The reception to the final episode of The White Lotus season 3 has been more of a massacre than its brutal ending.
Spoilers ahead.
Forget the shootout that erupts throughout the luxury Thai resort in the show’s final moments, there have been more shots fired by critics.
The series finale was deemed a ‘crushing disappointment’ and a ‘waste of time’ for Forbes writer Erik Kain, while Adam White in The Independent said it was a ‘bad’ season.
Viewers also accused The White Lotus of being ‘boring’ because of its slower pace.
But everyone who falls into the ‘hater’ camp is missing the prestige drama’s point entirely.
The White Lotus, even though it is sometimes billed as such, is not intended to be a thriller with implausible plot twists and cliffhangers like a Scandi Noir or any Harlan Coben show on Netflix. It is, at its heart, a character study.
This is most pertinently explored in the toxic friendship between Laurie (Carrie Coon), Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Kate (Leslie Bibb). Arguably, not much happens with them aside from catty comments and an epic bender.
Yet in the final’s stand-out scene, Laurie, out of the blue, announces their holiday has made her feel ‘so sad.’ It dawns on her that her life has just been one bad decision after the other.
She expresses regret for devoting her soul to a career that hasn’t loved her back and for previously committing to a long-term relationship with the wrong man. It is time, she says, that has ultimately given her life meaning.
Time to make mistakes, learn, take accountability and ultimately live. It’s a deeply human monologue and one all viewers can relate to.
The White Lotus also examines the corrupting effects of wealth, power and greed on the human psyche, and this is aptly illustrated by Belinda’s (Natasha Rothwell) character arc.
In season one, we saw her life in tatters after Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) offers to change her life by funding a salon business, only to U-turn at the eleventh hour.
In season three, she has returned as a lowly-paid therapist, but this time she has a bargaining chip. After questioning the morality of accepting cash from Greg (Jon Gries) in exchange for her silence over his involvement in Tanya’s murder, she goes in hard and asks for even more dosh: $5million, to be precise.
Having been slighted herself, does she then use that money for good? No. Like Tanya before her, she swiftly tells her lover, fellow therapist Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) that she no longer wants to go into business with him and the betrayal is worse given Belinda’s backstory and her romantic intimacy with Porrnchai.
The White Lotus puts forward the deeply uncomfortable truth that most people, no matter how good, will compromise their morality for the right price.
The other major complaint levelled at The White Lotus’s third season lacks entertainment value.
But this is wrong. While the final episode is the length of a feature film, it packs all the punches of a Shakespearan tragedy.
This is keenly felt in the Ratliff family’s final day at The White Lotus. We have suicidal father, Jason Isaacs’ Timothy, nearly killing off every member of his family, bar his hapless son Lochlan (Sam Nivola), with a poisoned pina colada to spare them the pain of being poor after his secret bankruptcy.
After their first sips, panic clouds Timothy’s face, and he smacks the drink out of their hands. Except the next day, Lochlan unknowingly drinks from the spiked cocktail and collapses by the pool.
It is great TV and I won’t hear otherwise. All the elements are there: A ridiculous family murder-suicide plot, death by a darkly hilarious means and a father’s anguish at unwittingly killing the one person he sought to save.
Yes, Lochlan eventually survives, but his near-death is a gripping narrative device. He is the ultimate red herring for the real deaths to keep viewers guessing until the final moments.
When you do learn that in the body bags are doomed couple Rick (Walton Goggins) and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), it’s an emotional suckepunch.
Rick finally avenges his father’s murder by shooting who he thinks is his killer Jim (Scott Glenn), only to learn that he is his father. To add to his agonising pain, Chelsea gets fatally wounded in the subsequent crossfire just hours after they proclaimed their ‘forever’ love to each other.
At least Rick is put out of his misery, as he also gets shot to death with Chelsea’s lifeless body scooped up in his arms.
What did you think of The White Lotus' finale?
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It is a devastating ending and all the more so because Chelsea, with her goofy charm, is The White Lotus’s most likeable character to date.
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The key to any successful drama is to make viewers care and I was in tears as the life extinguished out of her. While it is painful to say, the right people died for the purposes of gripping television.
No one would’ve cared if any of the other characters had died. I would have instantly forgotten the show if finance bro Saxon (Patrick Schwarzengger) had popped his clogs, for example. Creator Mike White crafted the conclusion expertly for dramatic effect.
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Sure, The White Lotus’s ending is unsatisfying in that the good characters become bad, and the morally bankrupt always get off scot-free, but it holds up a mirror to a society that is more often than not cruelly unjust. That, I think, is the point of the show.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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