The White Lotus Season 3, Episode 1 Recap

Greetings, valued guests and diamond points rewards members! Before we step onto the beaches of Thailand, may I offer you a light refreshment? Take it from me: It's wise to cleanse the palette before you enter a new season of The White Lotus. There you go. Better now? Perfect. Now, if you would be so kind as to turn your attention to the in-flight monitor, I’ve put together a little reminder about how we arrived at this very moment in TV—and what you might experience during your stay at the White Lotus's beautiful Bophut Beach resort.

In 2021, The White Lotus creator Mike White had a prescient thought at precisely the right time. While everyone was trapped inside during the Covid-19 pandemic, the writer-director behind Enlightened filmed a witty whodunit series secluded from the rest of the world. The show focused on entitled vacationers who—even though they could safely venture outdoors when we couldn't—had a horrible time. Money may buy you comfort, but all that wealth can’t protect you from yourself. So, right when the real world went to hell, it strangely felt therapeutic to laugh at someone else’s (fictional) misfortune.

A lot has changed over the last four years, even if it seems like nothing has changed at all. Regardless of how you're feeling about life (and America!) nowadays, The White Lotus returned to HBO this Sunday night. Let's get into it, shall we?

Parker Posey joins the cast for season 3.

This season's first lost souls are couple Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins) and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood). The massive-age-gap relationship is a mystery in and of itself, because money doesn't exactly seem to be the reason why Chelsea loves him. It feels genuine. Chelsea is head over the heels for Rick, even though he seemingly couldn’t care less about her. He has secret reason for staying at the White Lotus that doesn't involve relaxation at all.

Next up is a whole family from North Carolina led by patriarch Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs). Joining him is Victoria (Parker Posey), his pill-addicted wife; Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), their finance bro of a son; Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), the Buddism-curious daughter; and Lochlan (Sam Nivola), their timid brother. There’s a whole mess of conflicts happening in this clan. Someone from The Washington Post is desperately trying to reach Timothy for comment. Plus, I’m picking up some uncomfortable sexual energy between the Ratliff siblings?!

Last off the boat is a trio of women celebrating their lifelong friendship. Actress Jaclyn Lemon (Michelle Monaghan) is fronting the trip for her two girlfriends—Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon)—who are friendly enough in-person, but continually talk about each other behind their backs. Lisa from the K-pop supergroup Blackpink plays an employee named Mook, and Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) plays the friend-zoned security guard. Rounding out the cast are two familiar faces. The first is a shocker. Tanya's husband, Greg (Jon Gries), is here with another woman. If he thought he could avoid jail time, he certainly didn't account for the appearance of season 1's spa manager, Belinda (Natasha Rockwell). Her son is also arriving later. From what we see in the preview, he’s one of the first guests to hear this season's obligatory gunshots.

There are mysteries everywhere this season.

Now, season 3's music is markedly different than what we've heard before in the series, as is the slow pacing, the lack of technology, the monkeys in the periphery, and the shedding of overly manic characters like Tanya. In the premiere, sometimes the comedy is even hard to find. No doubt, there were a lot of fears about a White Lotus season without Jennifer Coolidge. In my eyes, all of the elements above are what made the series entertaining in the first place. I’m mostly worried because The White Lotus season 3, so far, is such a slow burn that fans might lose interest entirely.

Plus, this is The White Lotus, so we will certainly see a murder. And the killer? Very likely one of the new vacationers. Another guest is ending the series as a dead body. That said, in its third season, The White Lotus often feels like it's settling into its own tropes right as White was given the perfect locale to dive deeper. That it all will probably end with Who murdered whom? is a bit worrisome.

Moving forward, The White Lotus needs to figure out whether or not wealthy idiots in need of spiritual healing will amount to more than just pieces of a murder mystery. The ideas are all here. After two seasons, the vacationers are finally starting to realize that there’s nothing providing meaning to the number of zeros attached to their names.

After just the first episode, I can see that White is trying to force the guests to confront the noise inside their heads. As White told The Hollywood Reporter, this year's guests are "all in some kind of hurt" when they arrive. "Like, they’re all dead, but they don’t know it," he continued, "because it’s dealing with these existential tropes of facing into the nothingness of self."

It's entirely possible that White's intent is to subvert the tropes of the past two seasons, starting with chaos, only to give us the same sensory deprivation as the White Lotus guests in Thailand. Maybe White is frustrated that theories about each season's murder mystery often eclipse discussion of the themes. Truly, nothing would excite me more than for White to sweep me off my feet with a true season-ending breakthrough that goes beyond the murder. Tanya's death at the end of season 2 set White on the right path. He may have killed off the wrong character, but her tragically stupid demise successfully destroyed White Lotus as your typical whodunit.

In season 3, we need death to take on a new meaning again. Heed the Buddhist teachings! Are we not all grains of sand in the hourglass, waiting to return to the Earth from which we came? Let us meditate on that until next week. I’m hopeful that this season can transcend into something more.