After the near-universal acclaim lavished on the first two seasons of The White Lotus, it seems fair to say that season three has met a cooler reception. One of the criticisms has been that the show has opened up numerous avenues of potential conflict, only to seemingly (temporarily?) close them off again. Bewildered, downer-addled Tim steals the gun from the police hut – but then Gaitok steals it back. Simmering, fixated Rick goes to Bangkok on a revenge mission – but then bottles it and hits the town with Frank instead. Impulsive, desperate Laurie is caught in bed with Russian jewel thief Aleksei – but manages to escape a full-blown bundle with his furious girlfriend via a window. Let’s just say there’s been a lot of prologue.
However, this slow burn does have one big advantage: it’s hard to see how the finale is going to be anything other than explosive because, in traditional White Lotus style, we’ve already heard the gunshots. And the only potential shooters who can be definitively ruled out at this point are meditation teacher Amrita and Belinda’s son Zion whose trip to see his mum has already become unpleasantly dramatic. If anything, the situation feels more unpredictable than in previous seasons – by this point in both The White Lotus one and two, the battle lines were essentially drawn.
This time, almost everyone seems to be somewhere on an emotional scale ranging from miffed to extravagantly deranged. Even the monkeys are looking as sinister as hell. Certainly, spiritual enlightenment seems a long way off for the members of this tanned, ripped but ugly-on-the-inside crew. But who is going to pull the trigger? We have thoughts…
Gaitok goes gangster?
Poor, sweet, gentle Gaitok. Somehow, he’s felt like a victim-in-waiting since the moment we met him. But victimhood takes many forms. If anyone wasn’t born to be a cop it was Gaitok. But nevertheless, with the policing of the resort becoming more proactive, the gun back in the office drawer and his (correct) identification of the sketchy Russians as the jewellery thieves at the Muay Thai fight, it’s clear he’s going to be forced into dramatic action.
The extra hot sauce in this already pungent emotional broth is his ardent longing for Mook, a woman whose affection for him seems somewhat conditional. She has rightly pegged him as a soft touch but all the same, you just know he’d go the extra mile to prove her wrong. And for all of his charm, we’ve already learnt that he’s a surprisingly deadly shot after his visit to the range. Is he going to be the hero? Or, as seems more likely, entirely lose the run of himself when things get real? It’s always the quiet ones… Phil Harrison
Tim the timebomb?
Granted, Tim going on a rampage and killing everyone is arguably the most obvious answer on this list. For seven episodes straight, the financially troubled Ratliff patriarch has been simmering like a kettle on the stove about to go off. And there’s only so much lorazepam one man can take. He’s been fantasising about it all along: first, he’ll shoot Victoria, then Saxon and lastly himself.
There is, of course, the issue of the many, many shots heard in the first episode – much too many for a simple double-murder-suicide. But obviously, Tim wouldn’t stop at just three, he’d have to kill Piper and Lochlan, too, lest they have to live out the rest of their lives parentless and penniless. I’m betting someone walks in and sees, leading him to shoot them in a panic and so on. You might say, well what about Tim’s interest in the monastic lifestyle in the last episode? A red herring! Victoria would never let him join a monastery. No, the only way out is in the dirt: death. Annabel Nugent
Saxon spins out
In the penultimate episode of The White Lotus, the resident sex-obsessed alpha-male Saxon confronts his father/employer about why he’s acting so shifty on their vacay – and whether his erratic behaviour has anything to do with the liquidity of their family company. “My career is totally tied to yours, so if something bad is happening, it’s happening to both of us,” Saxon warns him. “I don’t have anything else but this… I can’t handle being nothing.”
While Tim stayed tight-lipped on the fraud/embezzlement blunder he’s been hiding from his family, Saxon will go bananas once he learns that his family is officially broke. My theory: the robbers will return to storm the hotel for different reasons (those are the gunshots in episode one), but amid the chaos, Saxon will find a gun and murder his father as revenge for ruining his life. This whole time, the script has hinted towards Tim killing his wife (Parker Posey) – but the repugnant son murdering his dad will be the ultimate twist. Plus, if anyone’s the murderer, it has to be Saxon. Ellie Muir
Rick’s raging return?
After the big build-up, Rick’s trip to Bangkok didn’t quite blow up. He nudged Frank off the wagon. And he looked his dad’s murderer in the eye and then, well ... pushed his chair over and ran away. Come on Rick; you can do better than that. The air of seething resentment that’s hung over this man throughout the series just has to find full expression eventually.
Meanwhile, his blameless – and, we might add, stupendously patient – girlfriend Chelsea has been gamely resisting Saxon’s increasingly insistent advances in Rick’s absence. But the insufferable nepo baby did manage to talk his way into her bedroom in the last episode, under the pretence of learning to meditate – and you just know he’s not going to leave it there. How might Rick react if he returned to the resort after his abortive revenge mission to find the incest-curious American in his private suite? My money is on “badly”. Jacob Stolworthy
The ruthless Russians
The focus on the trio of Russians – the hotel’s resident yoga guru and “energy healer” Valentin, his confusingly similar-looking friend Aleksei and their absolute downer of a pal, Vlad – has amped up over the last couple of episodes. The penultimate instalment finally confirmed what many of us viewers have been suspecting for a while: that the group were in fact behind the hotel robbery at the start of the series. Laurie even saw the spoils of their crime – including the snakey necklace – when she was doing a runner from the world’s most depressing one-night stand with Aleksei.
With hotel boss Sritala presumably still in Bangkok after her strange, fake movie meeting with Rick and Frank (who else kind of wants to watch The Enforcer, The Executor and The Notary, the trilogy of films that Frank summoned from thin air to bolster his imaginary directing credentials? They sound very much like they’d star Jason Statham), Valentin and co might strike again. But with hotel guard Gaitok newly tooled up with his own gun, things could get seriously messy, culminating in the massive shootout teased back in episode one. Gaitok is desperate to prove himself after his crush Mook lectured him for not being aggressive enough… but I don’t fancy his chances against a group of hardened criminals, especially ones that are preternaturally flexible. Katie Rosseinsky
Chelsea gets the chop?
From the moment Chelsea arrived on screen in White Lotus season three, she’s stood out as the show’s emotional centre – the only character seemingly untouched by cynicism. But in a series obsessed with death and duality, her light feels too pure to survive. She’s already been bitten by a snake, caught up in a robbery, and plagued by a sense of impending doom – telling herself that bad things come in threes.
And threes are everywhere: three squabbling girlfriends, three damaged Ratliff children, three Russian robbers, three guns in circulation, not to mention the twisted threesome on the boat – even the third season itself. In a show that dances with craven desire and moral rot, the brightest soul is often the most expendable. Chelsea’s death would confirm what this series has been whispering all along: in paradise, the darkness always wins. Rod Ardehali
The Gossip Girls go guerilla?
I don’t know any women like the friendship trio in White Lotus season three and I’m glad this has escaped my female experience thus far. Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate have been seething away at each other, episode upon episode; what was once peeling off into twos and bitching about the absent party became outright attacks, namely between Jaclyn and Kate, who both flirt with the same dodgy Russian.
There are other tensions and rivalries going on that male viewers might believe are far more dramatic than the one between these ladies but if anyone has the resentment to start a full-throttle shootout, I can only imagine that it’s those three. My bet is on Kate telling Jaclyn’s partner somehow about Jaclyn’s cheating (or the world more generally finding out about it via one of the other two) and Jaclyn and Kate getting into some fight that Laurie has to intervene in. You can’t tell me these three demons don’t have a larger part to play in all this. Hannah Ewens
