'The White Lotus' Season 3 Finale's Plain And Predictable Ending Wrapped Up Its Worst Season Yet
Where the 1% go, satire is soon to follow and if The White Lotus is proof of anything, it's precisely that. The weird, wild and wonderful world that Mike White and his team created in the series' first two seasons set the winning formula for the award-winning show: a who-was-it-done-to transcends into a whodunnit, as hypotheses spread through the digital domain like wildfires. Season three then, which was released in February 2025, three years after the sophomore season was released to rapturous reviews, was bloated with potential.
A day after The White Lotus' season three finale aired, it is now clear: that potential went largely unmet this series. The storylines felt slack, the deaths predictable. The foreshadowing felt obvious, the characters' arcs flimsy. What started with a slow, sleepy crawl out of the gate ended with a largely predictable mass shoot-out, something that didn't feel like a satisfying ending to such a bumbling non-event of a season.
FIND OUT MORE ON ELLE COLLECTIVE
Take Rick (Walton Goggins) and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) for example, whose storylines internet sleuths predicted from the start. As soon as audiences learned that Rick was looking for his father in Thailand, the connection to Sritala (The White Lotus Thailand's owner, played by Patravadi Mejudhon) was hidden in plain sight. The fourth (or was it the fifth?) time that Chelsea reminded Rick that bad things come in threes, the inevitability revealed itself. The White Lotus then descended into a bust-up that wouldn't have looked out of place in an episode of Eastenders when Rick shot the man he thought killed his father, Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn) before Sritala, cradling her dying husband, screamed at Rick that Jim was his father! 'He told me!,' she shouted several times, as the realisation dawns on Rick.
Then there was the Ratliffs whom, it felt like, were rushed onto the hotel boat and off the island before their storylines were properly completed. Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) was largely omitted from the season finale, while his mother Victoria Ratliff (Parker Posey)'s strange interaction with Kate (Leslie Bibb) in the second episode went unmentioned again.
Carrie Coon's character Laurie's monologue went some way to rectifying it, but the lack of resolution between what White referred to on the show's official podcast as the 'blonde blob' felt lacking. Michelle Monaghan's relationship with her husband was never revealed, and it felt in so many ways that you left the series wanting more from her character Jaclyn. You almost wanted the come-to-Jesus, soul-searching monologue from her more than Laurie.
Even Belinda, for whom the ghost of Tanya McQuoid loomed large throughout the series, became a victim of her own circumstances. The suspense of her and Greg-Gary's arc felt incomplete, like there was never a real sense of danger for her in the way that perhaps there could've been. And the question still lingers now that the series has finished what Greg-Gary's girlfriend Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) knew. Why did she stay in the dressing room during the hotel robbery, leaving her new 'best friend' Chelsea alone? And why did we spend so long lingering on Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and his relationship with Mook (Lalisa Manobal), who turned out to lend very little to the storyline after all. Even more than that, too — what became of the Russians who robbed the hotel? Did anything ever come of Valentin and his connections to corruption operating at the expense of The White Lotus? Not that we saw.
It felt like the more White tried to dissect and interrogate Eastern spirituality, the further he got from the original premise of the show, which was that rich people are — and always have been — the problem. The combination of a social and spiritual satire felt confused, like too many loose threads were left at the end of what has largely been a slow and bumbling series. White has bristled at accusations that the show has become too formulaic. In the show's official podcast, he said: 'There was complaining about how there's no plot... Part of me is just like, "Bro, this is the vibe. I'm edging you. Enjoy the edge. If you don't want to be edged, get out of my bed.'
The worry for fans of the show is that, like the characters he so masterfully writes, White might be inflating his own ambitions. And if The White Lotus has instilled anything in us, it's just how far those at the top have to fall.
ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE.
You Might Also Like
