Latest news with #AmorFati
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jason Isaacs Says ‘The White Lotus' Season 3 Was the ‘Saddest' Role He's Ever Had: ‘I Don't Know If I Can Do This'
[Editor's note: The following article contains spoilers for 'The White Lotus' Season 3, Episode 8, 'Amor Fati.'] Jason Isaacs considers his 'White Lotus' character arc to be his 'lowest point' emotionally as an actor. The 'White Lotus' Season 3 star detailed during 'CNN News Central' what it was like to get into the headspace of a patriarch who almost poisons his family to hide his financial ruin. (Don't worry, they all lived.) More from IndieWire Mike White Says Critics Are 'Meaner' Toward 'The White Lotus' After Its Success 'Daredevil: Born Again' Hurtles Toward Its Climax with an Operatic Episode 'That's the lowest point I've ever been, you know, as an actor – not as an actor, I mean, it's a magnificent show – but that's one of the saddest things I've ever done, a man who is about to – spoiler, cover your ears, cover the screen – kill his entire family and kill himself,' Isaacs said. 'And when I read the scripts, I thought, I don't know if I can do this. Like, I don't know how, if I can do it convincingly, believe, or if I can believe myself that I would ever do that. And watching that, it just reminded me of how unbelievably sad I was that day.' He added, 'I mean, people think acting is pretending. You decide to pull a face or decide to do something with your voice. It's not really. You just try and be the thing.' Of course, Isaacs' onscreen family is spared, to varying degrees of audience criticisms of the Season 3 finale. Isaacs recalled how even he and his fellow ensemble co-stars were 'sobbing' while watching the bloody final episode. 'We had a finale event on Sunday where we watched it with a big audience, and we all held each other's hands a lot of the time,' Isaacs said. 'And then we were kind of sobbing and holding each other a bit like the end of summer camp at the end. I don't know how much it was to do with the story, how much it was to do with the fact that we've been on this extraordinary adventure, and now we return to normal life.' He particularly applauded Carrie Coon's now viral monologue about the meaning of life. 'Yes, I love the three women,' Isaacs said of his favorite storyline. 'I thought Carrie Coon on Sunday night, when she gave that speech, theirs is the least melodramatic story. There's no, you know, drugs or murder or, you know, suicide. But just the notion that time is going by and that she, you know, the people she's known forever are more important to her than anything else. She broke everyone's heart. The whole audience was sobbing.' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
Telegraph
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The White Lotus, season 3 finale review: A bloody, uncomfortable journey to true enlightenment
'Isn't there enough money here for everyone to get their happy ending?' asked Belinda's son Zion, as this curious series of The White Lotus (Sky Atlantic) came to a curious end. The answer, Zion, is no (he clearly hasn't watched The White Lotus), and as our protagonists groped for enlightenment in the final days of their luxury spa trip to Thailand, the show's creator posed a thornier question: what even is a happy ending anyway? If you haven't watched the season eight finale, Amor Fati, then look away now. Writer and director Mike White kept us guessing long into this 90-minute episode as to who might be on the receiving end of the many bullets we heard pinging through the air in the opening instalment. There was no shortage of possibilities, or firearms or motives, and we were kept dangling uncomfortably for as long as possible. Would Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) finally snap? Would Rick's (Walton Goggins) action in Bangkok catch up with him? Would Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) make a foolhardy attempt to prove to Mook (Lalisa Manobal) that he is a man? All of the above, ultimately, with some denouements proving more satisfying than others. None was more emotional than the final-night dinner between old friends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon), which seemed set up for Laurie to blowtorch their relationship forever. Instead, she cracked, admitting that nothing – work, love, motherhood – had brought her life true meaning. 'Time,' she said, 'gives my life meaning. I'm just happy to be at the table.' The monks in the monastery would approve. Others, however, were still grasping at materialism to fill the void, with Piper Ratliff (Sarah Catherine Hook) falling for her mother's trap. She could not, she admitted, endure the night in the monastery. 'You could tell the food wasn't organic,' she said, while White gave Parker Posey's Victoria Ratliff one or two more zingers as souvenirs. Piper concluded she was a pampered princess after all, and that was pathetic. 'It's not pathetic,' said Victoria, beaming. She then took Piper shopping. Posey can leave a space on the mantelpiece for the Emmy. Yet the Ratliffs had greater storms to endure, with Tim seeming hell-bent on family annihilation, a storyline that has proved darker and more uncomfortable than the quasi-incest subplot. Those poisonous fruits from episode one came back (Chekhov's othalanga, if you like), and things only got darker still when Tim decided that Lochlan would be spared. Naturally, Lochlan proved to be the only one who drank the stuff. Isaacs' storyline hasn't always hit the spot – the early, phone call-heavy scenes centred around Tim's financial fraud were thin gruel – but his journey to enlightenment proved to be moving. Truly, he has accepted a life without material possessions (though he'll get three square meals in prison). Lochlan survived, but many others didn't, with the episode ending in a veritable bloodbath at the resort. The White Lotus works best at its most subtle and as the bullets flew through the air in the climactic gunfight, my mind went back to the end of season one, which was all the better for the lack of guns. In a series that serves us such great dollops of hard emotional truth, a gunfight just doesn't cut it. Rick, naturally, could not make his happiness last, and when face to face again with Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), shot him dead – only then to discover that Jim was his real father. In the ensuing melee, Chelsee (Aimee Lou Wood) finally got her third piece of bad luck, in the shape of a bullet in the chest. The most powerful storyline has arguably been Gaitok's, with the audience initially desperate for the sweet, homely, Buddhist guard to get Mook, the girl-next-door of his dreams. This has morphed quite beautifully, as Mook revealed herself to be more and more materialistic, and by this finale you longed for him to reveal the truth about the Russian criminals, hand in his gun and sail off into the sunset. He instead chose violence, and the girl, and he shot Rick dead. Seeing him drive off in Sritala's (Lek Patravadi) car, shades on, part of her security entourage, was heartbreaking. Somehow you were happier for the slain Rick, floating peacefully in the pond besides Chelsee, than you were for Gaitok. Or Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), who was convinced by Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) to squeeze Greg (Jon Gries, who surely won't return for season four, but who has been excellent) for every cent she could. Which she did, to the tune of $5 million. As she zipped off on her speedboat, leaving her hunky Thai lover and her dignity behind, it was clear what White was asking of us. Is this happiness? Is Gaitok's ending, getting the job, getting the girl, happiness? 'No one in the history of the world has lived better than we have,' said Victoria. 'The least we can do is enjoy it. If we don't, it's offensive.' Or, as Belinda put it: 'Can't I just be rich for five f---king minutes?' You can Belinda, but in the world of The White Lotus, we all know what happens when those five minutes are up. There just isn't enough money for everyone to have a happy ending. A dark, uncomfortable finale, but one that forced the audience to ponder the very meaning of happiness – true enlightenment.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The White Lotus' Season 3 Ends in Explosive Finale: 'It's a Classic Greek Tragedy'
[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? More from The Hollywood Reporter 'The White Lotus' Music Supervisor Gabe Hilfer on Playing in Mike White's Sandbox and Why They Didn't Use Any Lisa Songs When to Stream 'The White Lotus' Season 3 Finale Online Duke Has Checked Out of 'The White Lotus,' But What Do Its Students Think of That Controversial Scene? 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. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The Cast of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' Then and Now 'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
Forbes
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘The White Lotus' Season 3 Finale Recap And Review: A Crushing Disappointment
The White Lotus I could walk across the sand of my imagination and dig up so many of words to describe the Season 3 finale of The White Lotus. Like seashells or bullet casings scattered across the dunes, like drops of water spraying up above the waves, they come to me. Like seeds from a suicide tree. 'Tragic" might be one of them, and certainly there was tragedy here. 'Disappointing' might be another, and I am feeling terribly disappointed as I type this. 'Indulgent,' also, because I'm afraid that the success of the first two seasons must have gone to Mike White's head. What a mess. What a waste of time. It seems all the worries that I wrote about last week have come to fruition, and then some. Spoilers ahead. All the various storylines were wrapped up in Episode 8, 'Amor Fati,' though not as neat and tidy as some might have hoped. I suppose we're meant to take the title on the nose and simply embrace our fate. Sadly, there was little that was particularly surprising and even less that was satisfying in this final chapter of a long, rambling story that mostly went nowhere. The story with any real arc or payoff made me feel terribly sad, and perhaps that was the one story this season worth telling if only because it made me feel something. Every other story slogged along and then stumbled across the finish line. I felt nothing for most of these characters by the time the curtains were called. Perhaps the Buddhist monk's quote at the beginning of the episode was a warning: Don't expect resolution. That's life. And sure, that's life. But this is television. And I am far from pleased. We'll get right to the gutpunch. Rick (Walton Goggins) and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) are the bodies at the end of this grim tale. And I do mean grim in ways that the first two seasons were not. There was a certain liveliness to this show that is all but gone here, replaced with a sour sort of story that has all the darkness but none of the light that balanced it out in previous seasons. The first gunshots fired come from a gun that was only introduced this episode, which is a nice little twist on Chekhov's Gun. I've been tracking the firearms all season long, so of course it was Jim Holinger's (Scott Glenn) that fired the first shots, just minutes after being introduced. Rick shoots Hollinger dead shortly after the old man tells him that his mother was a liar (among other things) and his father no saint, cracking Rick's newfound sense of peace. Shocking not a single person who follows this show, Rick learns moments later that Jim was his father all along. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. More shocking is the accidental shooting death of Chelsea, who happened to come across Rick just moments before he rushed up and took Jim's gun and did not eff off when he told her to. If only Amrita (Shalini Peiris) had taken a moment to talk with Rick, perhaps he would have gone away with her and they could have lived happily ever after. Hell, Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) didn't even want a meditation session, he would have happily given up his hour. Either way, the one couple I was rooting for all season dies in the end. But what could have been a compelling tragic moment at the end of a brilliant story fell flat. Left me cold. And it's not because the story of Rick taking vengeance on the man he thought killed his father isn't compelling. It's because it's the only compelling story this season that went anywhere, and even then it ended in cliché. You might as well have had Jim, with his dying words, gasp 'Rick, I am your father…aagghh…" The White Lotus The Russians get away with their robbery. Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) never turns in Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius) because he's worried about harming people, and Valentin tells him that he and his friends will be executed if they're sent back to Russia. But he does shoot an unarmed man in the back. A man carrying an innocent woman in his arms who, for all Gaitok knew, could have still been alive. He gets the promotion, though, and the girl, and drives Sritala (Lek Patravadi) off to the funeral with a smile. I guess . . . some of the characters get a happy ending? The Gossip Girls stop gossiping for once, and have a heartfelt conversation at dinner where Laurie (Carrie Coon) cries about her disappointing life and confesses that being with her dear friends is what really matters. She doesn't need god or religion because time is what defines her, or something. I guess when you've got a dead-end career, a failed marriage and a rebellious teenage daughter, the devils you know are better than nothing at all. Rationalization catches up with us all someday. Again, the story of these three friends might have been interesting if it was given more room to breathe, but like most of the subplots this season, it spun its wheels and went nowhere fast. You could cut all three characters from the show entirely and lose nothing. Cut the Russians, too. And Gaitok and Mook (Lalisa Manobal) and I'm not sure what you'd really lose. Maybe a couple episodes worth of runtime. Maybe the show would have been tighter and better that way. The White Lotus Then there are the Ratliffs. Timothy (Jason Isaacs) almost poisons his family, but like just about everything else this season, almost is the key word. He almost poisons Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) because his eldest son has confessed that he is utterly in his father's shadow, that he has wed his life to his career and that he is nothing without it. He almost poisons his wife, Victoria (Parker Posey) because she confesses she would be nothing without wealth. He almost poisons his daughter, Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) because she realizes she can't live at the Buddhist retreat and eat bland food and sleep in a little box. She heeds her mother's wisdom instead: It would be rude and ungrateful not to enjoy their enormous good fortune. They live better than kings and queens of old. They owe it to the huddled masses to live this way and enjoy it, don't you see? Throw out your convictions, my dear. And so she does. Just like that. Perhaps the moral of the story is that convictions are what get us killed. In any case, all that wealth is about to go up in smoke. The walls are tumbling down, they just don't know it yet. But we don't see the crumbling. Timothy admits, finally, that things are about to change, but he lets their notifications do the talking. His hand is finally forced, on the boat, when the cell phones are returned. The boat sails off into the sunset, Timothy smiling out over the waves, and we're deprived any meaningful fallout. Parker Posey's reaction is not forthcoming. The White Lotus The one person Timothy doesn't mean to poison ends up poisoning himself. Poor, stupid, dimwitted, empty-headed Lochlan (Sam Nivola) finds the blender in the morning, still goopy with the poison seeds and 'bad coconut milk' and decides 'Hey, instead of rinsing this out, I'll make a protein shake and drink it.' Who does this? Who doesn't rinse out (and ideally wash) a filthy blender filled with milky stuff? His near-death experience is all very poetic, of course. That indulgence I spoke of up above is on full display. We see his soul underwater, Lochlan fighting to swim, drowning, and when he looks up he sees the dark silhouettes of old Buddhist monks staring down at him, and it's this big, horrible, poetic moment . . . but I was just shaking my head. All I could think is, 'The Darwin Award goes to Lochlan, quite possibly the most idiotic character ever written for this show.' Even Tanya's death in Season 2 was less boneheaded. But Lochlan survives and nobody even talks about it or tries to figure out what happened. 'I think I saw God,' Lochlan tells his relieved father. Maybe you did, Lochlan. But I'm not sure what I just watched. This was the least satisfying, least funny, least shocking, least impressive season of The White Lotus so far. Had it been the first, I'm not sure we'd ever have gotten a second, let alone a third. The White Lotus The whole thing ends with a wink. A better show would have ended with Rick and Chelsea among the lily pads, Rick's face finally at peace in death. There's poetry in that moment, however cliche his story ended up being. Instead, we get Greg (Jon Gries) watching Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) as she hustles some new lover to help cuck her rich, old, wicked boyfriend. A wink and a ship sailing out to sea, and Belinda and Zion waving to poor Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) who has become Belinda 2.0, though in a much less interesting story than the one Belinda first appeared in. I'm not sure if I'm Jack's broken heart or Jack's raging bile duct right now. Whatever the case, while both Season 1 and 2 remain works of absolute genius, frenetic stories about love and betrayal and petty spite and madness, stories that I will return to many times over in the future, I think I'll leave this one in the sand. Bury it deep and hope for something better in Season 4.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The White Lotus' Season 3 Finale Gave Us the World's Dumbest Shootout
This post contains spoilers for the third season finale of The White Lotus, 'Amor Fati,' which is now streaming on Max. The finale of The White Lotus Season Three begins with a montage of various characters getting ready for their final full day at the Thailand resort, including Piper and Lochlan waking up after their night at the monastery. The head monk greets all his guests with a speech about the elusive nature of life itself, acknowledging that it brings with it many questions when we want resolution. Life gets easier, he suggests, once we accept that there is no resolution. More from Rolling Stone 'White Lotus' Composer Won't Return for Season Four Due to Creative Disagreements 'The White Lotus' Episode 7: Sleeping With the Frenemy His 'White Lotus' Drama Is Barreling Forward, but Walton Goggins Wants His Latest Project to Put You to Sleep As a mostly self-contained season of scripted television, The White Lotus does not allow itself to be as mysterious or unknowable as the monk argues that our own lives are. So 'Amor Fati' offers resolution aplenty. But given how predictable, contrived, and/or outright silly these resolutions are, maybe it would have been better if there had been none at all? This was already the bumpiest of the series' three seasons. Expanding to eight episodes (after six in the first season and seven in the second) resulted not in more depth, but to certain ideas — Tim's murder-suicide fantasies, the friends' decades-old resentments — being repeated much too often. The stories of both Belinda and Gaitok felt badly underfed, as Lotus creator Mike White's level of interest in the non-wealthy — and/or non-white — characters has dipped with each passing season. If not for the specter of the mass shooting teased in the season-opening flash-forward, the whole thing would have felt like a meandering tone poem, elevated by some good performances (especially by Walton Goggins, Aimee Lou Wood, and Carrie Coon), the occasional zinger (mostly from Parker Posey's Victoria), and random bits of sexual experimentation (Lochlan giving his brother a hand, Frank's monologue about his ladyboy fantasies). But having seen the shooting in context, as well as all the other climaxes — or lack thereof — I wonder if maybe these deaths aren't now the promotional cart driving the narrative horse. Or if White has simply run out of things to say about the terribleness of the idle rich, but has become too successful himself through this show to stop. The first (and still best) and second seasons reached their creative high points in their respective finales, where 'Amor Fati' just summed up all the things that weren't working about Season Three. For the final time, let's break it down character group by character group: We have to start at the end regarding the trio of old friends. They are first-person witnesses to one murder, and are at least in the vicinity when four other people are shot and killed, and their reaction is… what? We have no idea, because we literally do not hear them speak in the aftermath of those five deaths. There is a brief glimpse of the pals cuddling up together on the boat taking them back to the mainland for their flights home. But if they are traumatized by the ordeal, or are simply using it as another reason to cast all their petty grudges aside and embrace their friendship, we have no idea. As a whole, the finale doesn't seem to know what to do with the idea of this huge and horrifying burst of violence happening in the middle of the resort, since Belinda, Zion, and the Ratliffs seem similarly untroubled to have been on the property at the time. (When Tanya shot up all the gays who were trying to murder her in the Season Two finale, that at least was on a yacht, and not at the hotel itself.) But the others get to talk about something in the season's closing minutes, where the friends are all but ignored — a frustrating but somewhat fitting conclusion to a subplot that was buoyed much more by the three actors involved in it than by the material they were asked to play. When you hand Coon — a.k.a. one of the greatest and most emotionally raw actors working today — a heartfelt monologue like the one that Laurie delivers at the friends' final Thailand dinner, of course it's going to be at least a little effective. But the words she was delivering with such force were wildly at odds with how the character was portrayed throughout the season. The idea that she was scared straight after her bad night with Aleksei, followed by the glimpse of the other two happily playing together in the pool, didn't make sense after we had watched her so clearly hate both of them for the rest of the week. Maybe if they'd saved the speech for after, again, the three of them were witnesses to a mass shooting, it might have seemed more honest? What a bummer! It's not that Belinda is corrupted by the life-changing bribe she and Zion are able to negotiate with Greg. It's that her corruption felt inevitable and unearned at the same time. Belinda felt like a rich and complicated person in the first season. Her relationship with Tanya had many layers, and wasn't just about a rich woman emotionally leeching off of a poor one. Brought back for a new season, Natasha Rothwell didn't have a lot to do, and Belinda was a much thinner sketch this time around. And compared to pretty much every other younger character in the show's history — from the Mossbacher siblings in the first season to the Ratliffs here — Zion was granted zero depth. He was just a cartoon chasing after dollar signs. That Belinda does to Pornchai what Tanya once did to her is ironic, but not in a particularly interesting way. The series' worldview about what money does to people is so unwavering, and so relatively one-note, that of course she was going to abandon the guy once she had some cash in hand. As with Belinda, White goes for some simplistic irony here. She's the woman who thinks of herself as good, but who gladly accepts $5 million to look the other way about a murder, while he's a Buddhist who doesn't want to hurt anybody, yet gets rewarded — with both a promotion and the affection of the woman of his dreams (who's in fact not that great and only going to corrupt him) — for fatally shooting an unarmed man in the back. And… that's it. Maybe Lisa from Blackpink is such an inexperienced actor that White didn't feel he could give her an actual three-dimensional character to play, or maybe he just didn't care, but this was another subplot where there was no there there. Well, if nothing else, we have found a brand that is about to be much more upset about being associated with Tim Ratliff than Duke University has proved to be. The second the camera offered a close-up of the logo on the blender that Tim tried to use to blend poisoned cocktails for everyone in the family but Lochlan, you can assume Bosch's crisis PR department moved into high gear. But Chekhov's Blender just felt silly. Not just because it seemed as if the older Ratliffs all drank about as much of the concoction as poor Lochlan did after he watered down what was left in the blender with protein powder and water. And also not just because — 17-year-old prestige TV spoilers follow — Tim was attempting to pull the same terrible murder-suicide stunt that a Walton Goggins character did (in the finale of The Shield), on a show that also featured Walton Goggins. Primarily, it felt silly because the show had presented so many fake-out fantasies of Tim killing himself and/or his loved ones that by the time it happened, it was hard to watch either scene with the poisoned drinks and believe someone was actually going to die. The decision to cut between Lochlan seemingly dying by the side of the pool and him having a vision of drowning in the pool only leaned into the bait-and-switch quality, so that by the time his eyes flickered open in front of his grief-stricken father, it had all become a bad and ineffective joke. And then White somehow backed even further from the ledge he had seemingly placed the family, by showing that Tim had somehow made it through this ordeal finally learning a lesson about the importance of family over material assets. It's supposed to be a more bittersweet ending than, say, the Mossbachers being brought together by the bogus robbery attempt in Season One, since we know the Ratliffs are about to lose all their money and that Tim is going to prison for a bit. But the story up until now was played much darker than most anything in prior seasons, so to end on even a slightly upbeat note didn't ring true to what had come before. After teasing the idea, in Sam Rockwell's memorable fifth episode monologue, that Frank experiments with gender whenever he drinks and does too many drugs, the finale backed off of that in favor of just showing him dancing manically in his underwear surrounded by (presumably hired) young women the morning after he fell off the wagon. But if that part of the story didn't go where it seemingly should have, the Rick part went exactly where everyone knew it would, at least regarding the true nature of his relationship with Jim Hollinger. Jim didn't kill his father, because of course Jim was his father. And Rick killed him. And got Chelsea, and then himself, killed in the process. To this subplot's credit, Goggins and Wood were wonderful throughout the season, particularly both of them in the finale sequence where it seemed like Rick actually had finally let go of the grief he'd been carrying all his life, and Goggins at the climax when an utterly haunted and ruined Rick couldn't stop himself from seeking vengeance. But if Tim Ratliff successfully pulling off a murder-suicide of most of his family would have played as incredibly dark for White Lotus, it also would have been at least somewhat in the series' fundamentally comedic DNA. When Tanya began shooting up the yacht and then fell to her death from it, that was all played for laughs, after all. This was presented as straight drama (other than perhaps Fabian squealing and falling into the water), which badly disrupts the tone of the show, and invites a level of scrutiny it simply isn't built for. If the true nature of Jim and Rick's relationship was meant to be a surprise, it wasn't. If Rick was meant to be a crack shot capable of taking out both of Jim's bodyguards with relative ease, it would help to know literally anything about his past other than that his mother died when he was young and that he and Frank used to party together. And if the resort was going to be host to such a horrific event — not so long after people died violently either on or near two other White Lotus properties over the last few years — then the show needs to be prepared to deal with the consequences of that. You can't just put everyone on boats like everything is normal, and have Pornchai and the other staffers waving goodbye from shore, when everyone would be getting interviewed by the local police at this point. It was simultaneously predictable and nonsensical. The finale was followed by clips of White talking about his goals for this season, while also teasing what's to come with the upcoming fourth season. 'There's always room for more murders in the White Lotus hotels!' he promised. At a certain point, aren't the TripAdvisor reviews alone going to ruin their business model? Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time Denzel Washington's Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century
