So, ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Was Bad

I was waiting until the finale to see if my suspicions were right about this season and yes, in fact, season 3 of The White Lotus was not good. It was bad.

The White Lotus season 3 is full of decent individual moments and some good individual performances, but the way this was scripted was awful with predictable plotlines, bizarre tropes and characters that ultimately went nowhere interesting for the duration of the season.

We might as well start with Rick, who we now know was the instigator of the shooting and what would end up being five total deaths, including his own. It made literally no sense at all that Rick would go to Bangkok, threaten a powerful man with a gun in his face, then casually stroll back to the hotel the man owns to have brunch with his girlfriend. Hell, you don’t go back at all, you just tell Chelsea to get on a plane immediately and get back to meet you in America. What did he think was going to happen? He’s not a stupid character, but this is a very stupid script.

As for the shootout, I predicted this, but I still cannot believe they actually went through it. They did in fact pull a Darth Vader where it was revealed that Jim was Rick’s father, something pretty much yelled from the rooftops during their first encounter, and the shock would have been if this was not true. It’s just absurd they actually dusted this one off to use in the show.

The White Lotus season 3 also gave us possibly the single worst character in series history in the form of Mook. As I suspected no, she did not have anything to do with the robbery, a common fan theory, but it’s clear now her character only existed to toy with Gaitok and eventually, nudge him toward violence in the series’ last few moments. She’s a completely siloed character with no story of her own. I didn’t want to believe this, but I genuinely think pop icon Lisa was cast here for the international attention it would bring, not because they needed her. This was not her fault, and she’s a perfectly good actress, but they gave her absolutely nothing to work with.

The Gaitok ending is…fine, I guess. Forgoing his supposedly peaceful nature to shoot Rick (in the back, unarmed, carrying a woman I might add, which is a lot worse than shooting someone say, pointing a gun at him). But what doesn’t make sense after this is that if he’s now this badass bodyguard, why he wouldn’t earn extra points by turning in Valentin for the robbery? He’s going to kill a guy but not get some criminals arrested because it would be too mean? What?

The Ratliff storyline ended up being a massive disappointment in the end, despite some good individual performances here from Parker Posey and Patrick Schwarzenegger over the course of the season. Timothy’s plan ended up being a Jonestown-like killing of his family with poison seeds, but accidentally almost killing the one son he was not trying to kill. What was the idea here? He asked Lochlan whether he would be okay with no money, which made him spare him. Did he ask Lochlan if he would be okay if his father murdering his entire family in front of him on vacation, leaving him as the only surviving member? Then, finally, the entire resolution to this is that the Ratliff’s finally check their phones and realize what’s happening. The end. Insane anti-climax. I thought for sure this was leading them to staying in Thailand at the last minute to hide like all the other rich white guys, but no, it was just this.

The Melinda and Greg storyline surprised me in the sense that it just…ended. She squeezes more money out of him. She leaves. The one thing that worked here was that she does to Pornchai what Tanya originally did to her, promising to start a business with her and then just leaving with all her money. The most disappointing aspect of this Greg finale is what the show did to poor Chloe, who was one of the best characters of the entire season and she literally gets two lines in the entire episode.

Somehow, in the end, the storyline with the three women worked the best, at least on an emotionally complex level with their evolving dynamic. This extracted a potentially Emmy-worthy performance from Carrie Coon, especially in this final episode.

The White Lotus is well-shot, well-scored, well-cast and well-acted. But Mike White has got to start writing more coherent, more interesting storylines going forward, and perhaps he should no longer be writing and directing every single episode of this series himself. It’s losing steam.

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