White Lotus

The White Lotus season 2 finale revealed who died in the HBO resort drama's mystery plot, from creator Mike White.

“He’s not the thing that takes up all of the energy, and she’s there because of this woman [Tanya] who takes up all of the space and all of the energy. When speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the start of the season, Coolidge described Tanya and Greg’s relationship: “He’s come into her life and is kind of filling it up. By the end you’re like, well, maybe what Ethan and Harper need was just a small dash of what Cameron and Daphne have.” And while White has hopes for Dominic (Michael Imperioli) to change, given his wife’s (voiced by Laura Dern) final phone call, he is less hopeful that Cameron ever will. But now all of a sudden, relationships evolve in a place and sometimes after the honeymoon is over, things change. The creator said the idea came to him in the first season finale when Tanya said to Greg, “I’ve had every kind of treatment over the of years. Terrified for her life, Tanya swipes the bag her “paramour” brought with him, uncovers a gun and shoots and kills her attacker, along with Quentin and one of the other men. [nephew](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/the-white-lotus-episode-5-haley-lu-richardson-1235272521/)” Jack (Leo Woodall) are indeed not who they appear to be, and Tanya realizes Greg has likely put a hit out on her over the money. And because she feels so vulnerable, she’s kind of a little bit all over the map. The first season highlighted money and the second sex, and White says the third season will be a “satirical and funny look at death and eastern religion and spirituality. The leading theory heading into the finale was that Quentin was working with Greg to facilitate Tanya having an affair, so Greg could gain access to her money in a divorce (the pair had a pre-nup). The only person who was confirmed to survive was vacationing wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy), who uncovered the body while taking a dip in the water. Could the deceased be a result of the presumed extortion plot surrounding heiress Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge)?

After weeks of fervent speculation and close examination of costumes and props, viewers finally got their answer.

[wild theories about bloody endings](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/who-will-die-in-the-white-lotus-season-2-finale) (Cameron and Ethan jet ski accident? But even though The White Lotus isn’t about death, it was about Jennifer Coolidge—and with a [third season officially coming](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/the-white-lotus-season-3-everything-we-know-so-far), it’s time to start reimagining exactly what that might look like. 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. 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. The season ends, just as the first one did, with all the major players in the airport and on their way home. 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.

The internet posted its way through the season 2 finale of The White Lotus, starring Jennifer Coolidge, Aubrey Plaza, and a gun.

The season 2 finale of The White Lotus had thrills, chills, ammo clips, Meghan Fahy’s freckles. Everyone is leaving the White Lotus Sicily a little (or a lot) different from when they arrived. And Mia is thriving(?) as a hotel lounge singer.

Ben Lee Made a White Lotus theme song/Megan Thee Stallion “Thot Shit” Mashup, because tonight is the finale, and we demand body-ody-odies.

And Albie would respectfully muse on the sex-positive feminism of Meg. But do you have a sun-room DJ setup to help process those feelings of excitement? We don’t know who’s going to die, but we can guess who would vibe with this mashup.

During The White Lotus season two finale on Dec. 11, viewers learned who left the Sicilian resort in body bags. Find out the characters' fates here.

[The White Lotus](https://www.eonline.com/news/1357522/pack-your-bags-and-check-out-these-the-white-lotus-secrets) dropped Dec. 11 on [HBO](https://www.eonline.com/news/hbo) and revealed the fates of several of its characters. And that wasn't the only deceased corpse to be discovered, as one employee told Valentina that "other guests have been killed." Seasons one and two of The White Lotus are available to stream on HBO Max. A VIP guest has checked out of the White Lotus for good. Warning: This article includes spoilers from the season two finale of The White Lotus.

The White Lotus' season 2 finale revealed who made it out alive and which characters died at the hotel in Sicily — all the details.

The finale hints that Dominic will be able to restore their relationship — but it is unclear if he will kick his cheating tendency. In the finale, Quentin denies that his old boyfriend Steve is actually Greg. Lucia initially had Dominic as a client and later Cameron — although the latter doesn't pay in full. In the finale, Jack never explains everything to Portia about what has been going on. He moved on with Lucia — who is a sex worker — and he got caught up in her issues with her pimp Alessio. In the penultimate episode, her love interest hinted at the real relationship between him and Quentin. During the second season, Ethan's marriage to Harper took a turn for the worst as they spent more time with Cameron and Daphne. In the last episode, Harper tells Ethan that Cameron kissed her when they went upstairs together. Ahead of the finale, Harper questioned whether there was a future for her and Ethan. Although he works out his financial issues with the duo, he gets attacked by Ethan on the beach. In the finale, Tanya realizes that Greg might be trying to kill her to get her fortune. Tanya kills almost everyone on the yacht with a gun she finds — but ultimately dies after hitting her head while trying to get to the dinghy.

“It's a warning to husbands, babe. Screw around and you'll end up buried in the garden,” Daphne (Meghann Fahy) quips with a flippant smile. The scene pans ...

Her neighbors grow jealous of the creation and begin to commission replica vases made of clay, leading to the ubiquity of hand-painted anthropomorphic vessels by local artists in Sicily to this day. In real life, this legend from around the 12th century depicts the young woman at home tending to the flowers and plants on her balcony, as her father envied her beauty and didn’t allow her to leave his home. In the first episode, as Daphne, her husband Cameron (Theo James), and their travel companions Harper (Aubrey Plaza) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) check into the hotel, the receptionist Rocco informs them that the Testa di Moro vases in each room are based on a Sicilian legend about a Moor man visiting the villa who professes his love for a local girl.

As the second season of The White Lotus sails into the Sicilian sunset on Dec. 11, we've rounded up all the best secrets about the show to tide you over ...

[the first two seasons of The White Lotus](https://www.eonline.com/news/1354523/why-tom-hollander-and-leo-woodall-relished-entering-the-white-lotus-in-the-middle-of-the-season), keep scrolling. [Connie Britton](https://www.eonline.com/news/connie_britton), [Sydney Sweeney](https://www.eonline.com/news/1350350/sydney-sweeney-clarifies-her-comments-about-not-being-able-to-take-a-6-month-break-from-work), [Steve Zahn](https://www.eonline.com/news/1346043/the-white-lotus-jennifer-coolidge-sydney-sweeney-and-more-reunite-at-the-2022-emmys) and [Alexandra Daddario](https://www.eonline.com/news/1345229/alexandra-daddario-shares-the-silver-lining-in-all-my-children-firing)—who checked into a White Lotus resort in Hawaii operated by [Murray Bartlett](https://www.eonline.com/news/1334837/how-murray-bartletts-physical-character-emulates-modern-influencers) who, among other shocking encounters, was accidentally killed at the hands of [Jake Lacy](https://www.eonline.com/news/1341366/the-white-lotus-jake-lacy-transforms-into-a-terrifying-kidnapper-for-next-tv-role). [a recently-confirmed season three](https://www.eonline.com/news/1355177/hbo-reveals-if-the-white-lotus-will-be-getting-a-season-3)—which creator White [teased might take place at an international political conference](https://www.eonline.com/news/1348499/the-white-lotus-creator-already-has-plans-for-season-3)—we decided to do a deep dive into some of the show's biggest secrets. [Michael Imperioli](https://www.eonline.com/news/1315351/the-white-lotus-books-a-new-hotel-guest-for-season-2), [Theo James](https://www.eonline.com/news/theo_james), [Meghann Fahy](https://www.eonline.com/news/1272316/heres-why-you-should-be-watching-the-bold-type-right-now), [Aubrey Plaza](https://www.eonline.com/news/aubrey_plaza), a returning [Jennifer Coolidge](https://www.eonline.com/news/1351530/why-jennifer-coolidge-wants-to-join-the-real-housewives-of-beverly-hills) and more checked into the fancy seaside Italian hotel—with a number of uncertain deaths looming in the air. [The White Lotus](https://www.eonline.com/news/1357180/haley-lu-richardson-says-she-stalked-aubrey-plaza-before-starring-on-the-white-lotus-together) might be saying arrivederci—but there are still plenty of juicy secrets to uncover. Season two of the Mike White-created HBO drama took the high-end resort escapades to Sicily, where

Mike White's HBO show offers a few answers and a whole lot of questions in the Season 2 finale.

Nonetheless, “The White Lotus” remains something of a triumph. He eventually convinces Dominic Di Grasso (Michael Imperioli), calling it a “karmic payment” to make up for all his dad’s ills and by promising to try to urge his mother to take him back. The character of Tanya already strained credulity to some degree, such as when she finds a photo of Greg in Quentin’s home and allows herself to be convinced it’s actually of an acid-dropping cowboy fisherman named Steve. Earlier in the season Cameron has sex with a prostitute, while he and Ethan are having a guy’s night out. He and his band of art-loving friends weren’t the rich world travelers they claimed to be. In lesser hands, the dead bodies might feel like a cynical carrot leading the viewer to the final episode.

The second season finale of HBO's acclaimed Sicily-set series gave us tearful confessions, scams, and several dead bodies. All hail Aubrey Plaza.

That series creator Mike White managed to not only cook up a second season of The White Lotus a year and a half after the first one premiered, but have it surpass the first, tackling more complex topics like desire, intimacy and fidelity with grace and a surfeit of style, is a testament to his ingenuity. Just when you think she’s made it to safety, however, she slips off the railing, hits her head on the side of the dinghy, and slowly sinks to the bottom of the ocean. The former is slowly, painfully piecing together that Quentin and her estranged hubby Greg (Jon Gries) are after her fortune as she once again observes their framed Brokeback Mountain-esque photo. Portia, meanwhile, is slowly, painfully piecing together the fact that her weepy Essex lover Jack (Leo Woodall) is nothing more than Quentin’s rent-boy henchman. [Mike White](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/mike-white/)’s series this season has been Ethan’s refusal to bed [Aubrey Plaza](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/aubrey-plaza/)’s looks-serving vixen. [Michael Imperioli](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/michael-imperioli-sopranos-emmy-scorsese-first-time-1266650/)) transfer him 50,000 Euros—“a karmic payment… [Jennifer Coolidge](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/jennifer-coolidge-white-lotus-interview-1234622497/)) and Portia ( [Haley Lu Richardson](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/haley-lu-richardson-first-time-video-1076695/)). It appears that this chaotic trip, and the intervention of Cameron and Daphne, has helped these two more than they’d like to admit. Her admission leads Ethan to attack Cameron, airing out years of frustration with a sharp right hook, and confide in Daphne (Meghann Fahy). That scholarly revelation is perhaps the least surprising one in the [HBO](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/hbo/) limited series’ nerve-wracking finale, which saw not two, but four of these miserable rich bastards wind up dead. One of the more implausible parts of It was a drunk, dumb nothing!” she exclaims, adding, “And the real issue is, you’re not attracted to me anyway!”

"The White Lotus" just wrapped up its second season, but creator Mike White already has his eyes set on Season 3.

White continued, “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, a journey to death. “The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. And she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years, death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.'”

In 'The White Lotus' season two finale 'Arrivederci', we learn who was dead in the water, and the answer uses Mike White's favorite symbolic image to ...

And why else would Niccolo be taking her back to shore with a bag full of rope, duct tape, and a gun? She’s different from a character like Daphne, who sees the storm and swims parallel to it, charting her own path through the chaos. [Mysterious Monkeys](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-white-lotus-episode-3-recap-mysterious-monkeys.html),” she is hysterically upset — her face frozen in a mask of agony and resentment. In The White Lotus, there’s something comforting about our personal irrelevance in tension with other people’s choices, Daphne seems to say, because it gives us freedom to decide for ourselves how we act and react. [95 percent of it](https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/ocean-exploration) that remains uncharted and unexplored by humans, entire ecosystems in which we have no part. One of the final scenes of “Departures” is Quinn on a Hawaiian-style outrigger boat paddling far away from the shore (and his old life) and moving toward the sun and something new. Those opening-scene deaths signaled a different approach: Gone was an aquatic environment as restorative or welcoming, and in its place was the ocean as mysterious and impenetrable — not too far off from what Daphne says to Ethan about marriage in “Arrivederci.” When Daphne observes, “We never really know what goes on in people’s minds or what they do … Water is a well-established symbol of rebirth in art and literature, and White has recurrently evoked that meaning in his own work with additional layers of fantasy and surreality. [Arrivederci](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-white-lotus-season-2-finale-recap-arrivederci.html),” it is returning White Lotus guest Tanya who is found drowned, marked for death by her frilly, pink, floral dress — so similar to the one worn by the dummy version of Michael Corleone’s first wife, Apollonia, at The Godfather tourist attraction visited by Portia. The first time she tries to scatter her mother’s ashes while on a chartered boat in “ And at the end of “ [The White Lotus](https://www.vulture.com/tv/the-white-lotus), Mike White has made us wonder: Who’s in the water?

Another installment of the buzzed-about HBO anthology is coming, but who are the new crop of islanders and where could they be heading next?

[Entertainment Weekly](https://ew.com/tv/the-white-lotus-season-2-preview-mike-white-aubrey-plaza-theo-james/) that he originally centered season two around politics and power, rather than sex and relationships. But [Jennifer Coolidge](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/07/jennifer-coolidge-the-white-lotus-interview), returning from the Emmy-winning first season, had another standout showing—the question of whether she could she reprise the role of Tanya again, however, was [answered in the season 2 finale](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/white-lotus-season-2-who-dies). What will [the credits sound like](https://www.vanityfair.com/preview/articles/63936881081d9a38b8646aa3?status=draft&t=1670605153247)? So I need to figure out how to unplug and refresh or something.” May we suggest…a vacation? And will the guests venture beyond the resort [to eat](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/the-rich-people-on-the-white-lotus-have-terrible-dining-habits)? “I don’t have a lot of gas in the tank. “I need to reboot a little bit,” White told Couric A piece of casting didn’t work in the second season and we’re hoping to [do] that in the third season. “I felt like it should be more focused on men and women and relationships and adultery and have an operatic feel to it, so I pivoted.” Still, the writer-director maintains he could still do his initial idea “down the road maybe, if they give us a third season.” [twist-filled second season of The White Lotus](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/the-white-lotus-season-2-easter-eggs) (and shocking answers to the question of [who dies](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/who-will-die-in-the-white-lotus-season-2-finale)) yet another edition of [Mike White’s anthology series](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/photos/2022/11/white-lotus-gift-guide-2022) is on the itinerary. “He wanted me to be in the second season, and there was an idea that I loved for the character,” she told I have to beg off to be honest because I don't really know.”

Speculation on where The White Lotus season 3 will be set has begun online, with fans wanting a ski lodge season. Mike White wants to look at Eastern ...

[TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRVhjvJt/) is [awash](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRVh2CJ1/) with The White Lotus ski lodge dream casts. “I think the third season, it would be maybe a kind of satirical and funny look at death in Eastern religion and spirituality, it feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.” So are we looking at Asia? puts Carmen Sandiego behind bars figures out where Mike White is setting The White Lotus season 3 will get a free trip anywhere in the lower 48 states!

“Please, these gays, they're trying to murder me!” —Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) in the Season 2 finale of “The White Lotus.” (Fabio Lovino / ...

[Luca Guadagnino’s “A Bigger Splash,”](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2020-09-14/hbo-we-are-who-we-are-luca-guadagnino-films) “The White Lotus” goes to no great lengths to suggest the world beyond the resort property — Lucia and Mia are largely treated as the molls in White’s own “Godfather,” and Valentina’s (Sabrina Impacciatore) first queer sexual experience comes with a tacit quid to its quo. “Give me 50,” he demands finally, “and I’ll help you with mom.” Maybe this is the tragedy my source at HBO was referring to — the tragedy of people in stunted, transactional, fundamentally dishonest relationships who nonetheless cling to them, because it’s all they have. But with all the ominous music and shots of those Moorish heads, White seemed determined to make us anxious for the reveal, i.e., the end, which is never a good thing for a character-led drama. As for the rest, like many resort vacations, I am already struggling to recall it; it’s not that it was unpleasant so much as unremarkable, each episode blurring into the next as surely as those dinners at the restaurant hotel. Brennan: Fahy, as if to illustrate your point, lands the finale’s most potent punch with a mere expression, breaking like a wave across her face, as Ethan details his suspicions about Harper and Cam in a conversation with Daphne on the beach shortly after the boys’ wet T-shirt contest... Between the close-ups of paintings and sculptures, the slow-motion inserts of crashing and retreating waves and the thunderous thud of Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s score, I finally felt White straining Sunday to keep the plates spinning after a season that roped me in, bit by bit, with its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. Fahy made Daphne the series’ most interesting character in part because she actually seemed to be on vacation, and you could see her existing in a Christie novel. Tanya remained a goddess, but Portia was a drip (though I kind of liked Jack). So perhaps I should have known better — and yet I audibly gasped when Tanya’s head hit the railing of the boat where Niccolo had been plotting to do away with her. [launched a thousand theories](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-12-09/the-white-lotus-season-2-finale-theories) concluded Sunday night with “Arriverderci,” as “White Lotus” creator Mike White and company bade farewell to Sicily in a super-sized 77-minute finale. That said, I was disappointed when she fell off the yacht to her death. Mary McNamara: Let’s hear it for Mike White, who churned up the Ionian sea with so many red herrings that we couldn’t believe the corpse in the water would be the obvious choice — Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), with the big fortune and the duplicitous husband.

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers up through Episode 7 of “The White Lotus,” airing Sundays on HBO and streaming on HBO Max.

White continued, “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, a journey to death. “The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. And she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years, death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.'”

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. Adam DiMarco and Haley ...

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. [White Lotus season 2](https://time.com/6223583/the-white-lotus-season-2-review/) finale, when he runs into Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) at the airport on their way out of Italy. Jealous Ethan (Will Sharpe) and exasperated Harper ( Not only does he inherit Tanya’s hundreds of millions, but he doesn’t even have to share them with Quentin and company. The latter couple is no worse for the wear because their marriage has always been a farce. That’s not to say there aren’t characters who come out of the season better off than they were going into it. 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. 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. He might never have let Lucia (Simona Tabasco) con him—or his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), the original mark—into giving her €50,000. Sebastian](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-white-lotus-artwork), 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. Even though she’s yet to have her worst fears about Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) confirmed, it’s an understatement for the ages.

The White Lotus has blossomed into a truly massive hit for HBO, as gripping each week as any episode of Game of Thrones ever was, and now after last night?

While we have no direct link between them and Greg, I do wonder if there is literally some sort of evil Legion of Doom being built behind the scenes of The White Lotus with Greg at the apex, which does not seem like such a wild theory after last night. Also, we still don’t know who Greg was talking to on the phone, saying he loved them. Portia, however, was the wrench thrown into the plan, as you’ll recall Greg was agitated that he brought her assistant along. But we do know he’s either somewhat wealthy himself or has wealthy-appearing friends, given his past relationship with Quentin, which was revealed in the past two episodes. These friends, in theory, could have been the group of gays from season 2. In season 1, Greg says he’s in Hawaii on a fishing trip with friends, rich friends, you would imagine, if they can afford to go fishing in Hawaii.

Creating a season finale for an anthology is often a lot more difficult than for a serial. The last episode of an anthology resembles the makings of a series ...

There is one item that requires no interpreting, though: The White Lotus is a hell of a ride, and we can’t wait for the next group of rich misfits to arrive at the hotel chain! We can see from a mile away that everyone involved is being played like a piano by Lucia, and it’s great to see someone outside of the elites get a win in this show. Jack won’t confirm Portia’s suspicions or let on what he was going to do to her, but he has the decency to let her go on her merry way, advising her to skip a reunion with her now-dead boss and go straight to the airport. One storyline that was quite a bit more blunt in its approach, but still wasn’t completely resolved, is that of Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) and Quentin (Tom Hollander). Her penchant for vengeance leads to what we can assume is the two of them hiding under the Italian sun, getting it on without the knowledge of their spouses ever becoming tangible. Series creator Mike White went with the latter choice for most of his characters in the second season of his hit dramedy.

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, ...

But here, all along, Daphne defied the odds and found a way. 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. [ biggest shift this season](https://www.vox.com/culture/23425402/white-lotus-review-credits-explained-murder) 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. 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. When she tells Daphne as much as she can without spelling out all the details, Daphne doesn’t even flinch. When Cameron and Daphne tell her they don’t read or watch the news, she’s shocked at their incuriosity about the world. 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. (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. 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. And as a result of accidentally drugging the resident pianist, Mia convinces hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) to fire him. Tanya is convinced Niccolò and the gays are going to kill her (“These gays are trying to kill me,” she whisper-hisses, perfectly). And speaking of sex workers, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) got a real happily ever after.

The finale proves it: Mike White's Sicily-set drama stuck the landing with a shocking ending.

It’s that it’s EasyJet that they’re waiting for that really makes it sting — or, if one were to think about it for more than a punny second, it’s that not one of the three have learned a thing from their time abroad, or in their whole lives. That places it in fascinating opposition to “The White Lotus” 1, which, though filmed in high COVID under lockdown conditions, ended in a sort of bizarre coda of conditional optimism, as a misfit scion of privilege broke free, for a moment, and paddled out to the wilds of the open ocean. They’ve made it from the wilderness into — for at least a glimmering moment — the heart of society, all thanks to their ability to adapt to other people’s desires. The show seemed to arise out of the most productive sort of creative bad mood, one in which White was primed to interrogate not just our dinner-party politics but those of our bedrooms, too. And here I run the risk of doing what I think White is using metaphor to chastise: The gay men seeking to extract everything of value from Coolidge’s character while claiming to flatter her look a lot like “White Lotus” fans praising the character actress’ iconic performance. Ethan’s and Harper’s (Aubrey Plaza’s) storyline struck me as somewhat one-note throughout the series — a TV gloss on “Eyes Wide Shut” without the clever shifts in tone or the masquerade ball, as both went on a protracted dark night of the libido. And visiting the set in Sicily to interview Coolidge, simultaneously exhilarated and worn, gave me yet more insight into the ways in which Tanya is a sort of extractive collaboration between writer and star — one in which White assigns to Coolidge more than she thinks she can handle, and she soars every time. And then she murders them in a brutal spree before falling to her accidental death, off the edge of the boat. I’d had great sympathy for Tanya in the first season, for all the ways she was human, including her ability to be dreadful to the staff. Which meant that I couldn’t credibly claim the show was in the hunt for the best of the year: After all, I didn’t know how it ended, and whether or not it stuck the landing. In her first season, Tanya moved along a recursive journey from A to somewhere between A and B and then back again: She edged ever so slightly outside of herself in order to begin to show compassion to a hotel staffer, then remembered she was rich and didn’t have to. It was a complete story, but it achieves a sort of comic sublimity in having been flipped, and a tragedy in flipping once more.

Seasons 1 and 2 of 'The White Lotus' were set in Hawaii and Italy, respectively — everything to know about season 3.

[Connie Britton](https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrities/connie-britton/), [Sydney Sweeney](https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrities/sydney-sweeney/), [Murray Bartlett](https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/white-lotus-creator-star-murray-bartlett-break-down-finale/) and more. [didn’t want to do something](https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/pictures/stars-whove-regretted-playing-certain-roles-over-the-years/) that we had already done,” he said. [Variety](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/the-white-lotus-episode-3-sex-workers-lavventura-jennifer-coolidge-1235429639/) in November 2022. “ [Obviously people loved her](https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/the-white-lotus-cast-cant-get-enough-of-jennifer-coolidge/), and she’s my friend. What’s [fun for me is doing a shape-shifting show](https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-body/pictures/celebrities-whove-lost-or-gained-weight-for-movie-roles-2013111/) and trying not to repeat. [continued to reach new heights in season 2](https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/aubrey-plaza-reveals-which-white-lotus-costar-stalked-her/), which is the ultimate testament to Mike’s raw, unparalleled vision. Murray Abraham — to feel different than the satirical series’ debut. And if we went to Italy without Jennifer, she would be so mad,” he told [Jennifer Coolidge](https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrities/jennifer-coolidge/), who [won an Emmy for her portrayal](https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/emmys-2022-jennifer-coolidge-wins-dances-off-stage/) of Tanya McQuoid, was one of only two actors from season 1 to return for the next installment, which takes place in Italy. [School of Rock ](https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/pictures/school-of-rock-cast-jack-black-joan-cusack-more/)screenwriter wanted season 2 — which features A-listers including [Aubrey Plaza](https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrities/aubrey-plaza/), [Michael Imperioli ](https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/michael-imperioli-shares-tribute-to-late-james-gandolfini/)and F. His courage to explore the uncharted waters of the human psyche, paired with his signature irreverent humor and buoyant directing style, have us all dreaming of more vacation days at the resort we’ve come to adore. [Mike White](https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/white-lotus-creator-cast-survivor-teammate-on-hbo-show/)’s anthology series [The White Lotus](https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/pictures/white-lotus-season-2-everything-to-know-about-the-hbo-series/) has officially been renewed for a third season.

Though his character Christopher Moltisani died a few episodes before the finale, producer David Chase told the actor how it would all end, that it would just ...

When Imperioli and I spoke in November, he was preparing to go the next day to the funeral for Abraham’s wife of 60 years who died earlier that month. “Maybe it's good because it keeps you honest and keeps you from phoning it in because you still have a drive to be good.” [a new series](https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/michael-imperioli-alec-berg-hbo-1234898249/) with [Barry](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a40322202/barry-season-4/) and [Curb Your Enthusiasm](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a30731009/curb-your-enthusiasm-better-with-larry-david-ex-wife-cheryl/) writer Alec Berg for HBO—they just got back notes on their second draft and he hopes the momentum of White Lotus will help move it along. The practices helped and the cast became close—particularly Imperioli and Abraham, who often went out to dinner with Imperioli and his wife during filming. Imperioli was in his early 30s when he was cast as Christopher Moltisani, the pugnacious nephew figure to mafia boss Tony Soprano; the actor is 56 now and his signature coiffed hair is silver, but he is recognized for that role more than ever thanks to a new generation [he first season of ](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36973013/white-lotus-hbo-review/) [White Lotus](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36973013/white-lotus-hbo-review/), which was an instant sensation in 2021—until his manager insisted he binge it after seeing the actor’s first attempt at his audition tape. “I needed to find someone who is a great actor and grounded, credible, and honest, and, at the same time, likable to men and to women, who is somebody that you're gonna want to be in his company, even though you know these things about him. “I don’t get why people want to know—why they want to have you spoil the whole thing,” he says with a shrug. “I tend to take a while before I look at stuff that I do know, like maybe a long time,” he says. But at the same time, I think what [writer and director] Mike [White] is saying is that you can't deny sexual attraction, but that doesn't mean you have to act on it all the time. He was privy to the end of the most talked-about, most polarizing finale in television history: [The Sopranos](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a38145579/sopranos-ending-tony-fate-explained-david-chase-interview/). [the finale of The White Lotus](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a42166307/white-lotus-season-2-finale-theories-killer-predictions/) and Imperioli will absolutely not budge, no matter how I try to coax him, into giving me a clue about who ends up dead in the final episode.

Spoiler alert! The Season 2 finale of "The White Lotus" answered some questions, but raised a whole lot more.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Jack leaves Portia scared and suspicious, by the side of the road, but she takes his advice not to get involved. 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. It is akin to the tragedy of the Season 1 finale, although in many ways 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. It was a stunner, but it also felt inevitable, as Tanya seemed trapped by each move Quentin and his compatriots made on his yacht.

Theo James on what he thinks really happened between Cameron and Harper in season two of 'The White Lotus' and whether his children with Daphne are actually ...

There are videos making the rounds of you all dancing behind the scenes and generally having a good time. We wanted to make you think, Is it just a combination of Ethan’s paranoia and jealousy? But then I even forgot about the yogurt, so when you just said that, I was like, Jesus Christ, he’s unapologetically such a bad person. That’s why we ultimately wanted that fight to come from a place where Cameron gets confronted and is like, No, what the fuck? They’ve evolved away from each other as friends and now have basically polar opposite visions of the world in front of them. I haven’t seen the episode yet, but Cameron doesn’t give a shit. We did that scene toward the end of the shoot, and we did different versions. He does love his friend, even though he’s competitive with him and wants to dominate him, and he does love his wife. He’s trying to own his friend and own his wife in a search for control. Is that why Cameron was pushing Ethan to get with Mia and Lucia? Although Cameron has elements of being controlling and domineering, he is also loving in his own way, which, for me, made him compelling. “When you do a character, you have to find some way to identify with them,” he tells Vulture.

In an interview with NPR's Fresh Air last week, the writer and director Mike White suggested that his hit HBO series The White Lotus had less in common with ...

The impulse to follow in the footsteps of high-status people, emulating their experiences and then, by sharing, being emulated in turn? Week by week, The White Lotus achieved what only HBO series, [Taylor Swift ](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/taylor-swift-midnights-album-review/671811/) [album drops](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/taylor-swift-midnights-album-review/671811/), and Florence Pugh’s Instagram seem to be able to manage these days: taking over the discourse and leaving very few unsatisfied. (Even Mia and Lucia walked down a busy shopping street arm in arm, jubilant in floral dresses, waving at the notably nonviolent Alessio, just as they had in the first episode.) Meanwhile, Jack, the muscle-bound Essex boy charged with distracting (and possibly doing away with) Portia while Tanya was being dealt with, dropped her on an empty street by the airport instead, his COCK baseball cap seeming to linger unnervingly in one’s memory like the Cheshire Cat’s smile. [Season 2](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/white-lotus-season-2-review/671938/), including the questions of why Lucia and Mia, the sex worker and the wannabe pianist, seemed physically stuck at the hotel, sleeping on sun loungers instead of going home; why every guest at the White Lotus went to Sicily—Sicily!—only to eat all their meals in the same anemic on-site restaurant; and what happened to Tanya in the finale. Season 2 of The White Lotus, in particular, felt like an aggregation of different source materials, many as fascinatingly cerebral as they were delightfully familiar.

Early in the episode, Ethan accuses Harper of cheating on him with Cameron. After confronting Cameron—and nearly drowning him in the process!—he finds Daphne to ...

Maybe just the thought of Harper sleeping with his friend (which, for the record, she swears didn’t happen) was enough to reignite the flame. Do Ethan and Daphne go there to decompress, or do they sleep with each other in a fit of revenge? The camera cuts away before we see what happens next, but boy, do they leave a lot to the imagination. Maybe she simply feels for Etha—who is experiencing that level of betrayal for the first time? After confronting Cameron—and nearly drowning him in the process!—he finds Daphne to deliver the news. Early in the episode, Ethan accuses Harper of cheating on him with Cameron.

Will Sharpe, who plays Ethan, sat down with Variety to reflect on the season.

I’ve written a film script, which is a love story set against a period of American history that I think is slightly underexplored and that I wanted to write about for a while. I think he realizes that he wants to fight for the marriage, and that he has to fight for the marriage. I think there is a sort of innate competitiveness in Ethan, and he probably tells himself that he’s someone wants to have status because he’s earned it, and not to sort of go around demanding it. This fear of infidelity and the consequences have sort of hung over this — particularly Ethan and Harper, but all four of them — in different ways across the series. I do find that so funny that after the day that they’ve had, they just come over and sit down with Ethan and Harper. And so I was mindful of that, in the playing of him through the series, always having an eye on the endgame, which for me was that ultimately, all of his actions, whether they’re kind of questionable or laudable, are kind of motivated by love and wanting to get back to a place with Harper that he thinks they should be in. The friendship he has with Cameron is so interesting and fraught. We choreographed it a day or two before with the stunt coordinators, and had a lot of fun trying to work out what’s the best sort of level of trying to make this feel real, and exciting, but also, kind of like two people who don’t really know how to fight going at each other. Ethan seemed to be bubbling up all season, and finally snapped in the finale. And I guess initially, Harper is the one who, as you say, is kind of a little bit judgmental of them. It was such a pleasure to be a part of that. That is exacerbated by the company of Daphne and Cameron, and all the different ways in which that matrix kind of interacts with itself.

First, the plot. In L'Avventura, Vitti plays Claudia, who joins her friend Anna and Anna's boyfriend on a yachting jaunt in the Mediterranean. During a brief ...

And while we don’t know if Greg is cheating on her, we know that Tanya’s preoccupied with that question even after she’s discovered he hired people to kill her for her money—tragically, they are too full of the bullets she’s just pumped into them to answer—which does seem like a kind of madness, perhaps even enough to distract her when she makes her slip-and-fall plunge off the boat and kills herself. You don’t have to let your partner sleep with someone else, but you can’t expect them not to want to, and if you can’t handle the answers, there’s nothing wrong with not asking the questions. In the finale, tensions between the season’s two married couples come to a head as Ethan, whom Harper suspects of having had sex with a prostitute while she was away for the night with Daphne, comes to suspect Harper of having had sex with Cameron. [Eros is sick](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/100-lavventura-cannes-statement)” and humanity was in the grip of a “rigid and stereotyped morality.” For all of their intellectual ideas and formal majesty, Antonioni’s movies have endured in part because of—not to put too fine a point on it—the extreme hotness of their leading actors. Daphne has some experience in these matters, and she gives Ethan the same advice she gave Harper: Do whatever you need to do to feel as if you’re even. But the shift from her customary passive aggression to open hostility—she calls Cameron “an idiot” over dinner—sets Ethan on edge, and he presses Harper until she confesses: The two did get drunk, and they did go back to their rooms, and they did kiss. (Tanya, as well as a bunch of “these gays.”) We find out that Lucia (Simona Tabasco) was definitely playing Albie (Adam DiMarco) and the man who played the part of the pimp she needed 50,000 Euros to escape is just a doorman at a nearby hotel. [hot to trot](https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/white-lotus-season-2-aubrey-plaza-jennifer-coolidge.html), but they can’t seem to get on the same page, sexually speaking. Uncertain whether their spouses have had sex but knowing for sure that they came close, Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) walk across the low-tide sand to Isola Bella, disappearing into the forest as the camera watches from a distance. It’s Plaza’s Harper who gets the charged looks in that L’Avventura pastiche and Tanya who ends up disappearing off a boat, even if it doesn’t take that long for her body to be found. The scene in which a woman walks through a Sicilian courtyard and is menacingly leered at by a gathering crowd of men was re-created in the same location and reenacted shot for shot, with Aubrey Plaza standing in for the iconic Monica Vitti. As she and Anna’s boyfriend search for Anna, who it’s speculated may have died by suicide, they develop an attraction to each other and eventually have sex, although Claudia is consumed with feelings of betrayal toward her missing friend.

Here's who lives, who dies, and who leaves Italy changed forever in The White Lotus season 2 finale.

But, Mia at least seems to genuinely like Valentina and promises that she and Lucia will take her out to clubs and help her meet women. Ostensibly, this money is meant to help her get away from the abusive and dangerous pimp that seemingly chased her and the Di Grasso family through the countryside in the season’s penultimate episode, but that shadowy figure never actually existed and there was never any real threat to Lucia’s life or safety. He warns her that she doesn’t want to mess with these powerful people and drops her missing phone out the window as he drives away. After a first season that saw locals and service workers repeatedly forced to suffer at the hands of the White Lotus’s uber-rich guests, it’s wildly satisfying to see the non-elites notch some significant wins this time around. Was he supposed to kill her on the way back to the resort? Yes, he was clearly supposed to keep her busy and out of the way—he steals her phone, brazenly lies about it, and repeatedly delays their return to Taormina—but he also seemed to genuinely like her, which makes his decision to let her go feel extra murky. With some help from Portia (Haley Lu Richardson)—who’s having her own problems trying to figure out the reasons for Jack’s (Leo Woodall) extremely suss behavior after he steals her phone and refuses to take her back to the group—Tanya figures out that Greg and Quentin have been plotting to stage her murder. She tells her husband Ethan (Will Sharpe) that yes, Cameron (Theo James) came on to her and, yes, she accepted her suggestion that they go upstairs together. The rest of the season’s deaths—sorry everyone who was predicting one of the Di Grasso men was a goner—are basically the gays who were part of the plan to kill Tanya, including Quentin (Tom Hollander), Didier (Bruno Gouery), and her hook-up from last week Niccolo (Stefano Gianino). (I’m still so mad that Tanya essentially never interacted with the Sullivan/Spillar quartet.) But Coolidge gets several of the season’s best lines—prepare yourself for the inevitable memes!—and ultimately goes out as the result of a freak stupid accident rather than getting murdered by a man. He apparently has a lengthy history with Tanya’s husband Greg (Jon Gries), whose prenuptial agreement means he won’t get any money if the pair divorce, but who stands to inherit it all if she dies. [The White Lotus](https://www.denofgeek.com/the-white-lotus/) has come to an end, filled with suspicion, betrayal, and a variety of rich people behaving badly.