'The White Lotus' Season 3 Kicks Off With Another Murder
Upon your return to The White Lotus, you'd be remiss not to notice the beady-eyed monkeys hiding, perching and swinging from the trees that surround the Thai resort that forms the setting of the hotly-anticipated third series.
The first episode opens with a regal long-tailed macaque — a breed of monkey native to Thailand, which some natives are known to worship — perched high upon a branch, surveying all that lies beneath, an eery rattling sound ensconcing him. Less than 30 minutes in, as a trio of childhood best friends — Jaclyn (Michelle Monoghan), Laurie (Carrie Coon) and Kate (Leslie Bibb) — are settling themselves into The White Lotus, Kate gets excited about the very monkeys that seem to lurk at every corner of the first episode. 'Just don’t feed them,' Laurie reminds her friend in a matronly manner. 'Monkeys can be aggressive.' And so the scene for The White Lotus season three, which creator Mike White has said will be a 'satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality', is set — surrounded by aggressive monkeys, we're in for one hell of a wild wellness ride.
On a veranda looking out over suspiciously calm waters, we meet meditation guide, Amrita who tries to encourage Zion to quiet 'our chattering monkey minds'. Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) is a handsome university student, raised in Hawaii who’s never meditated before but whose mother is 'into the spirituality stuff' and has sent her son to Thailand to unwind from the stress of finishing his final exams and 'some other stuff.'
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'How do you find Thailand?,' Amrita asks Zion. 'Well, you know, I just got here but I like it. I grew up in Hawaii so really similar, except there's no monkeys in Hawaii. It's actually crazy seeing them up in the trees.'
As the pair start meditating, there are more monkeys before the balmy tranquility is shattered amid a series of gun shots. Like rats fleeing a ship, guests — and monkeys — start scattering, this way and that and, despite Amrita's insistance to stay calm, Zion dives into the once-calm waters of the lake and begins wading through to find his mother, who he describes as 'out there'. Attempting to stay low in the water, Zion comes upon a statue of a Buddhist God, which he recites a Christian prayer to, asking it to protect his mother. 'Please let my Mum be okay,' he says, glaring desperately at the statue. 'Don’t let anything happen to my mother, Mother F***er.' Piercing the sound of gun shots, the echoing of police and ambulance sirens starts to ricochet. Oh, The White Lotus. It's good to be back (ish).
We're then transported to one week before the gun shots broke out, to a boat transporting the incoming flock of guests to The White Lotus. Rick (Walton Goggins) is smoking a cigarette as his cheerily and entirely unaware partner Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) reclines beside him in a crochet dress and cat-eye sunglasses. Speaking before the third season's premiere, Goggins told Time that his character is lost when he arrives in season three. 'He is angry, and he’s bitter about the hand that life has dealt him,' he said.
The vessel is also carrying the upstanding Southern Ratliff family, whose patriarch and matriarch, Timothy and Victoria (Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey), glance disapprovingly at Rick and Chelsea, who, phone charm swinging, proceeds to take selfies of herself on the boat. The Ratliff's three children, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lochlan (Sam Nivola). Sitting opposite the Ratliff's are Jaclyn, Laurie and Kate, who we meet for the first time. The only guest on the boat less visible to the naked eye is The White Lotus' most frequent return visitor, toxic masculinity, which reaches its apex as Saxon and Rick begin a heated exchange. In an interview with Time ahead of The White Lotus' epic return, White confessed that the ensemble cast, which changes each season, are 'all in some kind of hurt'.
'Like, they’re all dead, but they don’t know it…because it’s dealing with these existential tropes of facing into the nothingness of self [and] Buddhist themes that have life and death and ethical aspects, [the season] just got more heavy,' he said.
We also hurriedly meet Blackpink's Lisa, who makes her small screen debut in The White Lotus, with what we can only assume is her love interest, who 'saves' her by dropping her at the beach on the back of moped as the guests pull into the shore. As the guests disembark the boat and arrive at The White Lotus, we meet what may well be Jennifer Coolidge’s replacement, the coiffured co-owner of the fictional hotel, Sritala (Lek Patravadai), who’s introduced by hotel manager Fabian (Christian Friedel) to Rick and Chelsea as the visionary behind the wellness programme at The White Lotus. Fabian boasts that The White Lotus' wellness offering is the 'best in the world'. After being welcomed ashore, the Ratliff family is quickly ushered off to their rooms, not long after Timothy and Victoria boast about their children's private and prestigious North Carolina educations and Piper's thesis on what Timothy refers to, in a Southern drawl, as 'Boodism' (Buddhism to you and I, of course). As the three 'long-time, but not old' friends disembark, Jaclyn is clear that 'everybody in LA is talking about' The White Lotus. It's then finally time for Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) to make her triumphant return, this time as part of an exchange programme with The White Lotus' Hawaii outpost we visited in the first season.
There's a twist at this year's White Lotus sojourn, however. The White Lotus' Thailand branch specialises in wellness and it doesn't have Wi-Fi. 'We consider the hotel to be a digital detox area,' Pam, a member of the hotel staff, tells the disapproving Ratliff family. 'We actually encourage our guests to put your phones, your laptops, your electronics, into this bag, I will take them, I will put them in our safe and at the end of the week, we will give them back to you. That way you can focus on being present.' After Victoria tells Saxon not to say the word 'genitals' because it's a 'bad word', a sense that not seems with the Ratliffs can't help but be lodged. The family refuse to sacrifice their digital devices, and they shrivel up their noses when Pam tells them that there's no way they can be bored, as they're each going to have a busy schedule based on their 'own personal goals'. They'll undergo a biometrics test, which Pam will then use to create a personalised plan. Needless to say, the pampered and preened Victoria doesn't look pleased. When Saxon picks up a piece of fruit from the floor the colour of poison, Pam advises him not to eat it. It's from the 'mighty Pong Pong tree', whose fruit is toxic. 'Could it kill ya?' asks Saxon, an impish smile wiped across his face. 'Yeah, it could actually, it's very poisonous,' Pam says awkwardly.
As Rick and Chelsea get acquainted with their rooms, we begin to see more of the cracks in their relationship. 'We've been to Mexico, Costa Rica,' Chelsea tells Mook (Lisa). 'We can go wherever really, because Rick barely works. I used to be a yoga teacher.' A Balinese trip ended up becoming a stay at The White Lotus, which only begins to raise suspicions when Rick asks Mook whether Sritala is married. Mook says that she is married to a 'very famous man in Thailand', which Rick responds to with a 'Is he here?' When Mook tells Rick that Sritala's husband has been sick and is currently recovering in Bangkok, a glimmer of frustration washes over Rick's face before he says 'Fuck. Fucking Mother Fucker, of course he is. I need a drink.' As they sit by their private pool, Rick tells Chelsea, who is cheerfully and woefully under-furnished with the knowledge of why her partner is so angry at the world, that the hotel's wellness offerings were not why he chose the resort. When she probes, he tells her to stop with the questions. She replies by telling him that he's got issues and asking whether they should get 'f***ed up' before their detox.
In their own villa, Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie toast with white wine to each other as they cycle through which treatments each person's had to preserve their age-defying looks (spoiler alert: there are no spoilers) and toast to their friendships. Competition seems to simmer between the three, all of whom have honed bodies, high-flying lives and silken blonde hair.
The White Lotus season three's first episode is a slower burn than its predecessors' debuts, but with expectations as vertiginous as they have been, that's almost understandable. Instead, White and his team have had to lay the groundwork for a new ensemble cast of character's storylines. And lay the groundwork they do masterfully throughout the episode; when Piper and Lochlan visit the monastery, and Piper seems nervous, on-edge almost; when Timothy is repeatedly contacted by a Wall Street Journal journalist who's working on a story about one of his previous business associates and a deal he was involved in; when Laurie sneaks off to bed to escape the competition between her friends and bursts into heaving sobs; when, sipping on a Martini after Rick stormed off, Chelsea meets Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon), the girlfriend of — wait for it — Tanya McQuoid's (Jennifer Coolidge) ex, Greg (Joe Gries), who has relocated to Thailand. Chloe tells Chelsea that Greg is 'f***ing boring', and that he's what the locals refer to as an 'LBH' — short for Loser Back Home.
In true The White Lotus fashion, the episode closes with the camera panning from the window of Timothy and Victoria's bedroom as the two prepare for bed. Brimming with questions, desperate to know more, we characteristically check out of the first episode of The White Lotus season three, peering through the looking glass, incredulous at how the other half live.
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