern religion. What if Greg travels to a new location to "grieve” Tanya's demise. In that case, I would be thrilled to see what karma has in store at the next White Lotus resort.

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• <i>The White Lotus</i> Season 2 Was About Love as Delusion. In the End, It Fooled Viewers Too

The White Lotus Season 2 Was About Love as Delusion. In the End, It Fooled Viewers Too

Spoiler alert: This article discusses, in detail, the White Lotus season 2 finale. If you’ve yet to watch that, do yourself a favor and don’t read this.

“How was Palermo?” Albie (Adam DiMarco) wants to know, in the penultimate scene of the White Lotus season 2 finale, when he runs into Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) at the airport on their way out of Italy. “Not great,” she deadpans. Even though she’s yet to have her worst fears about Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) confirmed, it’s an understatement for the ages.

It also makes you wonder how this tragic vacation might’ve gone differently if things had worked out between her and Albie—two sheepish dupes who finally exchange phone numbers in the season’s final minutes—when they first met. He might never have let Lucia (Simona Tabasco) con him—or his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), the original mark—into giving her €50,000. Dominic might never have convinced Albie to run interference with his mom, apparently saving a marriage that she probably should’ve ended long ago. Portia might not have spent her last day in Sicily afraid for her life, because she wouldn’t have fallen for Jack (Leo Woodall), the earthy pseudo-nephew, lover, and henchman of “high-end gay” fortune hunter Quentin (Tom Hollander). Which would’ve made it tough for Quentin to get Tanya alone on a yacht with a bag containing half the murder weapons from Clue.

Sure, it’s ultimately Madama McQuoid who kills the gays, not the other way around. But in true self-sabotaging style—and taking full advantage of Coolidge’s unmatched physical-comedy prowess—Tanya manages to shoot her way out of the trap, only to end up in a watery grave of her own making. So central was this character to two excellent seasons of Mike White’s luxury-resort misery-fest that her death was unfathomable to just about everyone (including yours truly ) publicly hazarding guesses as to who the corpses in Sunday’s finale would be. In retrospect, it seems fitting that a season about love as a delusion would end by shocking viewers who ignored what our own eyes told us about Tanya’s fate because we adored her.

In fact, the only eyes that seemed to observe much of anything at the Sicilian Lotus were inanimate. A Renaissance painting of St. Sebastian , that creepy fresco from the title sequence, those macabre Testa di Moro statues peeking out from every corner—they were all watching the guests’ every misguided move. Yet the characters themselves couldn’t seem to see anything clearly, least of all the far-from-ideal objects of their affection. Just about everyone got scammed, from Tanya and Portia and the Di Grassos to Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), who’s crushed again when newly hired lounge singer Mia (Beatrice Grannò) confirms their obviously transactional relationship as such, to the two young couples constantly performing romance and jealousy for each other’s benefit. And it all happens because everyone is too busy projecting their own selfish desires and insecurities on each other to fix a critical gaze on their own delusions.

The Di Grasso men are a particularly sad case. Dominic essentially has to bribe a sex worker he personally hired to keep his family from falling apart. Watching Lucia exit with the cash while she thinks he’s sleeping, Albie finally grows up a little. Now that his feminist facade has been shattered by a genuine gold digger, he’s ogling hot girls at the airport right along with his dad and grandpa. Speaking of poor Bert ( F. Murray Abraham ), his big blow came in episode 6, when he discovered that the Di Grasso women of Sicily had no interest in forming a loving bond with a man who’d missed his chance to do right by the Di Grasso women of America.

That’s not to say there aren’t characters who come out of the season better off than they were going into it. Mia got her gig and Lucia got her money; that final shot, in which the two best friends skip off together to make immoderate purchases, might be the closest thing White will ever give us to a happy ending. Jealous Ethan (Will Sharpe) and exasperated Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) have rekindled their romance by allowing their insecurities to transform them into unfaithful, game-playing rich people like Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne (Meghann Fahy). The latter couple is no worse for the wear because their marriage has always been a farce.

And then, lest we forget, there’s Greg (Jon Gries), whose money-motivated deceptions in the honeymoon suite makes Lucia’s scheme look quaint by comparison. We don’t see what becomes of him once Tanya’s body is pulled out of the sea—probably because it’s so easy to guess his fate. His little Double Indemnity gambit works out even better than (as far as we know) he anticipated. Not only does he inherit Tanya’s hundreds of millions, but he doesn’t even have to share them with Quentin and company.

Of course , given the pessimism White’s shown us about love under heteronormative patriarchy, it’s the middle-aged white guy with two smitten, relatively vulnerable admirers wrapped around his finger who comes out on top. Meanwhile, Quentin might be too dastardly to mourn, but it’s worth noting that he dies, and gets a bunch of his friends killed, doing dirty work for a straight guy. That makes Tanya this modern-day opera’s one true tragic heroine. Doomed by her very existence as a lonely, self-conscious single woman of a certain age with a certain astronomical bank balance, she gets her dramatic, if also supremely klutzy, underwater death scene. Season 3 won’t be the same without her. (Does she have a twin sister Coolidge could play? Maybe season 3 can take place at the White Lotus in purgatory?) But would we want to keep coming back if The White Lotus didn’t manage to shock us every time? Like Cam and Daphne and Ethan and Harper, the show needs an element of uncertainty to keep the spark alive.

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'The White Lotus' Season 2 Finale: How It Ended and Who Died

Sunday's season 2 finale of The White Lotus tied up some other loose ends and revealed who on the hit HBO series will not live to see another resort

Glenn Garner is a form writer-reporter who worked heavily with PEOPLE's Movies and TV verticals. He left PEOPLE in 2023.

This post contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of The White Lotus.

As a beloved character learned on Sunday's White Lotus season 2 finale, a weeklong getaway to Sicily is truly a trip to die for .

Fans of the HBO series were devastated to learn the fate of Jennifer Coolidge 's Tanya after two seasons. Despite a boatload of social media theories, the climactic yacht massacre and Tanya's easily avoidable, accidental death as laid out by creator Mike White still managed to surprise.

The finale rejoined Tanya after Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his "high-end gays" threw the shipping heiress — whom they'd now dubbed "the new diva of Palermo" — a party at his palazzo in Palermo and hooked her up with Italian stallion/mafia scion Niccolò ( Stefano Gianino ).

For more on The White Lotus , listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.

Elsewhere, her assistant Portia ( Haley Lu Richardson ) woke up in a hotel with Quentin's supposed — but hopefully not! — nephew Jack ( Leo Woodall ). After his drunken hints at Quentin's financial issues, Portia was immediately suspicious of Jack when she couldn't fine her phone.

Before leaving the palazzo, Quentin caught Tanya looking at the photo she found the night before, seemingly featuring him and her shady husband Greg ( Jon Gries ) as young men. Although she swore it looked just like Greg, Quentin made up a story about some guy named Steve. Skeptical but unable to uncover the truth just yet, Tanya headed to Quentin's boat with his friends to head back to Taormina.

Later over lunch, Portia confronted Jack once again over her missing phone, but he continued to deny stealing it. He then immediately left his own phone at the table, and Portia took the opportunity to call her boss.

Tanya was surprisingly able to get a signal on the yacht, giving Portia the opportunity fill Tanya in on Jack's revelation Quentin was on the brink of losing his family villa but was expecting a hefty sum of money to come his way soon. At this, Tanya also broke the news to Portia that she'd seen Jack having sex with his "uncle" Quentin. They both agreed they had a bad feeling about everything.

Tanya then told Portia about the photo of Quentin and Greg, suddenly realizing that their prenuptial agreement prevents her husband from getting any money if they divorce. But if she died, he would get it all. Meanwhile, she recalled, it had been Greg's idea to visit Sicily in the first place. Tanya told Portia to get back to the White Lotus so they could "get the f--- out of here."

After the yacht dropped anchor back in Taormina, Tanya looked for a way off the boat and back to safety, but Quentin insisted she stay for dinner, telling her she could catch a boat ride back to land with Niccolò after their last supper together.

En route to the resort, Portia abruptly confronted Jack about having sex with Quentin. He finally caved, telling her to "just leave it alone" and saying he was just doing his job by driving her back to Taormina as his "uncle" had asked.

Hours later, Jack dropped off Portia in Catania, closer to the airport. He urged her to forget about Tanya and fly back home to the U.S. on her flight the next day. "These people are powerful," he told her. "You don't want to f--- with them." Before he sped off, he tossed Portia's phone on the roadside next to her.

RELATED VIDEO: Stars at The White Lotus Season 2 Premiere

Back on the yacht, Tanya saw Niccolò fishing around in a mysterious bag during dinner and was antsier than ever not to hop into the dinghy of death with him. After another drink, she grabbed the bag and locked herself in a bedroom, discovering that it contained a serial killer kit: rope, duct tape and the gun he'd shown her the night before at the coked-up party in Quentin's villa.

Once the banging on the door began from outside cabin, Tanya panicked. She grabbed the gun and, when the door burst open, shot the gun. After killing Niccolò, she continued firing wildly, fatally shooting everyone aboard except one partygoer and the captain.

As Quentin lay bleeding on the ground, she asked whether Greg was cheating on her, but he couldn't answer, only muster one final, bloody sputter.

After her rampage, Tanya tried to jump into the boat to head to land, but she slipped on her chunky platform heels and hit her head on the dinghy's railing on the way down. Knocked unconscious, she drowned.

Her body was then revealed as the one that Daphne ( Meghann Fahy ) discovered in the first episode. Just off shore, the coast guard discovered the other bodies on the yacht.

Things came to a head for Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) as he accused her of having sex with Cameron ( Theo James ). She ultimately admitted to kissing him, but Ethan was convinced she was lying.

After storming across the beach and punching Cameron in an oceanic bro fight, Ethan took solace in a few words of wisdom from Daphne. She gave him a knowing look, and they headed off to Isola Bella where they may or may not have complicated the love quadrangle even further.

Despite an awkward last dinner, all was right with the young couples, with Ethan and Harper even getting in some vacation sex during their final night.

After a blissful night with Mia ( Beatrice Grannò ), White Lotus manager Valentina ( Sabrina Impacciatore ) let the aspiring singer take over permanently for Giuseppe (Federico Scribiani).

Although she appeared heartbroken to learn that Mia didn't want to pursue a relationship, they agreed to keep things casual and convenient — and Mia even offered her and fellow sex worker Lucia's ( Simona Tabasco ) services as Valentina's wingwomen to meet local lesbians.

Albie ( Adam DiMarco ) proposed Lucia move with him to Los Angeles and even convinced his dad Dominic ( Michael Imperioli ) to give him €50,000 as "karmic payment" so he could help her be free of her supposed pimp. To no one's surprise, Lucia cut and ran with the money, taking one last glance at Albie before she left him sleeping alone on his final morning.

But all wasn't lost — Albie ran into Portia at the airport. When he told her about the unidentified drowning victim and the yacht full of corpses, Portia got the drift of what had happened with Tanya. She commiserated vaguely with Albie about both getting played, and they swapped numbers. Kids!

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Seasons 1 and 2 of The White Lotus are streaming in full on HBO Max.

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The White Lotus’s explosive season finale, explained

Who died (and who survived) at The White Lotus.

by Alex Abad-Santos

This article contains spoilers for the season finale of the second season of The White Lotus .

For the last week , White Lotus fans have been losing sleep in stressful anticipation of the series’s season finale and the answer to the show’s ultimate question: Which White Lotus hotel guests are gonna die?

And in Sunday’s finale, we got our answer.

Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) met her watery demise in the season finale, as did practically a full yacht’s worth of conspiring gay men.

As episode six hinted at, new friend Quentin (Tom Hollander) and Tanya’s husband Greg (Jon Gries) had a relationship — Tanya picked up (a poorly photoshopped) photo of the two in Quentin’s bedroom. We never find out what exactly that relationship is, but Tanya — after a frantic call from the subtly abducted Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) — believes that Quentin and his crew were in cahoots with Greg to kill her and cash in an inheritance.

Offshore on Quentin’s yacht, Niccolò (Stefano Gianino), Tanya’s mafioso escort from her cocaine-filled night, arrives to bring her back to shore — just the two of them and a sizable black “cocaine bag” in a tiny boat. Tanya is convinced Niccolò and the gays are going to kill her (“These gays are trying to kill me,” she whisper-hisses, perfectly). In a desperate move, she grabs the bag, finds the tape, rope, and gun inside, and locks herself in a stateroom. When the gays come knocking, she blindly shoots her way out, still whimpering, and manages to mortally wound if not outright kill everyone on the yacht. (No, I am not making this up.) Tanya Wick just has to make it to the attached dinghy, but instead of taking the stairs, she decides to jump — whacking her head on the side of the boat and drowning.

Tanya went out doing what she loved most, obviously luring in people with her copious amounts of money and then thwarting them last minute. (The murky status of Greg’s inheritance notwithstanding.)

In a cheerier conclusion than the first season, the rest of the guests got relatively happy endings.

How everyone else fared at the White Lotus Sicily

Fatally miserable couple Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper Spiller (Aubrey Plaza) recovered their missing intimacy, accepting a little bit of mystery in one another. Knowing that his college roommate at the very least kissed his wife, Ethan tackles Cameron (Theo James) in the ocean and punches him in the face. Ethan reveals the possible indiscretion to Cam’s uncannily zen wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy), who gives Ethan basically the same ambiguously erotic pep talk she gave Harper: Don’t be a victim; get yours. Unlike Harper, Daphne takes Ethan on a walk to a private island. After that, and a surprisingly not-weird dinner with the full foursome, Ethan rekindles his attraction to Harper and the two finally have sex.

The Di Grasso men left the island as they came — all terrible with women in their own unique ways. Dominic (Michael Imperioli) has a sliver of hope his wife will talk to him again, thanks to his son’s semi-extortionist blessing; Bert (F. Murray Abraham) still gets sexually excited from a hug. At the airport, Albie (Adam DiMarco) reconnects with Portia, each having been pretty well and thoroughly scammed by the sex workers they unwittingly ditched each other for. The two exchange numbers, so they can go on to hurt each other another day.

And speaking of sex workers, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) got a real happily ever after. Lucia played Albie and his dad for 50,000 euro. Alessio, the man supposedly stalking her, wasn’t a pimp or a disgruntled mob boss but just a doorman at a neighboring hotel. And as a result of accidentally drugging the resident pianist, Mia convinces hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) to fire him. Good for them!

Men get played. Women get rich. Yachts became death traps. What a surprisingly jaunty ending for our White Lotus guests (save for Tanya) and oddly hopeful cap to the second season of this beloved HBO show.

The season is a well-executed murder mystery

The biggest shift this season was how The White Lotus transitioned from feeling like a show about unaware and unchecked privilege with a little murder mystery hanging over it, to murder mystery with a bit of unaware and unchecked privilege on the side. Fans were more determined than ever to decode every potential clue . The change in vibe began in the very first episode.

We meet Daphne who, at first blush feels familiar to anyone who’s seen The White Lotus season one. She’s got perfect hair, a perfect swimsuit, perfect teeth. Big, clean, gorgeous teeth. In White Lotus code, this means she’s probably a horrific monster. Daphne chats up the girls next to her, initiating a conversation about how lucky they are to be in Sicily.

“Italy’s just so romantic,” Daphne tells the women, before getting into the Ionian Sea one last time. “Oh, you’re gonna die. They’re gonna have to drag you out of here,” she says.

As Daphne takes the plunge, the water suddenly doesn’t seem as blue or clear as it did in the wide shot. And then it happens: A pair of floating legs (and Tanya’s corpse that they’re attached to) thump into Daphne, and send her screaming for shore. Onshore, we learn that a number of bodies have been discovered, but no final body count given (beach club supervisor Rocco tells manager Valentina that there’s a “few”). All we know is that the unalive people were guests of the hotel.

That’s where the real show starts.

In season one, the possibility remained that the body bag we saw in the very first episode had been the result of natural causes. But since we saw that end with snotty guest Shane (Jake Lacy) stabbing hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett), and started this new season with a whole pile of bodies, it seemed all but assured that foul play would be afoot at the White Lotus Sicily. Were these deaths an accident? Were they on purpose? Murder? Manslaughter? And more importantly: Who died? And who killed them?

White’s sneaky move was to let the subtle, even pedestrian betrayals in relationships feel like clues to a murder mystery. A thousand motives flit across the screen, all possible in the characters’ fragile relationships. Over an innocuous dinner or drinks at the beach, the tension between these characters seems like it might boil over — and occasionally does.

Suddenly, it wasn’t so difficult to see a scenario in which Ethan, frustrated with Harper, would kill his old buddy Cam. It wasn’t impossible to imagine Albie killing Lucia after finding out his father also slept with her, or Jack (Leo Woodall) tossing Portia into the sea because she found out Quentin wasn’t his uncle.

The first season took a big swing , giving us White’s ideas about how American greed and pleasure are interconnected and how Hawaii and Hawaiians became the mainland’s victims. The White Lotus ’s second season doesn’t even attempt to tell a similar story. Instead, it’s skewering gender by way of masculinity, sex, and desire. It’s a more sensational, more sordid, more sinister, and more streamlined story. It’s a less ambitious season, maybe, but a more successful one.

Daphne Sullivan won The White Lotus

The White Lotus didn’t invent miserable rich Americans, nor did it create our morbid curiosity with them. Watching the wealthy writhe in emotional displeasure is a long tradition, from The Great Gatsby to the Real Housewives . There’s something comforting in knowing there are limits to financial security, and witnessing people who could afford anything still be unfulfilled in ways that they’ll never be able to solve. There’s something about the rich on vacation that feels like it could go full Hunger Games .

Yet, despite the endless reasons to hate so many of the main guests — Ethan is so terminally insecure, Harper is a horny grump, Cameron’s a slimeball, Tanya is an emotional vampire, Portia has no backbone, and the Di Grassos have never met a woman they couldn’t impose themselves on — there’s one I would die for: Daphne Sullivan.

Obviously, a lot of my affection for the character comes from Meghann Fahy’s brilliant performance. And just as much can be explained by the ancient proverb : “girl does sociopathic shit, her gays [say] work.”

But it’s also what Daphne represents.

When we first meet her on the beach chatting up the two women on vacation, there’s a sense that she’s kind of a rich dumb-dumb. That’s the common thread among White Lotus guests. Look how they can’t even understand what’s happening around them.

Adding to that impression is that we also meet eternally mordant Harper, who’s crabby the minute she gets to Sicily. Harper does not want to be there. She hates being on vacation with people she hates.

This irritability makes Harper seem like the show’s protagonist. It allows her to point out how out of touch the people around her are, the implicit position of viewers at home. When Harper tells Cameron and Daphne that she’s an employment lawyer, Cameron quickly spouts on about how most harassment lawsuits are fake. When Cameron and Daphne tell her they don’t read or watch the news, she’s shocked at their incuriosity about the world. If Harper, who the show paints as smarter than the rest of the cohort, thinks Daphne and Cameron are idiots, then they must be idiots, right?

But as the show progresses, Daphne shows herself to be much smarter than she appears — and maybe wiser than Harper herself.

In episode 5, Harper, by way of a condom wrapper and emotional warfare, finds out that Cameron and Ethan did MDMA and that Cameron cheated on Daphne with a sex worker. When she tells Daphne as much as she can without spelling out all the details, Daphne doesn’t even flinch.

Instead of shock, Daphne tells Harper about her trainer Lawrence. They spend an enormous amount of time together. Lawrence makes her laugh. Lawrence keeps her fit. Lawrence doesn’t let her get lonely. She describes him to Harper as blond and blue-eyed, and offers to show her a pic. Instead, she hands over a photo of her blond and blue-eyed children. “Oops,” she says, with the smallest point, and we know she’s never made a mistake at all, but that Cameron has in underestimating her.

“I spend more time with him than Cameron sometimes because he’s so busy at work,” Daphne tells Harper, before her face sharpens into a smile that’s all edges. “The point is, maybe you should get a trainer.”

It’s in this moment that Harper realizes Daphne isn’t oblivious to her life but, rather, fully aware of every moment of it. Like her shopping sprees, infidelity to the point of paternity fraud is one of the ways Daphne has carved out happiness in what could be an utterly punishing life. She’s the trophy wife to Cameron’s wheeling, dealing, cheating asshole finance bro, but Daphne plays the game, too. She just happens to be smart enough to never be left footing the bill. She knows being unvalued will get her further.

Daphne puts her slightly mercenary wisdom to practice in the final episode, after Ethan tells her something happened with Harper and Cam. Taking just a beat to let the hurt wash over her, she’s quickly ready to metabolize. While we don’t know for certain what happens when Daphne takes Ethan on a walk to La Isola Bella, it seems to lead to a reset in the natural balance of the group, which had gone perilously lopsided for Ethan since he had reason to be suspicious of his wife. Does Daphne really want Ethan? (No, I don’t think so.) Do they actually hook up? (Yes, I think so.) What matters is that neither of them is a victim anymore.

Daphne’s worldview serves both halves of the Spiller couple well, eventually. Each had felt victimized by the other: Harper by Ethan’s expectations and lack of sexual interest, Ethan by Harper’s moods and frustration, both by the other’s lies. Daphne helps put the couple on equal footing by encouraging each one to take their power back. Honesty is overrated; an appreciation for mystery in yourself and the person you love is a much sexier solution.

“You don’t have to know everything to love someone,” she tells Ethan.

She should know; it’s an answer that has paid off her time and again. It’s also worth noting that Ethan and Harper being on good terms with each other is a good thing for Daphne. If Ethan doesn’t see Cameron as a threat, especially if you read his “walk” with Daphne as more than a stroll, he might be open to Cameron investing his money and obliquely funding Daphne’s lavish life.

Upward mobility isn’t usually rewarded in The White Lotus, as we saw with Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) from season one, and Quentin and his cohort this year. Striving for something more never works out when you play against the ultra-wealthy. But here, all along, Daphne defied the odds and found a way. Just don’t tell anyone about her trainer.

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'The White Lotus' Recap: Who Died in the Shocking Season 2 Finale?

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Season 2 of The White Lotus has officially come to a close – and audiences finally learned who died in that very shocking, very unexpected final episode. 

The second installment of creator Mike White's Emmy-winning social satire opened with Daphne ( Meghann Fahy ) discovering a dead body in the water, off the beach of the Sicilian luxury hotel where she was staying with her husband Cameron ( Theo James ) and their two friends, Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) and Ethan (Will Sharpe). 

As hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) assessed the scene, it was soon revealed by her employee, Rocco (Federico Ferrante), that there was more than one dead body. 

Since then, audiences have eagerly been guessing which guests will turn up dead – and what led to their demise – as the remaining six episodes unfolded. And in the finale, "Arrivederci," all was revealed. [ Warning : Spoilers below!]

So, in the end, the dead bodies belonged to Tanya ( Jennifer Coolidge ), who was discovered by Daphne, as well as Quentin (Tom Hollander) and several of his gay companions, who were all revealed to be in on a long con involving an attempt to kill her and take all her money. It was Tanya who killed them while aboard their yacht on the way back to the hotel from Palermo before slipping and falling into the water while trying to escape on the boat's dinghy. 

It was during their final night that she discovered a photo of Quentin and Greg (Jon Gries) as young men together and came to believe that they were working together to take advantage of the prenup she had with her husband, whom she met during season 1 at the White Lotus hotel in Hawaii.

Jack (Leo Woodall), meanwhile, was tasked with driving Portia ( Haley Lu Richardson ) back across the island. Instead of returning her to the hotel, he took her to the airport. He left her with a warning to get out of Sicily as soon as she could and that the men he was involved with were dangerous. 

While Greg promised to return to Sicily, he never returned . And what came of his and Quentin's attempt to get her money remains unclear.    The hotel's other guests, however, survived. But they all left on mostly damper notes, with Albie (Adam DiMarco) being played by Lucia, who managed to score €50,000 from him and the rest of his family; the two couples — Ethan and Harper and Cameron and Daphne — dealing with the unexpected turmoil that erupted between them; and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) landing a full time job as the hotel's new singer/pianist after seducing Valentina and drugging Giuseppe (Federico Scribani).

And as promised by the cast, the season truly ended on a volcanic note with Mount Etna erupting in the background.

The White Lotus is now streaming on HBO Max.

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The Ending of 'The White Lotus' Season 2, Explained

Our breakdown of the finale and those shocking deaths.

The second season of the HBO drama The White Lotus has ended, the surviving characters have boarded their planes, and the viewers are left with...a lot of unfulfilled storylines. Many a fan theory has been left floating in the ether after the finale's big reveal of which hotel guest met their demise, and several ticking time bombs simply fizzled out to become a tightly-kept secret. Still, the season finale delivered in stressful scenes and shocked laughter, as each of the plots among the Sicily resort 's guest and staff came to their conclusions.

For anyone who wants to commiserate on the end of this must-watch TV event, follow along as we go through this finale breakdown group by group.

Harper and Ethan make up through jealously and (possible) mutual cheating.

Oh, Harper and Ethan. The spouses came on this strange trip expecting nothing more than general awkwardness, joining Ethan's asshole college roommate Cameron and his fabulous, complex wife Daphne on a couples' trip where the couples barely know each other. Instead, they got a severe test of their relationship as Ethan was suspected for Cameron's cheating and Harper used Cameron's interest in her to give Ethan a taste of his own medicine. 

Early in the finale, after some nudging from Ethan, Harper caves and admits that Cameron did kiss her when they went up to their rooms alone. She describes the moment as a "drunken, stupid nothing," and insists that's as far as it went since Cameron is, as she rightly points out, "disgusting." Ethan doesn't entirely believe her, but he focuses on the one part of the situation where there's no doubt: Cameron tried to sleep with his wife, just like he hooked up with all of Ethan's college crushes.

With no hesitation (like, not even a word to Harper), Ethan goes straight to the beach where he fights with Cameron. The two men alternate in attempting to drown each other, but a good Samaritan breaks up the fight after Ethan lands one great last punch. He then goes for a walk on the beach, where he runs into Daphne, sunning and oblivious.

Sweet Daphne has just been trying to ignore her husband's cheating and enjoy her vacation. Ethan ruins that when he directly tells her of her Cameron's infidelity, informing her not of the night with some random locals, but with her husband's tryst with Harper, the woman she was hoping to befriend. She looks sad for a second, before she rallies and gives Ethan a similar "do what you have to do to make yourself feel better about it" speech that she previously gave to Harper. The pair then go on a walk to a secluded part of the beach, where it's heavily implied that they hook up themselves.

In addition to showing that Daphne could rule a small country with her cunning optimism, whatever happened between her and Ethan may have saved Ethan and Harper's marriage. Later that night, after the foursome have one final dinner where everything goes unsaid, Harper and Ethan return to their room and Harper asks what will happen to them. Instead of a fight or a sad separation, the couple who haven't touched each other all vacation finally has sex! We next see them at the airport, cuddling with small smiles on their faces and the reassurance that their marriage just might make it after all. 

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Mia becomes the permanent lounge singer.

A quick note for Mia and Valentina, another pairing that could've ended in tragedy but instead finds its way. After their night together in one of the hotel's vacant room, they're woken up by a housekeeper walking in on them. Surprisingly, Valentina just goes back to her post in yesterday's clothes and no one says anything. She makes some major personnel changes with disheveled hair, starting with sending Salvatore back to the beach so Isabella's fiancé Rocco can come back to the front desk. 

Later that day, Mia returns to the resort for her lounge shift, and everything's great between her and Valentina. She even offers to take Valentina to the lesbian bars to find her a real girlfriend. Right after they stop talking, with the hopeful smile still on Valentina's face, Giuseppe comes back! Remember the previous lounge singer who was sent to the hospital after Mia gave him something that definitely wasn't Viagra. He has returned with a full bill of health, only to find Mia at his piano. Luckily for Mia, as soon as the drama is introduced, Valentina solves everything by firing Giuseppe and giving Mia the permanent singing gig. Both Mia and Valentina end the night on top of the world, but between the unjust firing and the dead body that'll be discovered the next morning, Valentina probably won't hold on to her job much longer. (We don't see the aftermath, but that's what headcanons are for.)

Lucia scams the Di Grassos out of 50,000 euros(!!).

Though Daphne is the Internet's favorite character, Lucia is the MVP of Season 2, walking away from a man she only knew for three days with a year's salary in her bank account. After "good guy" Albie promised to help her get away from her "pimp" Alessio in Episode 6, the mark wakes up with big plans, telling her she may be able to come visit him in Los Angeles. He goes to meet Dominic at breakfast with a battle plan, asking his father send 50,000 euros(!!!) to Lucia's account. Albie infuses this ask with a level of entitlement that is something to behold, as Dominic understandably refuses. Instead of backing down, Albie suggests that the money could be "karmic payment" for Dominic's history of cheating on his wife, and the son even says he'll put in a good word with his mother to take Dominic back.

This whole season, Dominic has been trying to change his ways and asking Albie to put in a good word with his mom. Because of this, even though he knows his son is being scammed, Dominic actually sends the money to Lucia's account. He tells Albie at dinner, and the 20-something immediately ditches his family to go receive thanks from Lucia. The sucker and the entrepreneur enjoy a sweet night together, and just when you think that maybe they are in love, Lucia sneaks out of the room in the morning, and Albie wakes up to her closing the door.

The last shot of Lucia and Mia is the last sequence of the episode, and it dispels any remaining doubts that Lucia has pulled off the scam of the century. In a parallel to the pair's first walk to the hotel in the premiere, we follow the women as they walk away down the Taormina street, before they stop to greet Alessio at his post (surprisingly as a doorman at another hotel). He was obviously an accomplice in the scam, not a "pimp" from whom Albie has saved Lucia. So the season ends with the two women on top of the world, and Albie doing just fine at the airport (more on that in a bit).

Portia was definitely kidnapped.

Episode 6 ended with only a general vibe that Portia was in danger, as Jack insisted on keeping her away from his "uncle" Quentin's villa. But within her first few minutes of finale screentime, it's clear that Portia's being held against her will, as she discovers that her phone has "mysteriously" disappeared from where she put it to charge. Jack shrugs off its disappearance, pretending that he did not take it, and later at breakfast he reveals that Tanya's heading back to Taormina via yacht, with Quentin and his posse of gays. Jack's going to drive Portia, who's missing her phone and whose luggage is left abandoned back at the villa.

We're about to see throughout this saga that Portia is not the sharpest assistant, but she actually makes a smart move in taking Jack's phone while he's in the restroom. She calls Tanya, they debrief on everything that's going on (including the reveal that Jack and Quentin were sleeping together), and Portia says over and over that she has a "really creepy feeling" about everything that's going on. Before the two women can come up with anything actually resembling a plan, Jack comes back and snatches the phone away. Poor Portia tries to demand that he takes her back to Taormina immediately, but Jack shrugs it off and takes his sweet time getting her to the car to drive her back.

Now, I do get why Portia would feel like she has nothing to do. When Jack's negging is still gentle, he makes some valid points: she probably brought very little money with her, she doesn't speak the language, and her attempts at assertiveness aren't really...assertive. Still, it's hard not to watch and cringe and yell at her to do something as Jack gets more and more frightening. She even confronts him about hooking up with his "uncle," and when he gives a non-response, she still lets him transport her to another location that obviously won't be the hotel. Instead, he drops her on the side of the road near the airport, saying that she shouldn't go back to the White Lotus because the people who hired him are powerful and not to be messed with.

Whether you think she's right to actually listen to Jack's threat, or wrong for not even trying to help Tanya, Portia does walk straight to the airport. We next see her waiting for the flight back to San Francisco, with nothing but her backpack and her ridiculous outfit. There she runs into Albie, who appears to have shaken off the fact that he was taken for literal tens of thousands of dollars. The last we see of them, the duo are exchanging numbers to assumedly date once they get back home. (Mike White, do not let these two show up married next season, I beg you.) 

Tanya doesn't make it off the yacht alive.

And so we've arrived to the last guest of this season and the last person we thought the show would actually kill off. Tanya McQuoid was in the most danger all season, but still, she was the only recurring character. We love Tanya (and Jennifer Coolidge) which is why I was low-key stressed the entire episode. By the finale, the show was toying with the obvious sinister plot, letting Quentin become fully menacing even before Tanya and Portia connected the dots between him, Greg, and the prenup. The strongest fan theory (besides Lucia's plan) was proven true: Tanya's husband was the cowboy Quentin knew from youth and Greg hired Quentin and co. to kill Tanya so he could get all her money. I'm still surprised that the plan wasn't just to blackmail, but I guess the stakes were high this season.

Unfortunately, by the time Tanya figures out that Quentin wants to kill her, she has already gotten onto the yacht. The big boat drops anchor about half a mile offshore, and Quentin lets Tanya know that Niccolò, the mafia-connected dealer she slept with in Episode 6, is arriving to personally take her to the shore that night. It'll just be the two of them, and she won't make it to the shore. Trapped, Tanya makes a solid attempt to ask the captain to help her, but he doesn't speak English, and he's gay too! (Lots of gay villain jokes in this season, not all of them great.) That's when Niccolò arrives, with his trusty black bag that Tanya already knows carries a gun.

Tanya is a lot more enterprising than Portia in trying to escape. (Seriously, Portia, you at least didn't get your phone back in the three-hour drive?!) She knows to stall out the dinner, and she gets eyes on the bag. When Quentin says that it's time to go, she excuses herself to the restroom, and successfully grabs the bag! The next sequence is jaw-dropping, with Tanya pulling up her inner strength and arming herself with the gun, shooting Niccolò, Quentin, and Didier through tears. It's a scene that'll earn Coolidge another Emmy, as she then confronts Quentin not about the murder plot, but with a question that is sooooo unimportant: "Is Greg having an affair?" Tanya's gonna Tanya, but I was so proud of her for escaping her death...until she can't figure out how to get down to the dinghy. Not knowing to look for the stairs, she climbs over the railing in heels, slips, falls, and drowns.

So it was Tanya's body all along that floated to the White Lotus beach. It's a very classic Tanya way to go, and just like the Season 1 ending, fans are left with nothing to cheer for, feeling conflicted on how every character will move on after their trip to Sicily (except Lucia and Mia, who are living their best lives). There's also just so much that could've happened this season that didn't. Albie never found out that both he and his dad slept with Lucia, and Harper and Ethan ended up moving past their issues without a real discussion. For all the Sicilian characters, it feels like we're leaving them before the really interesting stuff happens. There could be a whole Lucia, Valentina, Mia sequel and a Quentin, Jack & co. prequel made out of my lingering questions, but that's not the way White operates. Instead, we'll now have to wait for a third installment with a new cast that might be a look at "Eastern religion and spirituality." Whatever happens next, we'll be watching.

Quinci is a Culture Writer who covers all aspects of pop culture, including TV, movies, music, books, and theater. She contributes interviews with talent, as well as SEO content, features, and trend stories. She fell in love with storytelling at a young age, and eventually discovered her love for cultural criticism and amplifying awareness for underrepresented storytellers across the arts. She previously served as a weekend editor for Harper’s Bazaar , where she covered breaking news and live events for the brand’s website, and helped run the brand’s social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Her freelance writing has also appeared in outlets including HuffPost , The A.V. Club , Elle , Vulture , Salon , Teen Vogue , and others. Quinci earned her degree in English and Psychology from The University of New Mexico. She was a 2021 Eugene O’Neill Critics Institute fellow, and she is a member of the Television Critics Association. She is currently based in her hometown of Los Angeles. When she isn't writing or checking Twitter way too often, you can find her studying Korean while watching the latest K-drama , recommending her favorite shows and films to family and friends, or giving a concert performance while sitting in L.A. traffic.

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‘The White Lotus’ Creator Mike White Explains That Shocking Season 2 Finale Death

The showrunner also says lingering questions from Season 2 may be answered in Season 3

Note: the following contains spoilers for “The White Lotus” Season 2 finale.

“The White Lotus” Season 2 finale made good on the show’s promise to reveal exactly whose bodies were floating in the ocean in the season opener, but few were prepared to discover that Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya was one of the victims. According to creator and showrunner Mike White, the seed for Tanya’s death was actually planted in the Season 1 finale of the HBO series.

In the final episode of Season 2, Tanya finally realizes that Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his friends are not who they appear to be. Quentin clearly is old friends with Greg (Jon Gries), and when his yacht arrives back in Taormina, Quentin makes some excuse as to why Tanya can’t get off the boat just yet. Instead, they’re waiting for Niccolo (Stefano Gianino) to show up and personally escort Tanya back under cover of night.

When Tanya goes through Niccolo’s bag and discovers rope, duct tape and a gun, she confirms they’re trying to kill her so Greg can inherit all of her money. She, hilariously, takes all but one of them out with the gun, but when trying to jump down from the yacht into the smaller boat to go ashore, she hits her head and drowns.

In a behind-the-scenes video from HBO that aired after the episode, White said the entirety of Tanya’s Season 2 arc was crafted around her eventual death.

“In the end of last season, Tanya is sitting with Greg in the last episode and he’s talking about his health issues and she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years. Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.’ And I was thinking it’d be so fun to bring Tanya back because she’s such a great character, but maybe that’s the journey for her is like a journey to death.”

“And not that I really wanted to kill Tanya because I love her as a character and I obviously love Jennifer,” White continued. “But I just felt like you know we’re going to Italy, she’s such a diva, larger-than-life female archetype, it just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story.”

It was important to White, however, that Tanya not die at the hands of someone else.

“I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic,” he said. “It felt like she needed to give her best fight back, and that she in a way had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her. So it just made me laugh to think she would take out [this] cabal of killers and that after she successfully does that, she just dies this derpy death. It just felt like that’s so Tanya.”

“The White Lotus” Season 3 has already been ordered by HBO, and given that this is an anthology series the plan is to have a new location and new characters. However, in the post-finale video White alluded to a continuation or some kind of closure to Greg’s murder plot in Season 3.

“I think as far as what happens to Greg and the conspiracy of Tanya’s death, it’s possible that I think Portia is scared enough to just leave it alone but the fact that all of those guys die on the boat feels like there’s gotta be somebody who’s gonna track it back down to Greg. But maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens.”

Just as Coolidge was the only character to reprise her role from Season 1 in Season 2, could we see Haley Lu Richardson’s Portia return as she tries to dig deeper into what happened to Tanya? Or Greg? It would fit with the theme White teased as central to Season 3.

“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex, and I think the third season would be maybe a kind of satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality, and it feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus,” White said in the video.

Stay tuned, folks. This particular story may have come to a close, but there’s more “White Lotus” to come.

'The White Lotus' Season 2 finale: Who died? Who cheated? Who stole? And what does it all mean?

Spoiler alert! The following contains details from the Season 2 finale of "The White Lotus," "Arrivederci."

All is fair in love and war. Except absolutely nothing is fair in either. 

Sunday's Season 2 finale of HBO's Sicily-set satire "The White Lotus" landed with a startling thunk on the side of a boat, as a bombastic episode of television with a murder spree that may not have even been the biggest moment of its 80 minutes.

The "Lotus" finale comes together like a symphony, each scene falling into place like a cascade of musical notes, inevitable yet surprising at the same time. The exquisite finale was impeccably acted and scripted, a fitting ending to a breathtaking story. It is akin to the tragedy of the Season 1 finale, although in many ways Season 2 has outshone its predecessor .

While the first season was an apt exploration of class in a five-star upstairs/downstairs drama, it was still a version of a story we've seen before. In Season 2, creator Mike White molded something all his own, an examination of sexual politics and norms that have radically changed – but also depressingly stayed the same – since the #MeToo movement. Ever astute in his observations of modern life, White offers no answers to the tough questions, or even much hope for our flailing attempts at human connection. But he does provide a ruthless mirror in which to examine ourselves, and a breathless hunger for a third season. 

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Who died in 'The White Lotus' finale?

At the end of the week in the stunning Sicilian resort, we learn the body floating in the sea was Tanya's (Jennifer Coolidge), who fell to her death off the side of Quentin's (Tom Hollander's) yacht while trying to escape what she believed was a murder-for-hire plot and left a trio of dead bodies in her wake. It was a stunner, but it also felt inevitable, as Tanya seemed trapped by each move Quentin and his compatriots made on his yacht.

At the beginning of the episode, her assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) remained stuck far  from Tanya, with Quentin's fake nephew Jack (Leo Woodall), but the pair managed to speak on a brief call that convinces both that their generous companions have been conspiring with Tanya's husband Greg (Jon Gries) to murder her.

Fumbling and bumbling through the motions of socialization after this realization, Tanya attempts to save herself through desperate measures: exclaiming to the non-English speaking captain, delaying tactics and eventually shooting her captors before falling to her death in an ill-conceived attempt to get from the yacht to a dinghy. These scenes ricocheted from slapstick to startling to violent, and Coolidge – already wielding an Emmy for this role in Season 1 – plays it all easily, with Tanya's trademark haplessness. 

Jack leaves Portia scared and suspicious, by the side of the road, but she takes his advice not to get involved. She only hears about the deaths at the resort after running into Albie (Adam DiMarco) at the airport. After the terror Jack put her through, Portia is a lot more amenable to boring, safe Albie, asking for his number before boarding her flight. 

More: Wonderful 'White Lotus' is back for Season 2, and it's not a second too soon

Who got conned?

Albie and the other DiGrasso men (F. Murray Abraham and Michael Imperioli) didn't seem to learn much from their time in their ancestral homeland. In the end, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) was conning Albie, and was never beholden to a pimp or stuck in her life of sex work. She gets 50,000 euros out of him before (with an ounce or two of regret) she leaves him alone in his hotel room to live with the fact that his father was right; Albie was an easy mark. 

Albie's father Dominic (Imperioli) gets what he wanted in the end: an open line of communication with his estranged wife by placating his son, rather than by engaging in any meaningful acts of remorse or penance. And Nonno Bert (Abraham) is still the same old lech he always was, unable to congratulate Mia (Beatrice Grannò) on her gig as the new White Lotus lounge singer without commenting on his own arousal. 

The lack of growth from the DiGrasso men is underlined at the airport, where they're in line for a budget airline no less, when they turn to leer in unison at another woman in a crop top. 

More: Why we're seeing a new 'wave' of wealth satires, from 'White Lotus' to 'Triangle of Sadness'

Who cheated?

We may never know exactly what happened between Cameron (Theo James) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza), although Harper attempts to convince her husband Ethan (Will Sharpe) that the only thing that happened between them was a drunken kiss. 

After his argument with Harper, an enraged Ethan confronts Cameron in the ocean, and almost makes his so-called college roommate and friend the dead body, before their fight is broken up by a bystander. Ethan eventually finds his way to Cameron's wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy), and tells her of his suspicions about their spouses. Fahey proves herself the star of the series in a 30-second, silent reaction to Ethan's revelation, in which Daphne runs through the stages of grief in quick succession. Her happy, playful facade returns, and she lures Ethan to a small island. What they do there isn't clear, but when Ethan returns to Harper later, he suddenly reconnects sexually with his wife, all indiscretion forgiven.

Who got a happy ending

In the end, it's just Lucia, Mia and hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) who are unabashedly happy at the end of the week at The White Lotus in Taormina. 

After finally getting over her own sexual frustrations, Valentina is able to see other sexual harassment in her workplace, if not that she too was behaving inappropriately toward one of her employees. But it's as if her whole body has unclenched after admitting she is a lesbian, down to a slightly unbuttoned blouse and frizzy hair. 

Mia and Lucia, meanwhile, are 50,000 euros richer and strutting through the streets of town in the designer clothes they craved at the beginning of the season. Maybe they deceived and drugged and conned their way to their new positions, but they did it to a gaggle of guests who aimed at exploiting them first. 

The "Lotus" finale raised as many questions as it answered, but the loose ends aren't especially bothersome. White is singularly accomplished at filling his writing with satisfying ambiguity. There are vagaries and injustices in the messy worlds he creates, but just as in the real world, the characters must just move on or get trapped. 

Tanya, for instance, will only leave Sicily in a coffin. 

More: The 50 best TV shows on HBO Max in December: 'The White Lotus' finale and more

Explaining the "Derpy" Death in The White Lotus Season 2 Finale

[Redacted] has checked out of The White Lotus for the last time.

Major spoilers ahead.

The Season 2 finale of The White Lotus saw the demise of a fan-favorite character—but not before she got her hands dirty, too.

Yes, the body we see floating in the Ionian Sea in Episode 1 is indeed that of one air-headed heiress, Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge). In Episode 7, "Arrivederci," Tanya and her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), put together the puzzle pieces of an assassination plot orchestrated by her husband, Greg (Jon Gries). Under the terms of their prenup, Greg would receive zilch in the case of divorcing Tanya; but, if she dies, it's suggested that Greg would be her beneficiary. The flock of charming gay European men, marshaled by Quentin (Tom Hollander), turn out to be in cahoots with Greg and the Italian mafia to kill Tanya.

It's why Greg insisted that they holiday in Sicily, and it's also why he left the vacation early in order to give himself an alibi. And Quentin's Episode 5 confession of falling in love with a heterosexual cowboy who he would "have done anything for" is seemingly confirmed to actually be Greg, due to Tanya's discovery of a photograph of the two as young men donning cowboy hats in Quentin's palazzo in the last episode.

Portia—who is being held hostage by Jack (Leo Woodall), Quentin's not-so-nephew/lover—is helpless to shepherd Tanya to safety. Meanwhile, the heiress is stranded in the middle of the ocean, having embarked for one last ride back to Taormina via Quentin's yacht.

When the handsome, mafia-involved man, Niccoló (Stefano Gianino), who Quentin set her up with the night before, suddenly arrives via dinghy and armed with a mysterious black bag, Tanya's panic sets in. She begs the old, non-English-speaking captain to drive her to shore to no avail; she attempts to call for help but accidentally drops her phone in the ocean; she prolongs dinner by asking for another glass of white wine.

Finally, her conspirators can stand no more procrastination and implore her to "return" to the hotel by going on a moonlit boat ride alone with Niccoló. Instead, she excuses herself to use the bathroom and, along the way, steals Niccoló's black bag, the contents of which finally confirm her worst fears: rope, duct tape, a gun. In a performance that will surely earn Coolidge another Emmy nod, Tanya quietly sobs to herself as she takes the gun, closes her eyes, and begins to shoot. She kills nearly all of her captors on board, save for one lucky Frenchman who dives off the boat screaming and swimming to shore.

Apprehensively approaching Quentin as he bloodily gasped his last breaths, Tanya can't help herself. "Is Greg having an affair?" she desperately asks him.

With a gaggle of corpses behind her, Tanya now set her sights on escaping the yacht ride from hell. Seizing on the dinghy that Niccoló arrived in, she ignores the staircase right next to her and, extraordinarily, decides to instead jump from the second yacht's second level (while still wearing heels!). "You've got this," she tragically, pathetically cries to herself right before she leaps overboard, hits her head on the side of the dinghy, and sinks into the abyss.

Creator Mike White explains Tanya's ending in a post-credits interview. "I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic," he says. "It felt like she needed to give her best fight back and that she, in a way, had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her. So it just made me laugh to think she would like take out all of these cabal of killers, and that after she successfully does that, then she just dies this derpy death. And I just felt like, that's just so Tanya."

As for Portia, Jack unceremoniously drops her off blocks away from an airport, warning her to "get the fuck out of Sicily" and to not challenge the "powerful" people in charge of getting rid of Tanya. Portia heeds his advice.

While waiting to board her flight, Portia bumps into Albie DiGrasso (Adam DiMarco), the Stanford grad she blew off earlier in the season. Through him, she learns of Tanya's fate: "Did you hear one of the guests drowned at the hotel?" "Do you know who?" "No, it was crazy. They found a bunch of dead bodies on a yacht, too."

Salute to The White Lotus's publicity team.

As an associate editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, Chelsey keeps a finger on the pulse on all things celeb news. She also writes on social movements, connecting with activists leading the fight on workers' rights, climate justice, and more. Offline, she’s probably spending too much time on TikTok, rewatching Emma (the 2020 version, of course), or buying yet another corset. 

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The White Lotus Season 2 Finale: Here’s Who Dies

Spoilers for the season finale of The White Lotus to follow.  

After seven weeks of speculation, theme song dance parties, and close examination of one suspiciously placed photograph of cowboys,  The White Lotus has revealed who dies at the end of what was supposed to be a relaxing week’s vacation. 

The body count began on Quentin’s yacht, where Tanya ( Jennifer Coolidge ) sussed out what viewers had suspected: those gays, as she told the boat captain, were trying to kill her. Niccolo‘s black bag turned out to be exactly as suspicious as Tanya believed it to be, and she pulled out the gun to tearfully shoot Quentin ( Tom Hollander ) and his friends (and still made time to demand, unsuccessfully, that Quentin tell her if Greg was having an affair). 

But it turned out to be Tanya who was the body floating in the water all along. Attempting to make her escape overboard on the dinghy parked next to the yacht, she instead hit her head on the railing, drowning and presumably allowing her absent husband Greg ( Jon Giries ) to get away with taking her money after all. But at least she stopped some would-be murderers in the process. 

In the “Unpacking Episode 7” segment following the episode, series creator Mike White admits he didn’t want to kill Tanya but “she’s such a diva, larger-than-life female archetype, it just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story.” And he suggested that Greg’s part of the story might not be done— “it feels like there’s got to be somebody who’s going to track it down to Greg. But maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens.” 

The season ends, just as the first one did, with all the major players in the airport and on their way home. The rich and privileged are, once again, escaping with all their privileges intact, and the spirit of Tanya lives on in Portia ( Haley Lu Richardson ), who escaped whatever role was intended for her in the murder plot and wears a very Tanya-worthy head scarf for her flight home. Reuniting with Albie at the airport, embarking on what might not be the best relationship for either of them, feels like its own tribute to Tanya, too. 

White has been frank that the dead body conspicuously placed at the beginning of each  White Lotus season is a tool for luring in audiences. “When that first season became such a water cooler show [that] people were talking about, I was like, had I only known if I'd put a dead body at the beginning of  Enlightened , maybe people would've watched  Enlightened ," he told  NPR . "You realize these kinds of hooks do actually get viewers."

But the magic of  The White Lotus is that the wild theories about bloody endings (Cameron and Ethan jet ski accident? Harper murder rampage?) don’t get in the way of the character drama that’s actually at the heart of the show. In a season devoted to examining the interplay of sex and power, virtually every character has been putting themselves in dangerous situations in the name of love, lust, jealousy, or some combination of all of the above. But even though The White Lotus isn’t about death, it was about Jennifer Coolidge—and with a third season officially coming , it’s time to start reimagining exactly what that might look like. 

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The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 6 Review: Abductions

By: Author Paul Dailly

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Can we all agree that Jennifer Coolidge is getting many awards for her work on The White Lotus Season 2 ?

The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 6 was a perfect hour of this HBO drama because it continued to peel away at these individuals on their vacation in Italy.

Tanya is in way over her head, and there's no telling how her journey will end.

Series creator Mike White has been vocal about wanting Coolidge to stick around for future seasons, but what if that's just a smoke screen to lure us into a false sense of security that Tanya will survive this time around?

Tanya doesn't make the best decisions, as evidenced by taking drugs and partying with someone she knew she couldn't trust.

Quentin is tricky to read, but he wants to isolate Tanya, get her under the influence of alcohol and drugs, and get her to have sex with Nicolo.

Nicolo was easy on the eyes, and you could tell Tanya was smitten with him, even if she did find a photo of her husband with Quentin, cowboy hats and all.

It's hard not to question whether Tanya will look at that photo the morning after and find out she imagined Greg's face and it's someone else entirely.

Then again, we needed the dots to begin connecting sooner rather than later, with "Abductions" being the penultimate episode of the season.

Greg leaving the hotel was perfectly timed for Quentin and his entourage to take an interest in Tanya.

I've had plenty of theories about what these men plan to do to Tanya, but I'm now convinced there will be footage of Tanya's night of passion with Nicolo that will be used to trigger a clause in the prenup that will get Greg a hefty payout.

I was concerned they would want to kill her, but what if Tanya figures it out and outmaneuvers these men when they least expect it?

There was an emphasis on Nicolo having a gun, and I don't think that was only to show how dangerous these men are.

Quentin's yacht was present on The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 1 , not far from the shore where the dead bodies were probably floating in the water, so there's a good chance Tanya will take control of the narrative and things will turn deadly.

It's hard to believe how pro-Jack Portia was at the beginning of the episode, only for her to realize he's a far more nefarious figure than she's been led to believe.

Portia was ready to call Tanya out at breakfast when she tried to make her assistant aware that things didn't add up about Quentin and Jack.

Now that Portia knows Quentin has no money and stands to get a windfall, she should be able to put the puzzle pieces together.

But there's no telling what will happen with this show, and I'm afraid that no matter how much Portia tries to tell Jack he said nothing, he might take measures to silence her for good.

We don't know what these men are capable of. They're a rotten crowd, and with so much money at stake, they won't want their scam to go sideways at the last hurdle.

Jack was warned to keep Portia away from the house because they wanted to get to Tanya.

Either way, I wouldn't be surprised if Portia was killed in the crossfire, but I'd prefer the two women working together to ruin the scam.

We also need to see Greg again before the season is over. Tanya deserves a scene calling him out for everything he's done.

This man has been scamming her since day one, and it makes you wonder about all the times he acted like he was about to die in Hawaii.

Then there's Harper, Ethan, and Cameron, and the complicated dynamic that's getting worse by the minute.

It was about time Harper confronted Ethan about his lack of attraction to her. She doesn't strike me as the type of person to stay in a loveless relationship.

I don't think anything happened with Harper and Cameron in the hotel room. My theory is that Harper is messing with Ethan after his reactions to everything that's transpired on vacation.

He didn't bat an eye when his wife told him his friend stripped in front of her. If Harper is trying to make Ethan jealous, then she's played the part very well.

There has to be trust and communication for a relationship to function, and, unfortunately, these two can't seem to find the same level, which is a shame.

Ethan also has this pent-up rage about Cameron that will surely come out to play sooner rather than later.

The show makes us think one of their group dies on this vacation, but we'll need to tune into The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 7 to answer that question.

Daphne is the most enigmatic of the group because she's such a small part of the story, but her reactions are very telling about what she believes.

We know Daphne is on the beach in the season finale — after the bodies pop up. What if she played a part in these deaths and rushed to the sun loungers to make it look like she didn't do anything wrong?

Oh, the possibilities.

The Di Grasso boys finally going to trace their roots gave us some of the most intense and hilarious scenes to date. Arriving at someone's house and telling them you're their family, but not speaking their language is a bit much.

What did they hope to achieve? Maybe Lucia would have given them some pointers.

It's also possible there's discord between the Di Grasso family, and maybe someone is paid to take the trio out while they're at the hotel. It would be left-field, for sure, but it would be a shocking way to tie this story up.

Lucia was understandably shaken up by Alesso, but I'm not buying what she's selling. If she's hanging around the hotel with aspirations of marrying a rich man and running off to the U.S., how would she get out of the country?

Surely, Alesso — or whatever his real name is — would have her travel documents and some leverage. Something doesn't add up with her story, but I appreciated how the Di Grasso family tried to defend her.

Dominic couldn't wait to see the back of her, but he wanted to save her when she was seemingly in danger. That says a lot about who he is as a person.

Sure, he's done some terrible things, but at least shades of goodness are inside him.

Valentina's pursuit of Isabella was pretty sad. Clearly, she doesn't open up to anyone and is a bit of a loner. I can't even begin to imagine how she must have felt having no one to spend her birthday with.

The tricky part of that is how she approached Isabella. If she had been straight up with Isabella, she wouldn't have set herself up for so much disappointment.

Her night of passion with Mia will probably lead to some regret the following day, which could mean Valentina will take away her career in the hotel.

Valentina is very sad at her core, but I don't think she's ready to let someone into her life.

There's a lot we don't know about her past, and I don't see us getting much information on that with one episode remaining.

The stage is set for a thrilling finale, but I wish we had more clarity on how many bodies there are when this is over.

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What are your theories for the season finale?

Hit the comments below.

Catch the final episode on Sunday at 9 p.m., only on HBO.

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The White Lotus season 2 ending explained: Who dies in the finale?

Your biggest questions answered about The White Lotus season 2

The White Lotus season 2 finale has exploded onto our screens, and things certainly went out with a bang rather than a whimper. We finally found out which hotel guests met tragic ends and, in typical White Lotus fashion, there were plenty of surprises in store, too. Each storyline was neatly wrapped up while still leaving us with plenty of questions, but we wouldn't expect anything less from series creator, writer, and director Mike White. This isn't the end for the hit comedy-drama, either – The White Lotus season 3 has already been confirmed, but, for now, let's break down what exactly what happened in season 2's dramatic conclusion. 

It goes without saying, of course, that there are major spoilers for The White Lotus season 2 finale ahead. Proceed with caution if you haven't seen the episode yet and don't want to know what happens! 

Who dies in The White Lotus season 2? 

In The White Lotus season 2 finale, we finally learn the identity of the dead body discovered in the ocean by Daphne (Meghann Fahy) in episode 1. It's Tanya, played by Jennifer Coolidge, who dies. The other bodies found belong to Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his associates.

Earlier in the episode, Quentin and his friends take Tanya back to the hotel from the palazzo in Palermo on their yacht. The yacht drops anchor a little way from the shore, but Quentin assures Tanya that Niccolo, Quentin's drug dealer and potential mafia connection, will take her back to the hotel on a smaller boat after they all have dinner. Tanya is suspicious and pretends to use the bathroom so she can investigate what's in Niccolo's duffel bag. It's the gun from episode 6, plus some rope and tape – a textbook kill kit. She locks herself in a bedroom and, when Quentin and co. start trying to open the door, she begins to shoot the gun at random with her eyes closed.

She emerges from the room to find Didier and Niccolo dead. Hugo is still alive, but runs away and jumps off the yacht into the water. Quentin is bleeding out but still conscious, and Tanya asks him whether her husband Greg (Jon Gries) was having an affair. He's too weak to answer, and gives her one last withering look in his final moments. 

With the threat to her life eliminated, Tanya attempts to get off the yacht and into the dinghy so she can make her way back to the hotel. She jumps from the deck of the yacht, but misses the dinghy, hits her head, and drowns in the ocean.

What happened to Portia?

Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) gets increasingly desperate to get back to the hotel and confronts Jack (Leo Woodall) about his relationship with Quentin. Jack says it's his "job" to take Portia back to the White Lotus, but he ends up dropping her at the airport instead and warns her not to return to the hotel.

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She reunites with brief former fling Albie (Adam DiMarco) at the airport. Albie asks if she heard that a guest drowned at the hotel and that other bodies were found on a yacht, which makes Portia realize it must be Tanya. Her response? To ask Albie for his number. 

Did Harper cheat on Ethan?

Ethan (Will Sharpe) is convinced that his wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) had sex with Cameron (Theo James). When he accosts her about it, she says that they kissed in their hotel room, but that was it. Ethan doesn't believe her and he confronts Cameron on the beach – the two get into a physical fight in the ocean until a stranger breaks them up.  

Ethan then finds Daphne and tells her of his suspicions. Daphne tells him that he needs to do whatever he needs in order to "not feel like a victim," and the two of them go for a walk to a secluded area of the beach. When they return, the two couples reunite for their last dinner, and both pairs seem at ease with each other. When Ethan and Harper go back to their room, Ethan seems energized and full of renewed passion for his wife. While we don't know exactly what happened while Ethan and Daphne were alone, it's possible that they had sex to get back at their respective (supposedly) cheating spouses. 

What happened to Lucia and Mia?

Believing that Lucia (Simona Tabasco) is in danger from a pimp named Alessio, Albie convinces his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli) to send €‎50,000 to her by promising to put in a good word for Dominic with his mother. Albie and Lucia sleep together again one last time on Albie's last night at the White Lotus, but she sneaks away before Albie wakes up, leading him to realize he got played. 

As for Mia, she gets a permanent gig playing the piano and singing in the White Lotus restaurant after sleeping with hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore). The pair have seemingly formed a real friendship, and Mia promises that her and Lucia will take Valentina to Sicily's gay clubs and introduce her to some "hot girls."

With €‎50,000 to their name, along with the money finally paid to them by Cameron, Lucia and Mia are set financially. Lucia previously stated that she wanted to open her own boutique, and she's certainly in a position to do that now.

If you're up to date with The White Lotus, fill out your watch list with our picks of the best new TV shows coming our way in the next few months.

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism. 

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Who Lives and Who Dies in 'The White Lotus' Season 2 Finale?

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Editor's note: The below contains major spoilers for The White Lotus Season 2.

As we all take a collective sigh now that the end of The White Lotus Season 2 is officially here, we're also taking a little time to reflect on those that made it out of Sicily alive — as well as say "arrivederci" to those who weren't as fortunate and saw their Italian dream end with an untimely death.

Lived: Ethan and Harper Spiller

There was a time early on the finale when it looked like Ethan's ( Will Sharpe ) jealousy might get the better of him and spell an untimely end for his wife, Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) who he was positive had cheated on him with Cameron Sullivan ( Theo James ). He was nearing a breaking point and suffering from tortuous hallucinations of the two in the throes of passionate amore. She denies it, but he's never quite sold by her story that the two just shared a kiss. Ethan later had his own brush with death after Cameron got the upper hand on him as the two scuffled out in the Ionian Sea. Fortunately a bystander was there to separate the two, or Ethan might have ended up on the wrong side of this list.

Died: Quentin

It was the end of the line for the smooth-talking, cocktail-sipping British ex-pat from England ( Tom Hollander ) in the finale. Whatever his game was with Tanya McQuoid-Hunt ( Jennifer Coolidge ) and her assistant Portia ( Haley Lu Richardson ), the jig was up when a terrified and out-of her-mind Tanya emerged from a cabin below deck with the pistol that she found in Nicolo's murder bag. The boozy charmer from Palermo was caught up in the hail of gunfire before we could find out if he was really in cahoots with Tanya's husband Greg ( Jon Gries ) to abduct and kill Tanya so he could "decorate his house" as she put it. He appeared to be in complete control of the situation — until he wasn't. No more opera visits and Palazzo soirées for the mercurial man from Palermo.

Related : The Best Characters From 'The White Lotus' Season 2

Lived: Cameron and Daphne Sullivan

Superficial tech entrepreneur Cameron ( Theo James) and his wife Daphne ( Meghann Fahy ) made it off the island safely. Though it appeared that Cameron's advances and indiscretion with Harper might have cost him his life in his brawl with Ethan, he survived. Despite a consensus among the viewing audience that he was the most deserving of death, Cameron lives on to no doubt continue to cheat on his wife Daphne whenever he gets the chance. Meanwhile, Daphne remains content with compartmentalizing her pain and embarrassment as long as she gets to have a little tryst of her own here and there as well.

Died: Niccolo

Tanya's mafioso companion and full monty enthusiast, Niccolo ( Stefano Gianino ), came aboard Quentin's yacht equipped with a murder bag that was intended for her, but ironically and perhaps karmically, it proved to be the source of his own demise. After grabbing the bag and taking the steel-plated pistol from within it, Tanya shot Niccolo several times with it as he tried to force his way into the cabin where she was having her meltdown. Although we never really got to know the rakish Italian ringer very well, it's probably safe to say that it was a good riddance. Live by the sword, die by the word, right?

Lived: The Di Grasso Men

Bert ( F. Murray Abraham) , Dominic ( Michael Imperioli ), and Albie DiGrasso ( Adam DiMarco ) all made their way to the plane bound for the United States together safely. While none of them ever really appeared to be in much trouble as far as coming close to death, things could have gone a lot differently if they had not paid Lucia and her accomplices that played them like a fiddle to the tune of 50,000 Euros. A tough life lesson learned by the innocent, but self-righteous Albie. Hopefully, he continues to support his father in making amends with his mother.

Died: Tanya McQuoid-Hunt

Alas, it is with great sorrow that we bid goodbye to fan favorite and the only holdover from Season 1 (we're not counting that scumbag, Greg): Tanya. All she wanted was to have an Italian dream vacation and be like Monica Vitti. What she got was swindled by Quentin (and possibly her own husband) in what was truly the most tragic story arc of Season 2.

Tanya's drowning answered the question we had been asking all season of who was found floating in the Ionian Sea at the beginning of Episode 1. We got to enjoy her quirks, her romantic romps, and her wide-eyed naïveté before her luck finally ran out, and she plummeted to her death trying to escape Quentin's yacht. We will miss her, but it was a good run for two consecutive seasons on the show.

Lived: Portia and Jack

It was quite the journey for Portia during her week at The White Lotus. After arriving as a frazzled and frustrated assistant to Tanya, she had romances with both Albie and Jack ( Leo Woodall ) that would ultimately expand her horizons and allow her to take stock of her own existence. And though Jack proved too good to be true, she came away from her adventures with a new appreciation for life and a possible relationship with Albie as the two reconnected at the airport on the way home. Speaking of Jack, the wayward "nephew" to Quentin showed that in the end, there was some goodness in an otherwise wounded and lost young man as he let Portia leave Sicily instead of doing something far worse to her.

Lived: Lucia and Mia

The two con artists ( Simona Tabasco and Beatrice Granno ) came up big in the end after playing almost all the male White Lotus tourists like a fiddle. In fact, Mia came out of it with a new job as her sexual dalliance with resort manager Valentina ( Sabrina Impacciatore ) helped her land the gig as the piano-playing muse at The White Lotus. While they started out as what appeared to be two ambitious escorts, they proved to be the ones holding all the cards by the end of the season. Speaking of Mia's new gig behind the piano, Giuseppe also lived — but wasn't too happy about being fired and replaced by a young girl who got the better of him and stole his job.

The first two seasons of The White Lotus are now available to stream on HBO Max.

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The Extreme Pleasures of the “White Lotus” Season 2 Finale

At the beginning of the second season of “The White Lotus,” Mike White’s hit HBO dramedy, a bright-eyed, slim-hipped strawberry blonde named Daphne (Meghann Fahy), a guest at the White Lotus luxury resort in Sicily, decides to take one last dip in the Mediterranean before her vacation ends and she heads back home, to the U.S. But as she swims in the perfect azure waters, her dreamy immersion is shattered by the sight of a dead body, floating on the waves. She screams, and soon the police are called, and more bodies turn up. Who are they?

“The White Lotus” is peak spoiler TV (and this might be a good place to say that there will be spoilers in this piece). By starting at the end of the story and only then rewinding to the beginning, the show creates an itch that the audience must continuously scratch, and, by Sunday night’s finale, the scratching had become outright clawing. Certainly, in the course of the season, we saw no shortage of conflicts that could have yielded perpetrators and victims: there was the newly rich Ethan (Will Sharpe), seething with jealousy over a possible dalliance between his wife, Harper ( Aubrey Plaza , brittle and excellent), and his dick-swinging finance-bro friend, Cameron (the brutally handsome Theo James), who is married to Daphne; there was Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), a hapless heiress in a loveless marriage who, along with her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), had fallen in with a number of sinister, Palermo-based gay men seemingly intent on stealing her fortune by any means necessary; and there was Albie (Adam DiMarco), a wide-eyed, romantically minded Stanford grad travelling with his philandering father, Dom (Michael Imperioli), and still amorous grandfather, Bert (F. Murray Abraham). Albie had taken up with a local prostitute, Lucia (Simona Tabasco), who, unbeknownst to him, had also slept with his father, and who was being followed by her apparent pimp. And this was before we even considered the more minor characters (Giuseppe, the disgruntled hotel-bar pianist? Lucia’s friend Mia, the aspiring singer-slash-sex-worker?) It was truly anyone’s guess who the hell was going to die here.

I can’t pretend that there wasn’t something extremely pleasurable, on a plot level, in trying to crack this mystery. And yet the deaths also seemed to me like a bit of a beside-the-point hook: an easy entryway into the deeper business of considering how relationships on the series work—which is what White’s project is really about. “The White Lotus” isn’t a completely cynical show: its characters have feelings and doubts and fears that aren’t entirely subsumed by their baser, more mercenary instincts. Still, to my mind, the central point made in the series is that no relationship is detached from the transactional and that power always plays a role in how people deal with one another. Death is significant in the “White Lotus” universe, not because each season has been framed as a murder mystery but because death is the only state in which people can’t jockey for more: more sex, more money, more dominance. As long as you’re still breathing, White tells us, you’re going to keep fighting to get the upper hand, or die trying.

The first season of the show focussed on class, and the conflicts that emerged between the haves and the have-nots at the White Lotus resort in Maui. This time around, the theme was desire, with most of the battles emerging from the characters’ preoccupation with sex. (“The motivation of sex is always primary, I think,” White told me when I spoke to him, earlier in the fall for the New Yorker Radio Hour .) Ethan and Harper are experiencing bed death; Cameron and Daphne have a de-facto don’t-ask-don’t-tell cheating policy; Albie is horny but doesn’t want to be like his father, whose marriage is in ruins owing to his sex addiction. Portia, meanwhile, is drawn to Jack (Leo Woodall), the supposed nephew of Tanya’s new gay friend Quentin (Tom Hollander). Jack is an Essex boy whose touch is much less cautious than that of Albie, with whom Portia shares a couple of bland kisses early on.

Like the world’s most indulgent couples therapist, White deals with all these conflicts in satisfying yet surprising ways. Yes, Harper admits to some form of a hookup with Cameron, something that the season had been setting up since the very first episode; less expected is the response from these characters’ spouses. An aggrieved Ethan attacks Cameron while the latter is going for a swim, resulting in an underwater tussle that verges on the erotic. After a stranger breaks up the fight, preventing the two men from killing each other, Ethan reveals what he knows to Daphne. In one of the season’s more insightful—or, perhaps, depressing—moments, she responds by asserting people’s essential separateness from one another. “We never really know what goes on in people’s minds,” she tells Ethan, in a chipper but no-nonsense tone. (Fahy is fantastic in the role, but especially in this scene.) “You spend every second with somebody, and there’s still this part that’s a mystery. . . . It’s kind of sexy.” Then she and Ethan venture out on what, it is implied, is a sexual engagement of their own, to even the score. (Daphne: “You just do whatever you have to do not to feel like a victim of life.”) Later, Ethan and Harper, each recharged with the sexual attention of someone other than their spouse, finally fuck. But the congress is made possible solely through a complicated calibration whose ante will likely need to be upped.

Lucia, predictably, solicits money from Albie in a roundabout way, implying that it’s the only thing that can save her from her violent pimp. Albie asks his father to wire Lucia fifty thousand euros; in exchange, Albie agrees to put in a good word for Dom with his mother, Dom’s angry ex-wife. “I’ll tell her how sorry you are. . . . and how it seems like you’ve really changed—yada yada,” Albie promises, without much conviction; Dom, he says, should consider the money a “karmic payment” for all the hurt that he has caused his wife, his family, and maybe women in general. Giving your college-age son fifty grand to help out a prostitute might not be the most obvious form of making amends to your wife (and Dom’s main objection to the gambit seems to be animated not by any moral qualms but by the suspicion that Albie is Lucia’s “mark”). In the end, though, the deal seems to work: Dom calls his ex-wife, who agrees to talk to him when he’s back, and resolution appears close at hand. At the airport, however, we see his head—and Albie’s, and Bert’s—swivel in the wake of a pretty young woman who is passing by. Clearly, becoming a changed man might be more challenging than it looks.

Tanya and Portia’s plotline is the most delightfully twisty of the lot. In the fifth episode, we discover that Jack is hiding a secret; Tanya catches him in bed with Quentin. (This leads to what is perhaps the best line of the show, uttered by Tanya, to a horrified Portia, in the season finale: “Well, he was kinda fucking his uncle.”) When Portia asks Jack about the nature of the relationship between himself and his “uncle,” he explains that Quentin helped him out when he was “in a fucking hole.” “No one’s perfect,” he continues. “Sometimes you do things you don’t wanna do.” Even though this credo rings true of Portia’s oft-demeaning experience of working for Tanya, the idea, once articulated, seems completely unpalatable to her. Her goal in life, she told Jack earlier in the episode, is to be “satisfied,” although she’s not sure if such a thing is possible. The fact that no one is ever satisfied—that everyone endlessly tries to get the most in exchange for the least—is not just her view but also White’s. (Portia’s effective abandonment of her boss in the finale and her choice not to alert anyone to Tanya’s disappearance also suggest that she is looking out for No. 1, and that she is perhaps the worst assistant in the history of the job.)

“The prenup, the prenup, the prenup,” Tanya murmurs, recognizing that Quentin, in an attempt to raise money to refurbish his crumbling palazzo, has made a deal with her husband, Greg (Jon Gries), to kill her off. “He’s gonna pay them with my money so they can decorate their houses or some shit!” Tanya fumes. (As in Season 1, Coolidge is a comedy genius.) According to their agreement, if they divorce, Greg will get nothing of Tanya’s fortune. If she dies, however, he will finally have the upper hand, and her will to live, to win, is too strong for that. Panicked by the realization that, as she says, “these gays, they’re trying to murder me,” she goes out, gun blazing, spraying bullets willy-nilly and killing Quentin and his cohort on the yacht where they were planning to get rid of her. Tanya refuses to be what Daphne calls “a victim of life.” But that doesn’t stop her from eventually becoming a victim of fate. “You got this,” she tells herself, moments before tumbling off Quentin’s yacht, slapstick style, and hitting her head on a dinghy.

The last moments of the finale show Lucia and Mia prancing down the street, arm in arm. As Lucia stops to hug a tall, good-looking man, we realize that he is her supposed terrifying “pimp.” (Albie, after waking up in an empty hotel room to the discovery that Lucia has left without saying a word, admits to Portia, at the airport, that he was “played.”) The karmic debt has been paid, and it’s hard not to feel happy for the two girls, free of the pesky Americans who thought that they held the advantage. The song that plays in the background, however—Sam Cooke’s “The Best Things in Life Are Free”—provides an Opposite Day context to the scene. “All the moon belongs to everyone / The best things in life, they’re free,” Cooke sings. “Love can come to everyone / The best things in life, they’re free.” Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true? ♦

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'The White Lotus' Season 2 Ending Explained: We All Got Played

It's choppy out there. Let's dive in, shall we?

• Best New Journalist 2019 Australian IT Journalism Awards

Lucia and Mia really turned things around for themselves.

So much for Tanya McQuoid being the connective tissue between the two seasons of  The White Lotus . Obviously, spoilers up ahead for the season 2 finale, in which Jennifer Coolidge's character finds herself on a party boat that definitely isn't a party.

The seventh and final episode of the HBO Max series was a master class in social commentary, witty writing and gorgeous shots from writer/director Mike White. It wrapped up pretty much every loose end, while leaving one dangling strand involving Ethan and Daphne. And keeping that mystery unsolved is the point.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the season 2 finale of The White Lotus.

But first, Tanya. It was always going to stretch credulity having yet another person die at a White Lotus resort, but White chose the wildest and weirdly most believable option. The wealthy Tanya did indeed find a picture of her husband Greg and bankrupt British expat Quentin in cowboy hats together. (Although this isn't explicitly confirmed.) She and her assistant, Portia, conclude that Greg colluded with his ex-lover Quentin to have Tanya killed, because their prenup prevents Greg from taking any of her money if they divorce.

In a truly frightening sequence, a shaking Tanya loses Portia on the phone and has to face a boatful of people who want to kill her. She stalls for as long as possible before Quentin's man arrives to take her to shore and likely murder her on the way. Seizing her one opportunity to save herself, Tanya brazenly grabs her killer-to-be's duffle bag and locks herself in a room. Inside the bag, she finds a gun. As the door is kicked in, Tanya braces herself and squeezes the trigger, shooting anyone who comes at her.

Poor rich Tanya.

In one of many examples of absurd hilarity, Tanya makes sure to ask Quentin before he coughs up blood and dies whether Greg was cheating on her with another woman. Quentin stares at her incredulously, before carking it (dying, that is, in British English). Sadly, as Tanya attempts to climb down off the boat and escape via a dinghy, she slips and smacks her head on the dinghy's railing before crashing into the water, where she drowns. Her colorful dress made it look like the dead body we partially see in episode 1 was wearing bright boardshorts.

Many thought Tanya would be the only character to appear in every season of The White Lotus, which was  renewed for a third outing last month . In one of many smart rug pulls, White has eliminated that possibility. Why would Tanya spend all her time at White Lotus resorts anyway, if they're a hotspot for murder?

Harper and Ethan have fully accepted one another.

He could also potentially use one of the new characters introduced in season 2 as a familiar link. Let's pray it's Aubrey Plaza's Harper, although that seems unlikely. In a bittersweet turn of events, her eye-rolling, at first strongly principled, lawyer assimilates the same performative marriage facade that Cameron and Daphne put on. It's the only way now for her and Ethan to move forward -- whether they believe each other's stories about cheating or not, it doesn't matter. They're both willing to act out a happy marriage and allow each other to hold some level of mystery. Resting in each other's arms at the airport, they look a picture of peace and solidarity.

This is all after Ethan and Cameron have their inevitable showdown in the sea, but maybe it would have been too obvious and extreme if one or both of them died. The more unexpected turn of events involved Daphne taking Ethan to nearby island Isola Bella -- the shot looks like one of those Instagram pictures of couples leading each other down a path. It's left open to interpretation whether something happened between them, but it seems likely, since Daphne was unfazed by Ethan's worry that Cameron and Harper might have cheated together. She suggestively tells Ethan: "You don't have to know everything to love someone. A little mystery? It's kinda sexy..."

The mysterious leading the mysterious.

In a similarly messy situation, the Di Grasso men leave Sicily 50,000 euros poorer, yet they all seem surprisingly unfazed. Young Albie is momentarily put out by the revelation that Lucia was playing him the whole time, but he's swiftly on to the next opportunity: a changed Portia, who's now had her fair share of excitement and wants to settle for nothing more than the safest, most boring romantic option possible. (At least she looks mortified for one short moment about the fact her boss has just drowned to death.)

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Finally, in a nice 180-degree flip, season 2 sees no deaths and an optimistic outcome for the staff of the White Lotus, Sicily. Unlike season 1, this time it's the underprivileged who take advantage of the rich guests. Lucia has had a stellar payday, Mia is living out her dream as a singer and hotel manager Valentina has embarked on her sexual awakening. She's already less bitter in life for it, allowing her previous crush Isabella to work the concierge desk with her grateful fiancé, Rocco.

Best friends Lucia and Mia swirl down the cobblestone streets Elena Ferrante-style, basking in the glow of their accomplishments. Lucia briefly says hello to the now smiling waiter who chased her and the Di Grasso family down in a car, revealing that was all a ruse to convince the three generations of men that she was a hurt puppy in need of rescue.

It was a super satisfying end to an even better season of the genius show, Italy's fountains and volcanoes erupting in perfect climax. Maybe it would have been interesting to see Albie's father's reaction to his son being played, just like he suspected, but other than that, this was a truly immaculate capper to the season.

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‘White Lotus’ Season 2 Finale Gives Us the Mighty Jennifer Coolidge and the Meme-able Lines of the Year

By Alan Sepinwall

Alan Sepinwall

This post contains spoilers for the Season Two finale of The White Lotus , which is streaming now on HBO Max .

“Arrivederci,” the finale of The White Lotus Season Two, was in many ways nothing like “Departures,” the conclusion to the first season of Mike White ‘s acidic comedy about One Percenters run amok on vacation.

Yet in the most important way, the two closing chapters felt very much of a piece. Where the episodes until now made for a largely disappointing sequel season , White at the end managed to recreate the delicate combination of tones and themes that had made the first season so special.

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Yet for the most part, those scenes felt scary and almost unbearably tense. That Tanya is able to make like John Wick and gun down three of her would-be assassins should seem silly. But White keeps our POV entirely on her terrified face — which is more expressive in that moment than it so often seems when she’s floating through life — as she keeps popping off rounds until she is finally safe. Do a murder-for-hire plot and a burst of gun violence entirely fit the tone of this show? That’s hard to say, even after two full seasons. But as a set piece, it was bravura in a way that much of this Sicilian jaunt had proven to be before now — simultaneously a thriller parody and the genuine article.

We can make reasonable assumptions: the kid looks much more like the blonde trainer than he does Theo; the looks Ethan and Daphne were trading along the isthmus were not those of people looking to admire nature together. But the ambiguity made it more interesting than if White had spelled it all out(*). Whatever happened between Daphne and Ethan, the overall experience of the trip finally pulled him out of sexual neutral, leading to a passionate night with the lonely and frustrated Harper. And Daphne and Cameron’s unspoken agreements about their marriage — coupled with hints of pure sociopathy from Cameron — allow them to power through infidelities, brawls in the Ionian Sea, and whatever other bumps they hit.

(*) It helps that Meghann Fahy was sending out enough heat in that isthmus scene to melt a glacier, and also that she was able to say so much with the change of expression as Daphne absorbed what Ethan had just told her. Just a fantastic performance from Fahy, previously best known for Freeform’s The Bold Type .

Daphne’s philosophy that “We never really know what goes on in people’s minds, of what they do” doesn’t really apply to the season’s least successful corner, regarding the toxic masculinity of the Di Grasso men. Everyone behaves exactly as we would expect them to: Bert (F. Murray Abraham) proudly talks about how the family’s “Achilles Heel is an Achilles Cock.” Dom (Michael Imperioli) again tries to recommit to his wife, but can’t stop himself from gawking at a younger woman at the airport. And Albie (Adam DiMarco) is too caught up in his Good Guy fantasies to recognize that Lucia (Simona Tabasco) is scamming him. It’s all predictable and flat, with Abraham’s jubilant line deliveries providing that subplot’s only real life. 

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It’s a satisfying inversion of how Season One functioned, and arguably a necessary one, as it would be hard to imagine coming back to this show year after year if it was always going to be about the guests blithely ruining the lives of the poorer people around them.

But even a memorably violent and sexy finale can’t entirely cover for the rest of the season’s flaws. A third season has already been announced, and Cameron makes reference to taking his “friends” to the Maldives next year. Moving past Tanya will definitely help, as White had nothing new to say about her, despite Coolidge’s comic genius. Can White recapture Season One’s perfect balance of satire and pathos? And, if not, can his ability to craft big moments like Tanya on the yacht, or Daphne and Ethan’s long walk, be enough to make The White Lotus a destination worth revisiting again and again?

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Who dies on the 'White Lotus' Season 2 finale?

Warning: This post contains spoilers for “The White Lotus.”

After seven weeks of intense speculation , close readings of all the art within the hotel and prying together references to Italian culture , "The White Lotus" has finally revealed which characters end up in body bags at the end of the week in Sicily.

Although many fans thought all the signs pointing to Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) were red herrings, the iconic character has stayed at her last White Lotus resort — but she didn't go down without a fight.

Episode Seven, the Season Two finale, begins the morning after a wild night for Tanya partying at a palazzo in Palermo. Quentin (Tom Hollander), the owner of the villa, informs Tanya they have to head back to Taormina aboard his yacht, so she can make her flight back to the U.S.

Before Tanya and the group of "gays" leave, she returns to a bedroom in the palazzo to take another look at a photograph she saw the night before, which appears to show Quentin and her husband, Greg (Jon Gries), together, many years ago.

Quentin denies the photo is of Greg , and they head out on the yacht. Meanwhile, Tanya's assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), cannot find her phone in her hotel room, despite plugging it in to charge the night before. She questions Jack (Leo Woodall), who was sleeping in bed with her the whole night, and he suggests she lost it.

She manages to take Jack's phone and calls her boss, and the two begin putting the pieces together: Jack and Quentin are not related ( Tanya caught them hooking up in the middle of the night ) and Quentin and Greg could be poised to reap millions from her fortune if she dies, due to their prenup agreement.

Tanya begins to fear for her life, and the anxiety increases as the vessel slowly makes its way back to Taormina. Niccolo, the Italian local who she had met at the palazzo party, shows up on the yacht to bring her back to the shore on a small boat, carrying the same black bag from the night before where he stored his drugs — and a gun.

As day turns to night, Tanya’s anxiety reaches an all-time high. She asks for more wine to delay the end of dinner, before she runs to the bathroom and grabs Niccolo’s bag. She locks herself inside of a bedroom on the yacht, and grabs the gun out of the bag in tears.

Quentin begins knocking on the door, and eventually breaks it down. Tanya shoots, and doesn't stop firing the trigger until Quentin and several of his associates are dead.

If the shootout wasn't shocking enough , Tanya then tries to jump overboard into a smaller dinghy to make it back to shore. She miscalculates the jump, and bangs her head against the side of the boat before falling into the Ionian Sea.

The show's creator, Mike White, said in an interview aired after the show he wanted to give Tanya's character an "operatic conclusion."

The next day, Daphne (Meghann Fahy) is the one to find her body in the water, just as depicted in the first episode. The foursome — Daphne, Cameron (Theo James), Harper (Aubrey Plaza) and Ethan (Will Sharpe), leave the island with their marriages intact, but a lot of questions are swirling about what the couples got up to in their final days in Sicily.

Harper admits to Ethan that Cameron kissed her, but insisted it was "nothing." Ethan accepts the story (not without punching Cameron in the face), but notes there is a significant chunk of time missing between the pair returning to their room and Ethan attempting to knock down the door.

“The question of whether Harper and Cameron did more than the kiss, I think probably that’s just all that happened. At the same time, there’s some time that isn’t really accounted for and I think that’s why it’s eating at Ethan,” White said. 

Daphne and Ethan also had a trek to Isola Bella, a nearby inlet, after Ethan suggested something had happened between Harper and Cameron, and Daphne says they shouldn't be victims .

“Some of the unspoken things between them, you wonder if that’s going to ultimately catch up with them," White said. “It is somewhat of a happy ending although there’s dark clouds on the horizon too.”

Dominic (Michael Imperioli) also appears to be poised to save his marriage. After giving his son, Albie (Adam DiMarco), 50,000 euros, Albie put in a good word for his father with his mother. Albie swiftly transferred the funds to Lucia (Simona Tabasco), a local sex worker he caught feelings for and was worried she was in danger from another local after he followed them on a trip to explore their family's heritage.

Lucia leaves Albie in the early morning without a word, and she walks away in a new dress with her best friend Mia (Beatrice Granno), who was recently promoted to the hotel's piano performer the day after she hooked up with the resort manager, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore).

Albie admits he was swindled when he runs into Portia at the airport, and shares with Portia a guest was found in the water and several others were found dead on a yacht .

The pair gets each other's numbers and heads off to their flights, leaving viewers to wonder: Will Albie and Portia be the new Tanya and Greg in Season Three?

White hinted the next season could be set in Asia.

“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. “I think the third season would be maybe a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality. It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.”

Anna Kaplan is a news and trending reporter for TODAY.com.

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Meghann Fahy accidentally kicked Jennifer Coolidge in the face while filming pivotal White Lotus scene

The actress shares her costar's very chill response.

Jessica is a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, where she covers TV, movies, and pop culture. Her work has appeared in Bustle, NYLON, Cosmopolitan, InStyle, and more. She lives in California with her dog.

Jennifer Coolidge had a very la dolce vita attitude about being kicked in the face by The White Lotus costar Meghann Fahy .

Fahy appeared on Monday's episode of Jimmy Fallon 's late night show and discussed the parallels of a body washing ashore in her new series The Perfect Couple and The White Lotus, revealing that she accidentally clocked Coolidge one via her foot. It occurred while they were filming the season 2 scene where Fahy's Daphne discovers the dead body of Tanya (Coolidge) floating in the ocean.

"She did a lot of actually floating down in water," Fahy said of Coolidge. "And when we were shooting it, I did actually kick her in the face at one point. I felt so bad. They wanted to get a shot under the water of my foot making contact with her body, but I couldn't see where her body was. So she was just like, floating, waiting for my foot to like enter her general space."

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Coolidge's response? "She came up out of the water and I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm so sorry,'" Fahy recalled. "And she was like, 'Hey, man. You got to just go for it. Don't worry about me.'"

Quipped Fallon, "That is a professional."

The Sicily-set season 2 followed the exploits of married couple Ethan ( Will Sharpe ) and Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) as they vacationed with the wealthy Daphne and Cameron ( Theo James ). Also on holiday is Tanya and husband Greg ( Jon Gries ), and three generations of Di Grasso men played by Adam DiMarco , F. Murray Abraham , and Michael Imperioli .

Coolidge's heiress Tanya meets her demise after a shootout with some murderous gays, led by conman Quentin ( Tom Hollander ), aboard their yacht. When series creator Mike White informed Coolidge she would be killed off, "I said to him jokingly throughout the filming, I'm like, 'You don't have to, you know? Tanya doesn't have to die,'" Coolidge told Entertainment Weekly post-finale .

But in all seriousness, "I don't really know Mike's writing process, but it's like all these pieces to a puzzle and so when he comes up with something like Tanya has to die, I mean, she really did," Coolidge added. "This was an episode about women and all that they have to put up with and all their survival techniques. . .   there's a lot of betrayal going on in this show. There was a lot of women in this show having to survive a lot of different aspects of being a woman."

Watch Fahy's chat with Fallon above.

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The White Lotus Season 3 Cast & Character Guide

Ncis season 22 report hints at mcgee’s possible show-changing new job, supergirl's melissa benoist & 5 other actors join mindhunter star's netflix thriller series.

The release window for The White Lotus season 3 gets significantly narrowed by a leading HBO executive. The dramedy, which is created, written, and directed by Mike White, will unfold in Thailand for its third installment with a story that's set to focus on Eastern religion and spirituality. Even though filming on The White Lotus season 3 has recently wrapped up, its original release plans were delayed by the writers and actors strikes of 2023.

In an interview with Deadline , following the recent 76th Primetime Emmy Awards, top HBO executive Casey Bloys narrowed down the release windows for The White Lotus season 3 and The Last of Us season 2. Bloys, who is Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, said the plan is for both shows to premiere in the first half of 2025 in order to qualify for the Emmy eligibility window.

It's worth noting that the latest recent Emmy eligibility window ended on May 31, so both shows would have to be released before that date . The quote is below from Bloys is below:

Well, all I’ll say now, generally first half of the year, I expect them to be in the Emmy window.

What This Release Window Means For The White Lotus Season 3

It may not be long before more is revealed about the show.

On an immediate level, as Bloys indicates, planning for The White Lotus and The Last of Us season 2 to debut within the Emmy window is HBO's push to fully regain its dominance at the awards show, particularly after the one-two punch of The Bear and Shōgun walked away with more victories and headlines this year. But for the audience, it may suggest that it won't be long before promotional materials about the upcoming season are shared .

The White Lotus season 3 is poised to be the acclaimed HBO series' biggest season yet, with several big-name actors added to its ensemble cast.

Outside of the general theme of Eastern religion and spirituality, not much is known about what White has cooked up for the HBO hit. The White Lotus season 3 teaser does highlight the return of Natasha Rothwell as Belinda, a character that butted heads with Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya McQuoid in season 1. Rothwell will join an ensemble that includes Leslie Bibb, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Parker Posey, Dom Hetrakul, Tayme Thapthimthong, Carrie Coon, and Walton Goggins, among several others.

Our Take On The White Lotus Season 3 Release Window

The biggest cast yet could make for some interesting changes.

The casting announcements for The White Lotus season 3 stretched for several weeks, encompassing main and recurring actors. It could give the series a chance to break from its formula, with characters interacting with others that may exist outside their immediate storylines. But another thing to watch for, as the promotion for the HBO hit ramps up, are story details, which have been a tightly held secret thus far. It will be intereresting to see what tweaks the dramedy will make to its formula of strangers behaving badly on vacation.

Source: Deadline

The White Lotus

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The White Lotus is a sharp social satire following the exploits of various employees and guests at an exclusive Hawaiian resort over the span of one highly transformative week. As darker dynamics emerge each day, this series gradually reveals the complex truths of the seemingly picture-perfect travelers, cheerful hotel employees, and idyllic locale itself.​ Each season follows a new cast of characters with a greater mystery lying at the center of each new location.

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The White Lotus saison 2 : quand la dolce vita tourne au cauchemar lubrique

Révélation de l’été 2021, l’anthologie de Mike White a confirmé avec sa deuxième saison qu’elle était toujours la série la plus drôle du moment, au point d’inspirer la création d’innombrables mèmes. Retour sur la fameuse saison italienne de The White Lotus, un phénomène qui ne prend pas de vacances.

Il y a d’abord ce nouveau générique – qui rappelle celui d’une autre grande série HBO, The Leftovers – , accompagné par une nouvelle version du thème musical de Cristobal Tapia de Veer, devenu un tube sur les réseaux sociaux et même dans les clubs grâce à son penchant electro. Dès ses premières secondes, la saison 2 de The White Lotus nous indique qu’elle a choisi « le changement dans la continuité ».

Après Hawaï, direction donc la Sicile, où de nouveaux vacanciers tous aussi blindés et détestables les uns que les autres viennent passer une semaine dans un palace italien avec un personnel aux petits soins.

Il y a là une lignée 100% masculine qui incarne la reproduction du patriarcat de père en fils, avec un F. Murray Abraham ( Moon Knight ) incroyablement gênant en papi obsédé par la drague lourde, un Michael Imperioli ( Les Soprano ) accro au sexe qui s’offre les services des très jeunes prostituées du coin (la révélation Simona Tabasco), et un Adam DiMarco (The Order) qui doit se coltiner ces deux boulets.

Il louche lui-même sur une jeune assistante (Haley Lu Richardson) malmenée par nulle autre que… Jennifer Coolidge. Eh oui, Tanya, l’héritière aussi richissime que chaotique de la première saison revient à la demande générale.

Elle est désormais mariée à son Greg (Jon Gries), un homme à la fidélité plus que douteuse. Les unions dysfonctionnelles sont d’ailleurs le grand sujet de cette deuxième saison, qui met aussi en scène deux couples que tout oppose et qui ont eu la mauvaise idée de partir en vacances ensemble.

Mention spéciale à l’inénarrable Aubrey Plaza ( Parks and Recreation ), qui joue un rôle sur-mesure d’intello aussi méprisante que coincée, et qui est parvenue avec sa répartie glaciale à rejoindre Jennifer Coolidge dans le cœur des fans.

Toujours aussi imprévisible – et récompensée aux Emmy Awards comme aux Golden Globes –, cette dernière est encore dans la plupart des scènes les plus mémorables de cette saison, entre une référence hilarante à Peppa Pig et une phrase d’appel à l’aide que la communauté queer – mais pas seulement – s’approprie avec délectation.

D’une précision toujours chirurgicale dans son écriture de dialogues comiques « cringe » (malaisants), le showrunner Mike White prend encore un malin plaisir à maltraiter ces personnages névrosés et perdus dans une société genrée d’autant plus étouffante que l’argent et les inégalités déforment tous les rapports sociaux au profit des puissants.

On a donc très hâte de voir ce que l’homme à tout faire de The White Lotus nous réserve pour la saison 3, qui prendra place en Thaïlande et a annoncé un casting très prometteur.

The White Lotus saisons 1 et 2 sur Max, disponible avec CANAL+.