The White Lotus: Treading water in paradise

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This article was published 08/03/2025 (549 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The White Lotus, a surgically scathing HBO drama-comedy (on Crave, with new episodes dropping on Sundays), is now in its third season. That means another boat trip to another palatial resort in another paradisaical landscape, another ill-assorted group of mopey multimillionaire tourists, another lineup of beleaguered local service workers. It means another welter of buried secrets, venomous envy and petty grievances, all haunted by a flash forward intimating some form of violent death.

With the title of this season’s opening episode, Same Spirits, New Forms, creator Mike White seems to be obliquely addressing charges the show is repeating itself. White is, after all, giving us the same spirits — hugely privileged, desperately unhappy people — and dropping them into a new setting, in this case a luxe hillside hotel on an island in Thailand.

While this well-crafted show remains an often intelligent, unsparing dissection of the dynamics of wealth, fame and power, it also — at this point — relies on a familiar, even formulaic frame that needs to be pepped up by guest stars. (Walton Goggins! Parker Posey! Blackpink’s Lisa!) Basically, season three of The White Lotus feels like a weird cross between prestige TV and an old episode of The Love Boat.

So, what’s the same this time round? We have some recognizable Whitean character types — the obnoxious finance bro; the woozy, self-medicating woman; the sweetly earnest ingenue; the confused, uncertain kid; the stressed-out, hyped-up workaholic; the nakedly transactional couple; the nervy resort manager.

There are bright spots. This season’s ingenue, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), is a delight, her perfectly imperfect smile underlining her daffy, optimistic take on the world. That optimism is much needed in her interactions with her scowling, older boyfriend (Goggins).

There’s a sharply cynical analysis of three 40-something friends (Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon and Leslie Bibb), who’ve known each other since elementary school but whose paths have since diverged. The trio goes in for a performative kind of super-supportive sisterhood, but leave any two of them alone and they will immediately start sniping about the third.

Other characters and situations just feel like retreads, such as this season’s featured dysfunctional family, a mess of bad boundaries, willful blindness and unexamined awfulness. Posey plays the mother, slightly zonked on prescription drugs and elongating her southern drawl to ridiculous lengths. Jason Issacs is the father, an uptight money guy dodging urgent calls from the Wall Street Journal about a breaking financial scandal.

The setting is all lush green forest, clear blue water and gorgeously appointed rooms, but it remains a somewhat flat backdrop. The stories of the Thai characters (played by Dom Hetrakul, Tayme Thapthimthong and musician Lisa) feel perfunctory.

White might also be reaching the limits of the tempting but tricky eat-the-rich genre, which — for understandable sociopolitical reasons — has seen a recent resurgence with movies like Saltburn, Triangle of Sadness and The Menu.

Once more White invites us to gawk at the exquisite pleasures of the very rich, while simultaneously reassuring us that these people are all dismally unsatisfied. It’s a double-edged approach that risks falling into have-it-both-ways hypocrisy, making audiences feel comfy rather than challenged.

After all, we’re not this bad. We wouldn’t complain about “only” making $10 million on a shady money deal. We wouldn’t be this nasty to staff. We wouldn’t be miserably mired in petty problems even amidst unimaginable luxury.

And while White might be making trenchant points about the ugliness of wealth inequality, the show is simultaneously seducing us with its beautiful surfaces. The series is so good at conveying the gorgeous sheen and frictionless ease of money that viewers can forget the cautionary messages running underneath.

Sure enough, it’s been reported that some viewers are booking $14,000-a-night suites at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui in Thailand. The hotel chain is also using the series to entice fans, with its website currently inviting travellers to “experience the Poolside Escape cabanas inspired by the HBO Original Series, The White Lotus.”

Still, it might be a good idea to watch through to episode 8 before making that reservation.

If this season follows the show’s previous pattern, there is bound to be some kind of unpleasant reckoning. And as The White Lotus and its appalling characters keep suggesting, no matter how expensive and “exotic” the destination, these travellers are unable to escape themselves.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca