‘The White Lotus' Season 3 Ends in Explosive Finale: 'It's a Classic Greek Tragedy'

Yahoo

07-04-2025

[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from , 'Amor Fati.']
Is death a happy return? Is it a bloodbath? Perhaps it's a bit of both in the case of The White Lotus. After an eight-episode stay in Thailand, writer-director Mike White's anthology series has closed yet another chapter, with the season three finale delivering on one of the show's core promises: who is going to die?
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Seasons one and two finished with the deaths of core characters Armond (Murray Bartlett) and Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge), leaving viewers with the season-long question of how White and company would up the ante, or at least meet the high bar established in previous finales. The season three premiere had set the stage for a gruesome ending, with Zion Lindsey (Nicholas Duvernay) witnessing gun violence running rampant throughout the White Lotus: Thailand resort. Over the ensuing episodes, fans were left to speculate on who would end up on the wrong end of those gunshots, with no shortage of characters to choose from.
Would this year's murder victim come from the sprawling Ratliff family, be it Timothy (Jason Isaacs) or another member of his clan? How about one of Laurie (Carrie Coon), Kate (Leslie Bibb) or Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), the childhood friends turned adulthood rivals? Rick (Walton Goggins) was a strong candidate, given his preoccupation with 'this and that,' but would the vengeful man's partner Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) suffer the consequences instead? And how about one of Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) or Greg (Jon Gries), at odds with one another over Tanya's death? Maybe it would be more than one of those people… perhaps it could be all of them, in fact.
Now, no more need to speculate. Here's who died, and how the rest of the finale played out.
'Fuck you.'
No, I'm not talking to you, dear reader. That's just me parroting the fateful words Rick Hatchett utters to Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), the man he's spent all of this season fantasizing about killing, only to finally do it here in the final moments of the show. After returning to the resort from his trip in Thailand, Rick finally finds himself at peace, both with Chelsea and with his own dark quest. Unfortunately, he has another awful thing coming his way.
The morning after his return, Sritala (Lek Patravadi) and her husband Jim return to the White Lotus. At breakfast, Jim confronts Rick and utters some nasty words about Rick's mother, and even his father, saying he wasn't worth much anyway. Ironically, it turns out Jim and Rick's father are the same person — not that Rick finds out until it's way too late.
As the season reaches its boiling point, Rick watches as Jim poses for a photo with Sritala and the three ladies: Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie. He cannot abide watching Jim in such a peaceful moment, so he walks up to the man, grabs Jim's gun from his coat, and utters those two dark words: 'Fuck you.' Then he pulls the trigger, shooting Jim where he stands.
But it's not over. Rick kills Jim, only to hear from Sritala that Jim was Rick's father. Gunshots blare throughout the hotel as Sritala's bodyguards open fire. Rick returns the gunshots, taking out a few of the guards, but not before they shoot an innocent victim: Chelsea. Throughout the season, Chelsea warned that bad things happen in threes. Earlier in the season, she narrowly evaded injury at a robbery. She then evaded death via snake bite. But the third encounter was the fateful one, as she's shot to death in the crossfire.
Rick takes Chelsea in his arms and walks off, promising her that they'll be together forever. That promise is honored when Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) shoots Rick from behind at Sritala's behest. Rick, holding Chelsea, falls into the nearby pond, the two of them floating upward, off on their conjoined quest toward the great beyond.
Why did Rick and Chelsea become the two tragic victims of season three? In both an after-episode feature and on the show's official podcast, White explains: 'It's a classic theme of Greek tragedy: someone killing the thing they love while trying to get some revenge.'
'Chelsea has this kind of romantic fatalism about their relationship, and you want to buy into it,' says White. 'She says to him, 'Stop fixating on the love you didn't get. Think about the love you have! I'm right here!' It feels like a nice return to the beginning where we find Amrita (Shalini Peiris) in this therapy session with Zion. And now we see it in a completely different context. If Amrita had sat with Rick, maybe none of this would have happened.'
White elaborates about Rick's ultimate tragedy, saying that he 'has this person who really loves him, and he just can't experience the love in the present because he is just so fixated on the lack in himself and the lack of love he had in his past.'
There is also a hint to 'a life beyond' in their tragic ending, says White, and 'that love transcends this life. Even as they're wheeled out to the plane together in their symmetrical coffins, their love transcends this in some bittersweet way.'
Perhaps Chelsea will meet Rick in the afterlife, after all. 'I like the idea of giving her a lot of prattle that seems like nonsense, but that ultimately, you're like, 'oh, maybe,' and at the end, she talks about the groups working divine goal, so, whether I believe all that, it's nice to have a voice of that because she has this deep sense of belief – amor fati – and that things happen for a reason. Maybe somehow that takes off the edge of the sadness of her death in some way because it feels like she has some kind of higher power to what happens next.'
Heading into the finale, the likeliest deaths on the board belonged to the Ratliff side of the equation. Timothy was in extraordinary legal jeopardy due to shady business dealings, and he spent the whole season plotting ways out of his jam, including fantasizing about killing himself and his entire family. He comes quite close to pulling the proverbial trigger, if not the literal one, when he grabs some of the resort's poisoned fruit and blends it into a piña colada for his loved ones.
'I had read stories about this aristocratic guy who killed his whole family because he had been blowing through their money and didn't have the guts to tell them,' White says of his inspiration behind the story. 'The way Timothy's family sees him is so crucial to his sense of self, so when that's at risk, he'd rather burn the whole house than face the music.'
In the last moment, Tim slaps the drinks out of his family's hands, but in the morning, Lochlan (Sam Nivola) makes himself a drink using the same poisoned blender. He gets deeply ill, but somehow springs back to life in Tim's arms. 'He has done this shady thing and realizes not only are they going to be poor, but that this idea of this self that he's created, he's going to have to rip off the mask and see that he's not that person,' White explain's of Tim's inner tragedy. 'It's an annihilation of his identity in some deep way where it's almost like, why live if you can't be that person? And let's burn down the entire world instead of having to face this life post this identity.'
As for Patrick Schwarzenegger's Saxon and Sarah Catherine Hook's Piper? Saxon seems to be the exact same guy leaving the show, while Piper decides her life won't be nearly pampered enough in the monastery she dragged her family to visit. It's bad timing, given Tim's upcoming financial and legal woes. But in the end, as they leave the resort, Tim gathers his loved ones around as their cell phones are returned and warns them: 'Everything is about to change. But we'll get through it as a family.'
'It's a bittersweet ending,' says White. 'Life goes on past this personal valley, but what's going to happen without their comforts? I don't think Victoria (Parker Posey) is someone who can live in poverty. I'm sure she can come up with some other solution.'
Victoria, White adds, 'has a superiority complex and it has extended to her kids and it's turned it into a little bit of a cult where they're all kind of incestuous, that nobody's good enough and so they're all kind of looking inward.'
In the end, White says Saxon and Lochlan represent the two arguments around Buddhism. 'Somebody who's like, 'I wanna retreat to the monastery, not have any desires, and that's gonna be the better way to live this life.' Then another one who's calling them on it and saying, 'you're just afraid to have sex. You're afraid to do this. Don't run away from life.' And that they both, brother and sister, are two different voices in his [Lochlan's] ear and he [Lochlan] wants to give them both what they want. He wants to go to the monastery with his sister, he's gonna run away from the world with his sister. And then, with his brother, he's gonna go to the parties and have sex.'
While their fates were never truly at risk, their friendship certainly was: Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie had entered the season as a bonded trio, and were about to exit as mortal nemeses. But the rivalry ends fairly quietly. After her night out with the Russians, Laurie returns feeling like she needs her friends more than ever. She tells them how much she relies upon them, as the ones who have grown up with her and know her best. Despite their differences, all three veritable sisters are able to heal their rifts without much difficulty.
'The ladies' petty and large differences have come to the surface,' says White. 'It creates pain for them. So much of the later years of your life are spent defending the decisions you made or trying to justify your life to yourself. For Laurie, what is her takeaway? How is she going to take this into some kind of lesson to help her in this next stage of her life?'
Laurie has her answers, as the three women leave the season as close as ever. But they're very nearly caught in the crossfire of Rick's shooting rampage, as they're the ones posing with Sritala and Jim once the gunfire begins. For now, they live to vacation another day.
White said the story of the trio wasn't intended to be a scathing critique of female friendships, but rather how 'we have these touchstones in our lives and how those people can create suffering for you just by existing,' he says. 'You realize that the show's pleasures come a little bit from these relatable or identifiable types of people who go on vacation. A family that goes on a vacation, or a honeymoon, or three friends. I was trying to think, what is a new version that isn't the same – like a slightly different family. But part of me also feels like (and it's the reason why the first episode is called 'Same Spirits, New Forms') there's an attempt, whether I'm successful or not, to deepen what's come before, or continue to use certain tropes where the show feels like it's a conversation with itself in some way.'
No one was a likelier bet on the death draft board than Greg. The only character to appear in all three seasons of the show, Greg had offered Belinda a $100,000 deal to forget all about their previous association, allowing him to live his years out here in Thailand. But Belinda and son Zion doubled back to the man in the finale, demanding a much bigger payday: $5 million (if you can read that in Dr. Evil's voice). Zion brokers the deal on his mother's behalf and Greg gives in, depositing the cash in Belinda's account.
Harvey Dent once said, 'You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.' Villain or no, Belinda has become Tanya, at least in a manner of speaking, as she takes the money and tells her very temporary lover and would-be business partner Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) that she's going to get out of Thailand due to changing circumstances. The final image of the finale is Belinda and Zion heading out on a jetboat, five million dollars richer, the decisive victors of season three.
'Belinda has had a lot of disappointments,' says White. 'Greg has this offer for her, and I thought it would be funny for someone to benefit from this tragedy that befell Tanya.'
That ending, White says, was actually the first thing he thought of: 'Belinda leaving with money and leaving somebody in the same way she got left [in the first season]. Just because there was some criticism: she was the Black character; she was the dutiful put-upon worker; and then she got this very sad ending where she's consigned to work there forever, while everybody's riding off into the sunset. And some people thought that was accurate. Some people thought that was too depressing or whatever. There was a lot of conversation about that part of it.'
Her desire to be 'rich for like five minutes' felt very honest, says White. 'Maybe she will go and do something meaningful. And I think people do. I'm not that cynical. That kind of was actually an anchoring idea, that she would go and have this kind of Stella-gets-her-groove-back kind of thing with somebody there and is maybe fantasizing about maybe starting a business with this person. And then this windfall comes and it's like, 'I'm outta here. Sorry.' And we love her because we are with her, you know, we get it. But at the same time, it feels very human and doesn't make it the end of some '80s comedy where you see them put up the sign of their spa for less fortunate people and giving massages to housekeepers or something.'
The finale's matters are settled. Rick and Chelsea are dead, as a consequence of Rick's dead-set vengeance quest against Jim. Everyone else gets to walk away, some bodyguards notwithstanding. A fourth season of the HBO hit is already underway, with no air date in sight. Rumors persist about the show's focus moving forward, but what does White have to say about the future of his Emmy-winning darling?
'For the fourth season, I want to get away from the crashing waves against rocks vernacular. But there's always room for more murders at the White Lotus hotels!'
In the meantime, here's what White is leaving viewers to think about. 'This season, at least from how I was composing it, is using Buddhist ideas as the organizing principle, trying to think about identity as a cause of suffering,' he says. 'I think of identity as this way of thinking about yourself in these concrete, literal terms that then end up becoming a source of pain for you. It can be a source of pride, but it also becomes a source of pain. Basically, the whole thing is really a kind of dramatic investigation. And that is why the writing is a little different than the other ones. Obviously, there are satirical elements, but there is a kind of Buddhist parable. Like the Rick (Goggins) story. It's a little more hard-boiled than something that I usually write.'
The White Lotus season two is now streaming on Max. Head here for all of THR's season three interviews and covearge, including our uncensored oral history with White and the cast.
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