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The Guardian
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
From constipated security guard to drug-addled hotel manager: White Lotus's 40 best and worst characters
Warning: this article contains spoilers. Three seasons of The White Lotus are now complete, which means that Mike White has offered us some incredible main characters over the years – and some not so great ones. How do the newest batch stack up against the veterans? Let's rank the lot and find out. What's bizarre about Mook isn't that, as Gaitok's would-be love interest, she basically only functioned as a not-always-sympathetic ear. No, it's that she was played by Lisa from K-pop supergroup Blackpink, who is legitimately one of the most famous women in the world. It's like hiring Lady Gaga and using her as an extra. Tanya's assistant in the second season was a two-dimensional representation of Gen-Z. She hated work. She had terrible fashion sense and even worse taste in men. That's about it. Jim Hollinger was the man who Rick spent the entire season tracking down. However, when he was found, he simply turned up in that episode and growled, and then turned up in another episode and died. The show heralded his final scene with great portent (the screaming monkey!) but that doesn't cover for his lack of things to do. Has there ever been a television character as constipated as Gaitok? The hotel security guard did little more than stare on paralysed instead of doing his job. What a frustrating man. Want to know how low stakes season one of The White Lotus was? One of the main characters was a fundamentally decent man, rather than a leering caricature of consumer culture. Boring! Next! Mark's wife did have a little more to do, but not much. As a CEO who struggles to let go of the stress of her everyday life when she arrives at the resort, she felt like a crayon sketch of future characters who'd be better defined. Piper, no! The least memorable of the Ratliff siblings (largely because she didn't commit incest onscreen) Piper's arc was a bit of a damp squib. She wanted to become a Buddhist, tried Buddhism, didn't like it because of the lack of air conditioning, and then went home. A cross between Mook and Portia, Olivia was a snarky teen who didn't meaningfully contribute to the wider story. Also, she was played by Sweeney, an actor capable of much more than this. Season two arrived as the Michael Imperioli Season of The White Lotus. After all, if White was going to hire an actor of this pedigree, he must have written something meaty for him. In the end, though, he got one orgy scene and then nothing else. Let's look at this positively. Isaacs got a free luxury holiday, $40,000 an episode and – after his mid-season full-frontal shot – a weird little press cycle about penises in return for basically being catatonic for several hours at a time. He's had harder jobs, I'm sure. By this point, The White Lotus has a clutch of favourite archetypes. Albie fell into the 'sensitive young man on the cusp of embracing his sexuality' camp and, unfortunately, was the weakest of the lot. After Armond , there was hope that the next member of White Lotus staff depicted onscreen would be given something of comparable juiciness. Instead, Valentina tutted at her employees and her main highlight was comparing Jennifer Coolidge to Peppa Pig. Another White Lotus go-to archetype is the obnoxious, entitled bro. Cameron hit all the marks he was required to but, compared with his analogues in other seasons, was unsatisfyingly obnoxious and entitled. Shannon is such an onscreen force that she's reliably memorable in almost every role. However, her part in The White Lotus – as an annoying mother-in-law designed to torment Rachel – was one of the more forgettable characters of her season. Season three's 'blonde blob' (as nicknamed by White) – a trio of superficially nice but secretly mean women – were all much of a muchness. Jaclyn got plenty to do on the show (her disgust at being squirted with water pistols by local kids was a masterpiece) but she was the least likable out of the three. Similarly, Kate had her moments – her pyjama-clad eagerness to get the blob's Big Night Out wrapped up in time for bed was hilarious – but it still felt a little like her main job was to just react to her more interesting friends. The hotel co-owner in season three, Sritala drifted in and out of the action, but made her presence known whenever needed. That said, she's only this far up thanks to the show's decision to use that incredible clip of Mejudhon singing the traditional Thai song Lam Tad on a 1992 TV show as part of the plot. First and foremost an accomplice to Lucia (who was a better character), Mia gets points for elevating her potentially thankless sex work plot with her desire to sing for a living. A character who started out as Olivia's snarky sidekick, Paula ended up as a fairly integral part of season one. Her discovery that the hotel had been wrongly built on native land went a long way to underscore the show's jaundiced view of western tourism. Rachel was a sweet and ambitious woman who had just got married to the world's biggest jerk. Her slow burn realisation that the rest of her life was going to be awful forms a huge part of the first season. What a weird arc Lochlan had this year. He stared longingly at his brother while Saxon went into the bathroom to masturbate, then he masturbated his brother, then he was poisoned. Extra marks for his beautifully shot near-death scene. Extra extra points for seducing women via the medium of closeup magic. Sign up to The Guide Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday after newsletter promotion The only distinguishable member of the blonde blob, on the basis that she was actually able to articulate her sadness rather than frantically gloss over it. For a while it looked like all Plaza would get to do on The White Lotus was roll her eyes at her husband. But then her character slept with Theo James. Or maybe she didn't. Has any actor managed to play both possibilities with such total conviction? Woodall can neatly divide his life into the bit before The White Lotus and the bit afterwards. And this is all thanks to Jack, a secretive and magnetically sexy Essex man who seduced Portia, then his 'uncle', then the world. Cameron Sullivan walked so that Saxon Ratliff could run. Preening, obnoxious and obsessed with sex and smoothies, Saxon started the season as an unbearable bro. But thanks to a combination of drugs, incest and a Pema Chödrön book, he came out of it a changed man. A bit? Maybe? The only character to appear in all three White Lotus seasons, Greg/Gary started out as Tanya's meek and apparently terminally ill love interest, and ended as an all-powerful, obscenely wealthy villain with a weird sex thing. Will this be the last we see of him? Hopefully not. On paper, Bert didn't have all that much to do during season two. But whatever he was given, he wrung every last drop out of it. Ruder and more sexually forward than most 80-year-olds, Bert blazed a trail through every scene. Harper's husband, Ethan spent his time on the show experiencing various levels of doubt and paranoia as he watched his wife and best friend flirt in front of him, which Sharpe portrayed with aplomb. At times Rick felt as if he was shipped in from another, slightly more generic show. His hard-boiled quest for revenge at times felt a bit too straightforward for The White Lotus. However, it was rewarded with a killer death scene and an all-timer reaction meme. But we'll get to that in a second. Daphne earns her high spot thanks to her storyline's extraordinary climax. Ethan tells her that he thinks their spouses had sex. She responds with a mind-blowing silent 25-second reaction shot where wave after wave of emotions pass across her face, then probably has sex with Ethan in retaliation. A star-making performance. Anyway, about that meme. Rockwell's uncredited appearance was a breath of fresh air in an often turgid season. He drank. He did kung fu. He embarked on a berserk monologue about how he wished he was an Asian girl who could have sex with himself, while Rick boggled at him. Amazing. In a show full of entitled idiots, Shane Patton was by far the most entitled. A man so petty, whingy and obnoxious that he actually ended up murdering a hotel manager. Poor Chelsea. All season long she worried that bad things come in threes. Who knew that the third thing would be her being accidentally shot in the chest after watching her boyfriend kill his dad. The smart money is on Wood being this year's Woodall, a breakout star with an enormous future ahead of her. The beating heart of season one. He was a sensitive, awkward boy whose family went to Hawaii and argued a lot. He ended up staying there, achieving the greatest honour that The White Lotus can award: transcending tourism and integrating with the local people. In season one she was a hotel worker whose heart was broken when a guest befriended her and then left her in the lurch. In season three she returned as half-guest-half-worker who befriended a member of staff and then left him in the lurch. Now she is a millionaire, so God knows who'll she'll leave in the lurch in season four. A prostitute who electrified every scene she was in, Lucia ran riot through the corridors of the hotel, gleefully ripping off guests left and right as she went. In any other show she'd be a villain. But this is The White Lotus, and everyone is terrible, so she somehow emerged a folk hero. Hollander is uniformly great in everything. However, he was especially great in the second season of The White Lotus as Quentin, a mysterious British man with intangibly nefarious intent. In a way it's sad that he died; The White Lotus could have quite happily become The Quentin Show and nobody would have minded. Piper, no! Again! Letting Posey loose on a southern accent with dialogue that required her to massacre words like 'Buddhism', 'guru' and 'tsunami' was, in retrospect, a masterstroke. Officially Victoria is now broke. But if White can't find a way to drag her back to a luxury hotel for season four, it'll be a tragedy. Armond is the reason why we started talking about The White Lotus in the first place. The entire first season was structured and paced around his transition from pin-sharp hotel manager to gibbering, drug-addled lunatic. Armond also had the best death of the series – visibly defecating in a suitcase and then getting stabbed. He will be forever missed. Could it be anyone else? In Coolidge's hands, Tanya – rich and lost and self-absorbed – became one of the all-time great television characters. Her appearance in the first season gave the show a sad, sweet note. But in the second she was the centre of gravity, forcing the action to orbit around her whims. She was a great character, who had an amazing death. Thank God for Coolidge, thank God for Tanya and boo to everyone who tried to murder her.
Forbes
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
So, ‘The White Lotus' Season 3 Was Bad
White Lotus I was waiting until the finale to see if my suspicions were right about this season and yes, in fact, season 3 of The White Lotus was not good. It was bad. The White Lotus season 3 is full of decent individual moments and some good individual performances, but the way this was scripted was awful with predictable plotlines, bizarre tropes and characters that ultimately went nowhere interesting for the duration of the season. We might as well start with Rick, who we now know was the instigator of the shooting and what would end up being five total deaths, including his own. It made literally no sense at all that Rick would go to Bangkok, threaten a powerful man with a gun in his face, then casually stroll back to the hotel the man owns to have brunch with his girlfriend. Hell, you don't go back at all, you just tell Chelsea to get on a plane immediately and get back to meet you in America. What did he think was going to happen? He's not a stupid character, but this is a very stupid script. As for the shootout, I predicted this, but I still cannot believe they actually went through it. They did in fact pull a Darth Vader where it was revealed that Jim was Rick's father, something pretty much yelled from the rooftops during their first encounter, and the shock would have been if this was not true. It's just absurd they actually dusted this one off to use in the show. The White Lotus The White Lotus season 3 also gave us possibly the single worst character in series history in the form of Mook. As I suspected no, she did not have anything to do with the robbery, a common fan theory, but it's clear now her character only existed to toy with Gaitok and eventually, nudge him toward violence in the series' last few moments. She's a completely siloed character with no story of her own. I didn't want to believe this, but I genuinely think pop icon Lisa was cast here for the international attention it would bring, not because they needed her. This was not her fault, and she's a perfectly good actress, but they gave her absolutely nothing to work with. The Gaitok ending is…fine, I guess. Forgoing his supposedly peaceful nature to shoot Rick (in the back, unarmed, carrying a woman I might add, which is a lot worse than shooting someone say, pointing a gun at him). But what doesn't make sense after this is that if he's now this badass bodyguard, why he wouldn't earn extra points by turning in Valentin for the robbery? He's going to kill a guy but not get some criminals arrested because it would be too mean? What? The Ratliff storyline ended up being a massive disappointment in the end, despite some good individual performances here from Parker Posey and Patrick Schwarzenegger over the course of the season. Timothy's plan ended up being a Jonestown-like killing of his family with poison seeds, but accidentally almost killing the one son he was not trying to kill. What was the idea here? He asked Lochlan whether he would be okay with no money, which made him spare him. Did he ask Lochlan if he would be okay if his father murdering his entire family in front of him on vacation, leaving him as the only surviving member? Then, finally, the entire resolution to this is that the Ratliff's finally check their phones and realize what's happening. The end. Insane anti-climax. I thought for sure this was leading them to staying in Thailand at the last minute to hide like all the other rich white guys, but no, it was just this. The White Lotus The Melinda and Greg storyline surprised me in the sense that it just…ended. She squeezes more money out of him. She leaves. The one thing that worked here was that she does to Pornchai what Tanya originally did to her, promising to start a business with her and then just leaving with all her money. The most disappointing aspect of this Greg finale is what the show did to poor Chloe, who was one of the best characters of the entire season and she literally gets two lines in the entire episode. Somehow, in the end, the storyline with the three women worked the best, at least on an emotionally complex level with their evolving dynamic. This extracted a potentially Emmy-worthy performance from Carrie Coon, especially in this final episode. The White Lotus is well-shot, well-scored, well-cast and well-acted. But Mike White has got to start writing more coherent, more interesting storylines going forward, and perhaps he should no longer be writing and directing every single episode of this series himself. It's losing steam. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Bluesky Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
New York Times
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The White Lotus': 7 Questions for the Season 3 Finale
Season 3 of 'The White Lotus' has been the show's longest, with the creator Mike White spending eight episodes instead of six or seven to tell the stories of superrich tourists and their messed-up personal problems. The extra time has allowed White to slow the pace a bit, to match the more meditative vibes of the high-end Thailand resort where this season takes place. But has there been violence? Oh yes. Kinky sex? The kinkiest. Unsolved mysteries? Of course. Everything fans have come to expect from 'The White Lotus' has been abundant this season. Episode 1 began with gunshots, and in the weeks since we have seen armed robbery, white-collar crime, multiple violent threats and arguments and — yikes — fraternal incest. As this season heads into its supersized finale on Sunday night — at around 90 minutes, it will be the show's longest episode to date — here are a few of the questions we hope will get some answers. This may not seem like the most urgent issue facing the 'White Lotus' characters this year, but I think that by the time the season ends, it will turn out to be very important. Granted, one of the biggest complaints about this season — especially as compared with Seasons 1 and 2 — is that White has not integrated the resort's staff into the action as well as he usually does. But from week to week, the front gate security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) has been moving closer to the heart of the plot. In Episode 7, he realized that a major heist at the resort earlier this season was likely perpetrated by a fellow employee, Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius), and his two Russian friends. Gaitok has been in trouble with his bosses since the robbery. He has wrestled with self-doubt, wondering if he is too soft to follow his dream and become one of the well-paid bodyguards to the resort's married owners, Jim (Scott Glenn) and Sritala Hollinger (Patravadi Mejudhon). Busting the Russians could be just what Gaitok's career needs — and could also win the heart of his love interest, Mook (Lalisa Manobal), a co-worker with ambitions of her own. Is landing a plum job with a sizable salary the key to happiness? This is one of the big questions 'The White Lotus' asks every season, and it is also why Gaitok's story line matters. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
USA Today
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
'White Lotus' cast surprises: Turns out Gaitok is ripped, Fabian actor played Nazi
'White Lotus' cast surprises: Turns out Gaitok is ripped, Fabian actor played Nazi Show Caption Hide Caption 'The White Lotus' star reveals why her storyline can be triggering 'The White Lotus' star Michelle Monaghan talks to Ralphie Aversa about how the female friendship story line is so relatable and toxic. Over the past seven weeks, characters on HBO's Thailand season of "The White Lotus" have become highly dysfunctional family members for a besotted TV audience eagerly anticipating the show's April 6 finale. So while it's not a stretch to find that Patrick Schwarzenegger is playing smug jock-bro Saxon, discovering the international actors breaking out in wildly divergent roles can be downright shocking. Take British actor Tayme Thapthimthong, who plays the noble-hearted, soft-edged security guard Gaitok to perfection. While the smiley Gaitok gets no respect from the hotel owner's shady bodyguards, Thapthimthong, 35, is jacked and military. The actor rose to lieutenant with the Royal Thai Armed Forces Security Centre and worked as a nightclub bouncer. Ironically, before being cast in "White Lotus," he was a bodyguard for the Thai-American hip-hop group Thaitanium. "I kind of wanted to be a tough guy for my first big role," Thapthimthong tells USA TODAY. "But, actually, this is how a security guard would act in a five-star resort in Thailand. There are some elements of Gaitok in me. But not the full me." Thapthimthong got so cut with his beloved bootcamp training that series creator Mike White had to nix his ritualistic gym visits during the extended Thailand shoot to keep Gaitok believably unthreatening, at least physically. "Mike White told me not to go to the gym anymore. He said to maintain what I had, but please don't get any bigger or more ripped," says Thapthimthong. "I was staying at these amazing hotels with these great gyms I couldn't use. But I did what he asked and didn't really work out for seven months." With his professional background, Thapthimthong cringes over the scene in the fourth episode, when Gaitok leaves his new gun on the guard station table, only to have it stolen by Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs). "Oh my God, that still hurts me," he says. "Even in basic training, the instructors would look to take people's weapons from them. If you just put it down and turned around, they would take it and you'd get beasted for the next two days." More surprising "White Lotus" power transformations ahead of Sunday's Season 3 finale (HBO and Max, 9 ET/PT). Lalisa Manobal as Mook has an 'Alter Ego': Lisa from Blackpink Thapthimthong was kept in the dark about who would play Mook, the health mentor and lifelong neighborhood friend with whom Gaitok falls in love. The wildly curious Thapthimthong had to sign extensive non-disclosure agreements before learning the top-secret news that his acting partner was Lalisa Manobal, better known as Lisa, the singer and rapper in the K-pop band Blackpink. "It was a big shock to me when I found out; I never thought it would be her," he says. "I hadn't listened to K-pop, but I know how the Thai people see her as a national treasure. She's a superstar." Gen Z fans rave over Lisa, who performed at the Oscars and released her debut solo album with a title that sums up the rapper's "White Lotus" endeavor: "Alter Ego." The TV transformation to homegirl Mook in Manobal's acting debut could be explained with the 28-year-old's song, "New Woman," in which Lisa sings, "Wanna crack these walls." Yuri Kolokolnikov makes fun as Vlad from Vladivostok. But actor has a wild 'Game of Thrones' past Boisterous Vlad (Yuri Kolokolnikov), the Joey Chandler of the show's childhood-friend trio from Vladivostok, Russia, is so hilarious that there's a Reddit community devoted to Vlad's "Art of Dialogue." His alcohol-be-damned workout explanation of "flipping heavy ropes" had Carrie Coon's Laurie cackling so hard that it seemed more than acting. But Vlad, whose aunt broke a bottle over his head as a child, might be darker than he appears. The respected Russian actor Kolokolnikov, 44, has a murky TV past. He played the fierce wilding Styr, the Magnar of Thenn, in HBO's "Game of Thrones." Styr memorably beat the heck out of Jon Snow (Kit Harington) in a hand-to-hand battle before Snow fatally placed his axe in Styr's head. That was definitely not funny. Fabian is played by Christian Friedel, who starred as Rudolph Höss in 'Zone of Interest' The White Lotus resort manager, Fabian, is played with sweaty-handed effectiveness by German actor Christian Friedel. Fabian can't hide his deeply shady side, but his obsessiveness about singing in front of the resort is disarming. Talk about range, the last unforgettable performance by Friedel, 46, was as disturbingly calm and ruthless Rudolf Höss, the German commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp in "The Zone of Interest." The critically lauded, deeply disturbing 2023 drama received five Oscar nominations, including best picture, and won two awards, including best international feature.
The Independent
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Shots fired! The White Lotus finale theories, featuring rogue Russians, a lovelorn cop and a spurned nepo baby
After the near-universal acclaim lavished on the first two seasons of The White Lotus, it seems fair to say that season three has met a cooler reception. One of the criticisms has been that the show has opened up numerous avenues of potential conflict, only to seemingly (temporarily?) close them off again. Bewildered, downer-addled Tim steals the gun from the police hut - but then Gaitok steals it back. Simmering, fixated Rick goes to Bangkok on a revenge mission – but then bottles it and hits the town with Frank instead. Impulsive, desperate Laurie is caught in bed with Russian jewel thief Aleksei – but manages to escape a full-blown bundle with his furious girlfriend via a window. Let's just say there's been a lot of prologue. However, this slow burn does have one big advantage; it's hard to see how the finale is going to be anything other than explosive because, in traditional White Lotus style, we've already heard the gunshots. And the only potential shooters who can be definitively ruled out at this point are meditation teacher Amrita and Belinda's son Zion whose trip to see his mum has already become unpleasantly dramatic. If anything, the situation feels more unpredictable than in previous seasons – by this point in both The White Lotus one and two, the battle lines were essentially drawn. This time, almost everyone seems to be somewhere on an emotional scale ranging from miffed to extravagantly deranged. Even the monkeys are looking as sinister as hell. Certainly, spiritual enlightenment seems a long way off for the members of this tanned, ripped but ugly-on-the-inside crew. But who is going to pull the trigger? We have thoughts… Gaitok goes gangster? Poor, sweet, gentle Gaitok. Somehow, he's felt like a victim-in-waiting since the moment we met him. But victimhood takes many forms. If anyone wasn't born to be a cop it was Gaitok. But nevertheless, with the policing of the resort becoming more proactive, the gun back in the office drawer and his (correct) identification of the sketchy Russians as the jewellery thieves at the Muay Thai fight, it's clear he's going to be forced into dramatic action. The extra hot sauce in this already pungent emotional broth is his ardent longing for Mook, a woman whose affection for him seems somewhat conditional. She has rightly pegged him as a soft touch but all the same, you just know he'd go the extra mile to prove her wrong. And for all of his charm, we've already learnt that he's a surprisingly deadly shot after his visit to the range. Is he going to be the hero? Or, as seems more likely, entirely lose the run of himself when things get real? It's always the quiet ones… Phil Harrison Tim the timebomb? Granted, Tim going on a rampage and killing everyone is arguably the most obvious answer on this list. For seven episodes straight, the financially troubled Ratliff patriarch has been simmering like a kettle on the stove about to go off. And there's only so much lorazepam one man can take. He's been fantasising about it all along: first, he'll shoot Victoria, then Saxon and lastly himself. There is, of course, the issue of the many, many shots heard in the first episode – much too many for a simple double-murder-suicide. But obviously, Tim wouldn't stop at just three, he'd have to kill Piper and Lochlan, too, lest they have to live out the rest of their lives parentless and penniless. I'm betting someone walks in and sees, leading him to shoot them in a panic and so on. You might say, well what about Tim's interest in the monastic lifestyle in the last episode? A red herring! Victoria would never let him join a monastery. No, the only way out is in the dirt: death. Annabel Nugent Saxon spins out In the penultimate episode of The White Lotus, the resident sex-obsessed alpha-male Saxon confronts his father/employer about why he's acting so shifty on their vacay – and whether his erratic behaviour has anything to do with the liquidity of their family company. 'My career is totally tied to yours, so if something bad is happening, it's happening to both of us,' Saxon warns him. 'I don't have anything else but this… I can't handle being nothing.' While Tim stayed tight-lipped on the fraud/embezzlement blunder he's been hiding from his family, Saxon will go bananas once he learns that his family is officially broke. My theory: the robbers will return to storm the hotel for different reasons (those are the gunshots in episode one), but amid the chaos, Saxon will find a gun and murder his father as revenge for ruining his life. This whole time, the script has hinted towards Tim killing his wife (Parker Posey) – but the repugnant son murdering his dad will be the ultimate twist. Plus, if anyone's the murderer, it has to be Saxon. Ellie Muir Rick's raging return? After the big build-up, Rick's trip to Bangkok didn't quite blow up. He nudged Frank off the wagon. And he looked his dad's murderer in the eye and then, well ... pushed his chair over and ran away. Come on Rick; you can do better than that. The air of seething resentment that's hung over this man throughout the series just has to find full expression eventually. Meanwhile, his blameless – and, we might add, stupendously patient – girlfriend Chelsea has been gamely resisting Saxon's increasingly insistent advances in Rick's absence. But the insufferable nepo baby did manage to talk his way into her bedroom in the last episode, under the pretence of learning to meditate – and you just know he's not going to leave it there. How might Rick react if he returned to the resort after his abortive revenge mission to find the incest-curious American in his private suite? My money is on 'badly'. Jacob Stolworthy The focus on the trio of Russians – the hotel's resident yoga guru and 'energy healer' Valentin, his confusingly similar-looking friend Aleksei and their absolute downer of a pal, Vlad – has amped up over the last couple of episodes. The penultimate instalment finally confirmed what many of us viewers have been suspecting for a while: that the group were in fact behind the hotel robbery at the start of the series. Laurie even saw the spoils of their crime – including the snakey necklace – when she was doing a runner from the world's most depressing one-night stand with Aleksei. With hotel boss Sritala presumably still in Bangkok after her strange, fake movie meeting with Rick and Frank (who else kind of wants to watch The Enforcer, The Executor and The Notary, the trilogy of films that Frank summoned from thin air to bolster his imaginary directing credentials? They sound very much like they'd star Jason Statham), Valentin and co might strike again. But with hotel guard Gaitok newly tooled up with his own gun, things could get seriously messy, culminating in the massive shootout teased back in episode one. Gaitok is desperate to prove himself after his crush Mook lectured him for not being aggressive enough… but I don't fancy his chances against a group of hardened criminals, especially ones that are preternaturally flexible. Katie Rosseinsky Chelsea gets the chop? From the moment Chelsea arrived on screen in White Lotus season three, she's stood out as the show's emotional centre – the only character seemingly untouched by cynicism. But in a series obsessed with death and duality, her light feels too pure to survive. She's already been bitten by a snake, caught up in a robbery, and plagued by a sense of impending doom – telling herself that bad things come in threes. And threes are everywhere: three squabbling girlfriends, three damaged Ratliff children, three Russian robbers, three guns in circulation, not to mention the twisted threesome on the boat – even the third season itself. In a show that dances with craven desire and moral rot, the brightest soul is often the most expendable. Chelsea's death would confirm what this series has been whispering all along: in paradise, the darkness always wins. Rod Ardehali The Gossip Girls go guerilla? I don't know any women like the friendship trio in White Lotus season three and I'm glad this has escaped my female experience thus far. Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate have been seething away at each other, episode upon episode; what was once peeling off into twos and bitching about the absent party became outright attacks, namely between Jaclyn and Kate, who both flirt with the same dodgy Russian. There are other tensions and rivalries going on that male viewers might believe are far more dramatic than the one between these ladies but if anyone has the resentment to start a full-throttle shootout, I can only imagine that it's those three. My bet is on Kate telling Jaclyn's partner somehow about Jaclyn's cheating (or the world more generally finding out about it via one of the other two) and Jaclyn and Kate getting into some fight that Laurie has to intervene in. You can't tell me these three demons don't have a larger part to play in all this. Hannah Ewens
