The Season 3 premiere of Mike White’s “The White Lotus” aired on HBO Max on Feb. 16. This season, characters navigate friendship, family and restoring wellness at Thailand’s wellness center and hotel, the White Lotus.
An unhinged opening scene shows us that a gunman is loose at the resort. After we have all been induced with anxiety, the screen cuts to “one week earlier.”
The first episode introduced us to all of our new characters, and a few returning ones. In typical “White Lotus” fashion, the vacationers arrived at the wellness center via boat. This is where we make our first impressions of the characters, unable to hear any major dialogue, but make assumptions about the levels of entitlement from each character.
Right off the bat, we meet the Ratliff family, composed of five entitled southern charmers. Timothy Ratliff is the father, deep into the finance business. Victoria Ratliff is his odd wife who talks so slow that it’s unnerving. They have three children: Saxton, Piper and Lochlan.
After speaking with his father, Saxon approaches a separate couple on the boat, asking the man to put out his cigarette, showing his own entitlement.
The couple Saxon approaches consists of Rick, an older American man, and Chelsea, a younger British yoga teacher. Rick clearly does not take directions well from others, going back and forth with Saxon before finally putting out the cigarette.
We then see a group of three, older white women who have been “friends for years.” One of them is actually a famous actress, and the three women speak on how “thrilled” they are to finally be able to take a vacation together.
Belinda from season 1’s Hawaii location returned, after being gone the entirety of season 2. She is excited to learn a lot from Thailand’s White Lotus location and bring new methods back to the White Lotus location she oversees in Hawaii.
As the groups are greeted by hotel staff, they are assigned a “wellness expert” who plans their excursions for each day of their vacation.
The Ratliff family’s wellness expert is not really named, but the experts for Rick and Chelsea and the group of three female friends get more screen time.
Mook is the wellness expert for Rick and Chelsea, and Valentin is the expert for Jaclyn, Laurie and Kate.
Each of the groups have different reasons for checking in at the White Lotus, and we learn more about this each episode.
It is revealed in the first episode that Piper Ratliff is doing her thesis on Buddhism in Thailand, so that is the reason for the Ratliff family’s trip.
The Ratliff family is odd to state it plainly. They make an effort to say to hotel staff that they are “just a normal family.” When a family goes out of their way to state exactly how they want to be perceived, they are typically hiding something.
Timothy seems to be glued to his phone, something that is prohibited at this center, and Victoria pops pills every episode.
Saxon has no filter and total arrogance, making strange comments about his sister’s “hotness.” Lochlan, too, seems to have a weird thing going on with Saxon. We saw him stare at his older brother’s nude body at the end of episode 1.
Also at the end of this first episode, Timothy takes a phone call where he learns that the U.S. government is investigating him for fraud.
Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie prove to be a group of cutthroat women. I love the way these characters are written because of the way the dynamic of the group shifts within each episode.
In the first episode, it appears that Jaclyn and Kate are the duo within the trio, talking about Laurie the minute she leaves the room. In the second, Kate and Laurie do the same thing when Jaclyn leaves. You guessed it, Laurie and Jaclyn talk about Kate when she leaves in the third episode, completing the cycle of the dynamic of a trio.
Unfortunately, I think the storyline does a stellar job at portraying female friendships and how often group dynamics change. Especially the part about one friend always feeling on the outs.
Rick and Chelsea’s dynamic is still very much unknown to me. There has to be at least a 15 year age gap between the two, and Rick could not be bothered with any of the actual “wellness” part of the hotel. He is, however, interested in finding the hotel manager’s husband. Weird.
During the second episode, Victoria Ratliff comes out and speaks perfect Thai at the hotel restaurant when ordering her dinner. This sparked a theory that she may have been planning this trip for a while, and she might even have been the one who turned in Timothy to the authorities. Maybe she is planning on escaping to Thailand to get away from her husband’s crime.
We also get a spark of conflict and action in episode two when people break into the hotel’s gift shop. They had guns and face coverings, but fans think that three side character’s might be involved in the scheme. These three characters are Mook, Chloe and Valentin.
Remember, Mook and Valentin serve as health mentors. Chloe, however, is the girlfriend of returning character Greg, from season 1.
Greg is a wealthy, bald white man who Chloe refers to as a “loser back home.” Apparently, Greg has been living in Thailand for over a year, ever since leaving the White Lotus center in Hawaii.
So far in the series, the main question is “Who is the gunman from episode one?” Considering past patterns of “The White Lotus” characters being a key part of the all-encompassing violence, the characters in season 3 are under suspicion of being the gunman.
The only one in the clear is Belinda’s son, Zion, who joins her later in the week. The shooting from the first episode is shown through his point of view. As of now in the series, we are getting the plot from the week leading up to the shooting.
My thoughts put me most suspicious of the Ratliff family. I theorize that Timothy finds out about his wife’s scheme, and he snaps as a result of this. Maybe a federal team actually shows up to the hotel, and Timothy decides he is not going down without a fight.
Social media fans have many theories surrounding more than just “Who is the gunman?” Some theories surround the Ratliff siblings, ranging from the death of Lochlan to an unsettling, incest ending among the siblings.
Other theories analyze that Mook is not the innocent, friendly staff employee she presents herself as. The theory is that Mook has a scheme with other staff members to steal money from the wealthy guests who stay at the White Lotus.
Evidence stems from Mook’s close relationship to one of the security guards who has a crush on her. Fans think she only flirts with him and is friendly to distract him from any other events
happening at the hotel.
“The White Lotus” offers fans intense drama, cutthroat dialogue and unnerving events that provide the ultimate sense of entertainment.
