The White Lotus: Same Spirits, New Forms

February 16, 2025 7:14 PM - Season 3, Episode 1

As a new round of guests arrives at the White Lotus Thailand, Belinda settles in, Chelsea deals with a moody Rick, the Ratliffs go separate ways, and Kate, Laurie, and Jaclyn kick off a girls' trip.

The reviews below are for the first six episodes of season three which were provided to journalists. They are pretty vague but you might want to skip them if you want to watch the season completely unspoiled.

"Every inch of The White Lotus’s Thailand resort induces a mix of envious longing and burbling queasiness. There’s the pool, glimmering and pristine, and the endless cocktails and piles of fresh fruit at breakfast. There are monkeys in the trees above the opulent guest bungalows. Hot stone massages, private yoga, every possible amenity, and also rude, self-absorbed, and entitled rich people in every lounge chair, chasing status and self-improvement, conscious of every flaw but their own."—from Kathryn VanArendonk's review of season 3 for Vulture.

"While Coolidge gave The White Lotus much of its broad comedy, the rest of the ensemble cast could attempt more subtlety. This time around, though, the incandescently charming Belinda lends the show the opposite energy. She’s a familiar face, completely grounded in nuance and reality, while many of the new figures Mike White has drawn into his dark comedy of manners and murder lean into broad stereotype."—from Meghan O'Keefe's review of season 3 for Decider

posted by bcwinters (35 comments total)

GREG! Here’s hoping the monkeys carry him off at some point.
posted by jquinby at 8:17 PM on February 16 [7 favorites]

Just found out that Lalisa Monabal, who plays the effervescent Mook, is Lisa from BlackPink. Holy crap she's talented. She speaks fluent Korean too.
posted by ishmael at 9:54 AM on February 17 [4 favorites]

Not excited about those southern accents or how not-transported I feel when the rich family talks about their college rivalry.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:56 AM on February 17 [2 favorites]

Parker Posey is actually from the south, right? Is her accent off?
posted by ishmael at 11:17 AM on February 17

Wikipedia says born in MD and 11 years in LA afterward.

It's got a little ham in it but is pretty believable to me - I have definitely heard similar grande dame accents like that in my life. I would have guessed Charleston, which makes sense given the Duke/Chapel Hill comments.
posted by jquinby at 11:27 AM on February 17 [2 favorites]

Louisiana is different from North Carolina when it comes to accents, and even she calls it exaggerated, I now see via some googling.
posted by bluedaisy at 12:17 PM on February 17 [1 favorite]

I have a Texan friend with a very distinctive accent even after 20 years in California. On the edge of comical, but she is a true sweetheart and kind person so it doesn’t grate.
Enjoying the show so far as we meet our characters. However not enjoying the CREEP of an older brother even though there will surely be comeuppance. Not soon enough. Ugh ugh ugh. Random note: I wish they would show the food.
posted by gryphonlover at 11:43 PM on February 17 [4 favorites]

Maybe the thing about Posey's accent is that she's supposed to be on drugs too, probably benzos, and she's drawling for that reason. It does seem stereotyped though, like that whole benighted Southern family with possible incest going on. This show definitely rings changes on a few plot elements from season to season, such as siblings having to share rooms and the youngest kid being the outsider/audience point of view.
posted by BibiRose at 6:17 AM on February 18 [1 favorite]

The thing I like about White Lotus is that it is so White Lotus. Nothing else is White Lotus. Vaguely reminiscent of early Coen brothers movies, but 100% its own thing. The tension of one-percenters and the people that serve them is always so palpable and well done. Characters that are instantly easy to hate (lookin at you Saxon, you monster), characters that you can't quite put a finger on, and characters that maaaaybe are okay to like? I also think there's excellent cinematography on display here.

So yeah, I'm on board.
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:40 AM on February 18 [12 favorites]

Random thoughts...

Yes! Why do the uber-wealthy teen/adult children have to share rooms??? Remember the kid who had to sleep in the bathroom in Season 1?

Is the book the daughter is reading from real?

Greg!
posted by nanook at 6:42 AM on February 18 [4 favorites]

For folks who aren't up on their college rivalries: they are definitely playing on stereotypes in the Duke-UNC rivalry, which is THE rivalry in North Carolina, with college basketball as the center of it all (unlike college football or pro sports rivalries in other places). The dad and older brother, Saxon (!), are show as arrogant, entitled jerks, which is certainly the stereotype of Duke students held by Tar Heels, which is to say, UNC students. The "family/house divided" ridiculousness thing is actually a real thing, with folks driving around NC with bumper stickers with half UNC half Duke or half UNC half NC State.

The two Duke men fighting the two UNC women for the sweet, hapless college senior is ... something that actually plays out in North Carolina households, including ones that aren't super rich. So, this whole family is the embodiment of the rivalry in a super weird way. It's perhaps supposed to be satirical except it's pretty realistic, even as the characters are ridiculous.

They are also seemingly playing on notions of backwards Southern-ness, with addled Parker Posey talking about UNC-Duke as if people in Thailand would know or care about such a thing.

(I also note that Saxon is played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, so he's a Shriver-Kennedy-Schwarzenegger, which is as close as you can get to American royalty.)

Anyway, I kinda hate it. I wish they had made up a rivalry so I wasn't sitting there critiquing their portrayal of it. But Parker Posey is a delight as always.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:14 AM on February 18 [7 favorites]

My and my wife's criticism (we're both Duke grads but I was raised properly, in a UNC household) is that no one from the triangle (in an interview, Jason Isaacs said he wanted to emulate a Durham accent) is actually going to Duke.
posted by Maecenas at 12:50 PM on February 18 [6 favorites]

It's easier (and more fitting) to just hate the entire ACC.
posted by jquinby at 12:50 PM on February 18 [2 favorites]

I did not know that was supposed to be Durham?! Thanks for that. And I agree about who is going to Duke.
posted by bluedaisy at 2:28 PM on February 18 [1 favorite]

The thing I like about White Lotus is that it is so White Lotus. Nothing else is White Lotus. Vaguely reminiscent of early Coen brothers movies, but 100% its own thing. The tension of one-percenters and the people that serve them is always so palpable and well done. Characters that are instantly easy to hate (lookin at you Saxon, you monster), characters that you can't quite put a finger on, and characters that maaaaybe are okay to like? I also think there's excellent cinematography on display here.

I went through the same process, based off the opening gun shots, thinking, "Who will I not mind seeing killed in this show, who will I be upset about being killed in this show, and who will I really not care one way or another. "

Belinda is at the top of the list of people I don't want hurt for obvious reasons. The fact that her son is willing to charge toward gunfire for her just makes this even worse. If I had known she was going to be in this season, I'd forgotten, so it was a nice surprise.

Jason Isaac's accent was distracting because it felt like it wanted to go one way half the time and then went another way. Posey's accent sounded like a North Carolina accent, tbh, and other than being a bit more loud and exaggerated, I didn't mind too much. Having grown up in ACC country, the whole Duke/UNC thing was not a surprise in the least, and the Duke graduates definitely fit the mold of the stereotype. It feels like we haven't had a reference to the youngest son needing to be sure to join the right fraternity and that'd be about it.

Saxon is the worse in every conceivable manner. It's like they took the "bro" business major stereotype and purified it into the essence that is Saxon. I wondered if Lochlan's gaze at his brother going into the bathroom wasn't intended to indicate that he's closeted or something, as well as his decision not to answer what type of porn he likes to watch.

The build up in tension with Laurie watching her two friends was painful, and it was awkward and painful to watch her wail all of a sudden after she got back to her room. She definitely has come across as the lesser of the three equals and it's not clear if this is her own lack of self confidence or how her friends have treated her. Her anguish over the two also made me wonder if she was jealous of Kate having Jaclyn's attention or what.

Overall, the episode kind of dragged as we spent too much time setting up the different characters and getting to dislike, if not, hate a good number of them. I paused to see how much time I had left in the episode (I still had 23 minutes) and was not excited that I had 23 more minutes to enjoy. Hopefully we get more things happening and so on.
posted by Atreides at 7:01 AM on February 19 [2 favorites]

Having attended university with Parker Posey I can attest that she used to have a southern accent! Neither my memory nor my ear for accents are sharp enough to discern how different her accent here was from her natural born one.
posted by ejs at 11:43 AM on February 19 [7 favorites]

Parker Posey can do the accent. Parker Posey would rather do what she’s doing.

Hopefully what she’s doing includes a recreation of this monologue from a cut scene in Waiting for Guffman.

You can’t tell me Mike White didn’t watch that with a notepad, rapidly scratching down notes: Rich lady! Killing a man! Incestuous teens!
posted by bcwinters at 2:13 PM on February 19 [2 favorites]

Walt Goggins hasn't had much to do so far, but already he's my favourite character. I'm not saying Rick's a nice guy or anything, but I'd still sooner spend time with him than any of the NC family or the three blondes. Watching Rick constantly warring against the hotel's insipid wellness babble is going to be fun.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:57 AM on February 21 [2 favorites]

Agreed. Walt's character is definitely more intriguing and while he has been a bit of a jerk, I'm interested in seeing why he desperately wanted to meet with the owner of the resort. It has me wondering if it will be the domino that results in gun fire and chaos in the opening.
posted by Atreides at 7:51 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]

My friend texted me after watching this and said, “You’re just like Walt Goggins’ girlfriend. But you express it like Walt Goggins.” She is right.
posted by dobbs at 2:33 PM on February 21

Fucking Greg. I'm going to spend all season fruitlessly hoping he gets shot. Maybe he can be poisoned by the toxic fruit seeds instead, as a treat.

Saxon is too unlikeable, even for an unlikeable White Lotus character. Is this a plot point, or does Mike White mistakenly think Patrick Schwarzenegger has Theo James/Jake Lacy level charisma?

I hope the youngest NC family kid goes to NC State as the season kicker. Go Wolfpack, lol.
posted by the primroses were over at 6:17 PM on February 21 [8 favorites]

Those of you who enjoyed the music: the second song in the show was by Khruangbin. Here's a great live set by them.
posted by dobbs at 8:20 AM on February 22 [3 favorites]

The first episode's soundtrack is bangers throughout. Can't wait to hear the rest.
posted by jquinby at 12:59 PM on February 22 [1 favorite]

I hope the youngest NC family kid goes to NC State

I hope he goes to Hawaii and joins his series one counterpart in the canoe gang.
posted by Paul Slade at 4:19 AM on February 23 [9 favorites]

Patrick Schwarzenegger is a shitty actor and would be doing literally nothing if he wasn’t born into insane privilege. I hope the casting is a meta joke.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:25 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]

I'm trying to guess who's going to get murdered or at least who the candidates are. Is White establishing a pattern in this regard? I don't know if spoilers to past seasons are encouraged here, so I'll try to be vague.

I feel as if, in Season 1, there were characters both major and minor who were candidates. I didn't have that "I knew this" feeling at the reveal, and it still doesn't feel that obvious in retrospect. In Season 2, it felt a little more obvious-- at least what neighborhood the solution would be in. But maybe I need to go back and look at just the first couple of episodes of those seasons; it may have appeared wide open at that stage in both of them.
posted by BibiRose at 5:09 AM on February 26

The Guardian wrote an interesting (and I believe spoiler free) "Behind the scenes" article about the making of Season 3. - A couple of points particularly interested me:
1. The "writers room" for the show consists of Mike White alone; unusual for a show of this complexity I feel.
2. The actors spent six months living together in the hotel during filming. The bar tab was open but incidentals were not covered; hint: exercise caution when ordering Thai spiced cashews.
posted by rongorongo at 12:52 PM on February 26 [4 favorites]

I had gone through the entire show not realizing that the creator was that Mike White. Yeesh.

I also hadn't known the cast had committed themselves to half a year of filming on location, that's wild. This was a fun read, thanks for sharing!
posted by Atreides at 2:10 PM on February 26 [2 favorites]

I had gone through the entire show not realizing that the creator was that Mike White. Yeesh.

I have had moments while watching the women friends of thinking, "This is what a gay man thinks straight women are like."
posted by bluedaisy at 3:38 PM on February 26 [3 favorites]

Remember the kid who had to sleep in the bathroom in Season 1?

Yes! (I think it was like a pantry?) And it wasn't just that there wasn't room (somehow) it's that the parents absolutely Did Not Care because they were so self-absorbed about themselves and their issues. In this case too, the whole family is going on a huge expensive trip and they don't even notice that there's no wifi at the resort? Come on. I always find the commentary on what the super-rich are supposed to be passive or weird about to be fascinating. I do think the "poison seeds" are going to turn into something.

The cinematography was excellent, as usual, but I couldn't help wondering "Are those CGI monkeys" and given that this is White Lotus being all White Lotus-y, I suspect not, but there's always been a bit of a weird uncanny valley about this show. MORE GOGGINS PLEASE.
posted by jessamyn at 9:30 AM on March 3 [2 favorites]

I do think the "poison seeds" are going to turn into something.

If there hadn't been gunshots, I would be suspecting some combination of those fruits and the blender they keep making such a big deal about. Or maybe someone gets poisoned with that and then the poisoner is shot.

It being The White Lotus, it will probably be a large percentage random anyway.
posted by BibiRose at 10:41 AM on March 3 [1 favorite]

>Parker Posey is actually from the south, right? Is her accent off?

I thought she was doing her best Jan Hooks from Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
posted by Catblack at 7:50 PM on March 3

Parker Posey is from Laurel, Mississippi and the accent she is using accurately reflects a certain kind of rich person accent from there, a kind of knowingly arch exaggerated accent that terrible rich people in the Mid-South really use.

In the sense that it's particular to Mississippi and not North Carolina, it's inaccurate, but it's a hell of an accent that as a Mid-Southern-born person I recognized immediately.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:13 AM on March 5

She may be the funniest person alive. How many people can say "Ive got a second wind" and make it hysterical.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:24 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

I hope the youngest NC family kid goes to NC State as the season kicker.

I hope he screws them all over and goes to Davidson.
posted by Ber at 8:51 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]