Sunday, season three of “The White Lotus,” the darkly satirical show from filmmaker Mike White about the escapades of both guests and employees at a luxury hotel chain, concluded. What took off with a running start — the promise of a new setting, characters and great suspense — evolved into more of a running-in-place predicament and ultimately ended with disappointment for many.
Since the first season’s premiere in 2021, this television series, consisting of eight weekly episodes per season, has provoked shock and dialogue amongst viewers with its dark and comedic commentary on America’s rich and privileged vacationers. Fans were eager to receive Season Three and even more anxious for the conclusion of an increasingly suspenseful season.
This season followed a distinctively large cast of about 24 central characters — a significant jump from last seasons’ group of twelve. The most engaging storylines lay in those shrouded in mystery and sinister undertones, offering limited context on the characters' pasts, and often intentions, consequently resulting in maximum viewer intrigue.
One of these threads follows the Ratliff family, particularly the father Timothy Ratliff, who quietly wrestles with the decision to either kill himself or his family in order to best escape the consequences of his money laundering scheme awaiting him at home, all unbeknownst to his family. Meanwhile, middle-aged Rick Hatchett, harrowed by the childhood trauma of his drug-abusing mother’s death and father’s murder, arrives at the resort with cryptic wishes to meet the hotel’s owner who is responsible for his father’s death.
These suspenseful plotlines interweave with the bizarre and contentious antics of the other characters, including a catty trio of old friends, and the escapades of the Ratliff siblings. While the moments balancing suspense and comedy were well-delivered within the season, certain subplots — particularly several forgettable employee dynamics — embodied neither.
With so much anticipation built up through this season, viewers might understandably feel that while they were given reason to invest in the character’s narratives, they were ultimately strung along without much payoff. Each episode offered minimal new insight, often only revealing extraneous plotlines and isolated details. These occurrences seemed to be incorporated primarily for cheap shock value, such as the incestuous Ratliff brother behavior.
Second-year College student Luciana Kerner, who finished season three with mixed feelings, felt that many aspects of the storyline lacked significance or closure.
“I felt that there were some storylines and little anecdotes that they had mentioned at the beginning of the series that ended up remaining loose ends,” Kerner said.
In hopes that lingering plotlines would reach a satisfying crescendo, many viewers’ hopes for the season were hinging on the final episode. Instead, these narratives fell flat. The storylines resulting in actual resolution turned out to be somewhat cliché, like the identity of Rick’s father, or entirely anticlimactic, like the crimes of Greg, Timothy and the Russians.
Fourth-year College student Fred Butler was disappointed with the outcome of the season, saying that while things were wrapped up in a manner that made sense, it was simply unsatisfactory.
“The entire show was kind of a slow burn,” he said. “In usual “White Lotus” fashion, we were all expecting something to explode, but nothing ever occurred, all the way up until the final episode.”
As a self-proclaimed “White Lotus” connoisseur, Butler explained that the “slow burn” technique is an integral facet of the show’s appeal. While it had been genuinely effective in seasons past, he felt the tool of suspense had been unjustly wielded in this season.
“It's an unfair way to keep an audience around,” Butler said. “You're just continuously leading us into suspense and expecting the next episode to have some form of crazy drama that explodes, but we never really got to that.”
Fortunately, not all was lost in season three. A great strength of the series lies in its initiative to depict characters whom American audiences can relate to, for better or for worse. Even beneath the privilege and extremities of the characters, their vulnerabilities emerge through their struggles, giving viewers an opportunity to recognize similar insecurities or anxieties of their own. White succeeds once again in creating several complex, fascinating figures who viewers were deeply captivated by.
Kerner shared that she was deeply immersed in many of their storylines, particularly Timothy Ratliff, whose all-consuming culpability in the face of his crime is captured through scenes of sheer panic, followed by denial and indulgent self-medication, all the while putting up an fiercely defensive stance to his concerned family.
“I really felt his anxiety through the screen,” Kerner said. “I think the story really made me want to root for him.”
Butler, hailing from Tennessee, was able to understand Mr. Ratliff’s character in a different way.
“I know some families in Nashville that I think are very closely aligned with him,” he said. “I know plenty of families that embody that same shallowness and surface level familial relationship.”
Evidently, Mr. Ratliff’s character served as one of the stronger elements of the season, and a testament to the series’ unique ability to conjure characters whom audiences can find common ground with, and therefore find reason to invest in. Other noteworthy characters, evoking similar reactions and receiving rave reviews across the internet were Victoria Ratliff, brought to life by Parker Posey, and Chelsea, played by Aimee Lou Wood, both of whose candor, and aloofness was delighted in by audiences.
Posey’s exaggerated southern drawl and snobbish quips sent the internet into hysteria, bringing a hilarious energy into each scene and making Timothy’s suffocating turmoil all the more bearable. A similar beacon of airiness, Wood brought a starry-eyed and naive grace to Chelsea’s character, who was a relentlessly faithful light in the face of her brooding, vengeful boyfriend Rick.
Chelsea’s imminent death was foreshadowed throughout the season by her repeated warning, “bad things come in threes,” yet fans were no less crushed when she was eventually shot to death in the bloodbath of Rick’s revenge scheme. Her fate stood out as one of the more emotionally resonant and narratively sound plot conclusions, ultimately demonstrating the tragedy of her romantic fatalism.
Chelsea aside, many other beloved personas were left with less climactic, underdeveloped endings, leaving audiences who had believed them worth investing in, disappointed. Season three, while not entirely a letdown, focused too much on grabbing and maintaining the audience's attention, falling short of the exceptional standard set by seasons past.
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