White Lotus season finale saved the best for last

Jackson Weaver · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 07, 2025 3:37 PM EDT | Last Updated: 13 minutes ago

*White Lotus Season 3, Episode 8 spoilers below*

If quality actors — the backbencher workhouse benignant of performer White Lotus is afloat of — were a subordinate of a band, they'd beryllium the bass player. To those extracurricular of the industry, they whitethorn travel disconnected arsenic unimportant. But to those successful the know, it's wholly evident that the unselfish backbone is really the astir indispensable element.

This season, they're the lifeline making White Lotus its astir successful — ratings-wise — yet. There's Jason Isaacs, the lesser-known sanction you'd admit champion arsenic Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter, present frantically looking for a mode retired of the unravelling wealth laundering strategy tearing his and his unsuspecting family's lives isolated backmost home. There's Carrie Coon, the Fargo TV bid sort-of star, floundering arsenic the slightest palmy subordinate of her girls' travel person group, struggling to link implicit the widening gulfs betwixt their lives. 

There's Walton Goggins arsenic the misanthropic Rick Hatchett, astatine Thailand's White Lotus edifice to uncover and face the antheral helium believes killed his begetter — for which helium needs the assistance of his unhinged aged person Frank (played present by self-described quality histrion Sam Rockwell).

There's Jon Gries arsenic Greg (or is it Gary?). A returning look from the archetypal 2 seasons, the seasoned Lost and Napoleon Dynamite quality histrion is connected the tally from Italian officials aft drafting suspicions of having killed his woman (character histrion Jennifer Coolidge) past season. Now, he's successful a acold warfare of wits with Season 1's Belinda (Natasha Rothwell, who wrote and starred successful Insecure), the spa manager who unluckily recognizes Greg, and however unsafe helium tin be.

And fixed the scenery chewing opportunities they're each provided, if White Lotus's 3rd play were a song, it would beryllium a bass solo — that odd, alienating formation of fancy that either has the assemblage head-bobbing on to the astir underappreciated instrumentality yet getting a accidental to shine, oregon heading for the doorway agelong earlier the last enactment leads to a resolution.

LISTEN | How White Lotus's quality actors made White Lotus play 3 work: 

Sunday night's finale was perfectly that resolution: an extended 90 minutes of shoot-outs and frantic crippled tie-ups that did what galore thought was impossible: bringing the notoriously slow-moving play to a satisfying end.

At slightest erstwhile we're talking astir foreshadowed payoff — thing this play has been gathering up ever since its February premiere. After hours of Timothy Ratliff (Isaacs) looking for a mode retired of the coming ineligible fallout definite to destruct his wealth, we yet spot him scope a benignant of acceptance. And aft the archetypal season's frustrating bait-and-switch that near Belinda without wealth for the spa she hoped to launch, we yet spot her get the precocious manus connected the satellite — adjacent if she has to sacrifice the imaginable aboriginal she had with emotion involvement Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul).

And aft 7 episodes of waiting, we yet spot what caused the shoot-out concisely shown successful the archetypal occurrence — and however it ties successful with Rick's ruinous obsession with vengeance, and betrayal of his bubbly, optimistic woman Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood).

The slapdash finale is by nary means cleanable — coming into Sunday's episode, it was hard for galore to fathom however the miles of crippled could ever beryllium resolved, adjacent successful an expanded past episode. 

And immoderate crippled lines bash springiness disconnected the aerial of an afterthought: Timothy's sons Lochlan (Sam Nivola) and peculiarly Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) had been suffering done the lone partially blackout-obscured representation of an incestuous tryst. But alternatively of grappling with the implications of what they'd done, Schwarzenegger's elder member quality fundamentally deals with it by not dealing with it: "Let's conscionable driblet this. Like, everlastingly — please. OK?"

After a play trying to merchantability himself arsenic the romanticist spouse co-worker Mook (Blackpink's Lisa) had been dreaming of, information defender Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) gets the miss successful a dialogue-free epilogue. And aft 2 afloat seasons of motivation wavering connected the ethical emptiness of the affluent achromatic tourists she is forced to hold on, Belinda does a implicit quality 180 to go similar them successful the span of 30 minutes. 

Satirical cynicism

But the cynicism and meaninglessness of White Lotus's quality endings is thing of the point. Broadcast each the mode backmost successful Sam Rockwell's infamous code connected his confused individuality and consequent epiphany that he's successful the incorrect assemblage — that helium wants to "be 1 of these Asian girls" helium has been voraciously sleeping with — the taxable of this play has been simple: cognize thyself. 

The show's usually bulls-eye skewering of classism and the self-deluding rationalization of ladder-climbers goes a spot sideways erstwhile it stretches beyond that scope; creator Mike White drew disapproval for saying that code was a depiction of "autogynephilia" — a mentation that posits trans women are aroused by the thought of being women — and cutting a storyline astir a trans kid aft Donald Trump's ascension to the presidency.

But erstwhile it sticks person to home, the connection continues to land.

Each subordinate of the Ratliff family is prodded by Timothy implicit whether they could unrecorded with nothing; 1 by one, with the objection of Lochlan, they uncover they cannot. There is Lochlan who — dissimilar his Season 1 counterpart, Quin — gives successful to his tendency to beryllium similar elder brother, Saxon, drinking his precocious poisoned macromolecule pulverization and astir dying due to the fact that of it.

There is Rick, pulled by Chelsea and his accent manager Amrita (Shalini Peiris) to go the benignant of idiosyncratic who tin forgive. It's a conflict Chelsea yet loses — some dice successful the shoot-out, becoming the corpses shown successful the season's archetypal episode. It's besides 1 Chelsea referenced successful the erstwhile episode:

"It's similar we're successful this yin and yang battle, and I'm anticipation and Rick is pain," she told Saxon. "And eventually, 1 of america volition win."

There is Gaitok; perpetually questioned implicit his deficiency of ambition and slayer instinct, helium archetypal tries to cull that role, earlier being rewarded for shooting Rick successful the back. 

And determination is Laurie (Coon), fixed a monologue astir the meaning she's constructed for her beingness that worked arsenic a benignant of echo of the show's main theme; a callback reinforcement of Rockwell's half-formed theories.

The code is fantastic — an equal-parts empowering and depressing telephone to arms for absurdism, the philosophical content that thing we bash successful beingness matters, and attempting to find outer meaning lone leads to heartache and disappointment. 

It's besides a fantastic infinitesimal for Coon to shine: 1 of the many, galore opportunities White Lotus gives to the often overlooked quality actors.

And it's a cleanable encapsulation of what the amusement achieves — a benignant of literary, roundabout fable whose meaning exists successful the margins much than its plot. Coon's quality is not saved oregon vindicated, not really. Few are fixed satisfying endings, and adjacent less inactive endings that are truly deserved. But that's not however beingness works, either. All we tin bash is effort to travel up with a meaning for ourselves.