The White Lotus is currently airing its third season, much to the delight and frenzy of its fans.
The HBO anthology series, created by Mike White, centers on a different group of wealthy people each season who range from being morally blind to morally bankrupt. Each season is set in a different lavish resort and ends inevitably in someone’s death, something viewers are given a clue into in the first episode.
The White Lotus is a pressure cooker show. In previous seasons, the tension rises in each episode, with secrets uncovered and questions raised, before things ultimately hit a boiling point in the series finale, which has been known to be explosive.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO
Each week, there is significant social media speculation about what will happen next in the show, and sleuthing into unanswered questions, with posts across TikTok, X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram about the show receiving millions of views.
With the season now having hit its halfway point, with only four more episodes to go, here are some of the questions that The White Lotus‘ legion of die-hard fans desperately want answered.
Warning: This article contains spoilers.
Who Is Going to Die?
Perhaps the biggest question of all in this season of The White Lotus and the others, is who will die. In Season 1, it was Armond (Murray Bartlett), the manager of the White Lotus in Maui. In Season 2, Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge), the hysterical heiress, plunged to her death, after a shootout with a cohort of scheming men, hired by her husband Greg/Gary Hunt (Jon Gries) who tried to have her killed. McQuoid ultimately smacked her head off the side of the boat when trying to jump to safety.
So, who will it be in Season 3? The series opened with a flash-forward to gunshots at the resort, and a glimpse of a body in the water, and the series has so far made continual references to tsunamis and death by drowning. Who is the body in the water, and will they be this season’s only victim, or are the others slated for an ill-fated end? There are predictions online for nearly every character and fans of the show are dying to know.
What’s Going on Between Saxon and Lochlan?
The relationship between Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lochlan (Sam Nivola), the two Ratliffe brothers, is strange and has an unsettling sexual undertone. Saxon is a nepo-baby-finance-frat-boy who has instantly courted dislike of his character. Lochlan is the younger brother, shy and introverted and clearly in the shadow of him.
The sinister sexual dynamic between the two, along with remarks made about the sister, could fall into the spectrum of sibling sexual behavior. Many viewers are wondering what will happen between them, along with speculating (or perhaps hoping) that they’re not related at all. Nevertheless, viewers need some enlightenment as to what’s going on.
What Will Happen With Rick and Jim Hollinger?
In the fourth episode, viewers are finally provided with answers about what Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins) is doing in Thailand. Viewers learned that Rick’s father disappeared while doing humanitarian work and that his mother accused the White Lotus hotel manager, Sritala’s (Lek Patravadi) husband, Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), of being responsible for making it happen. Not many details have been shared about Hollinger, but he had been referred to in an earlier episode by the character Mook (Lalisa Manobal) as a “very famous man in Thailand.”
The latest episode shows Rick heading to Bangkok to confront Hollinger, and leaving his girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) behind. Will Rick seek vengeance or will he find out more details about his father’s disappearance that further complicate the narrative?
Who Called the FBI on Tim Ratliffe, and What Exactly Has He Done?
Timothy Ratliffe (Jason Isaacs), the highly-strung patriarch of the Ratliffe family, has been at the center of some of the series’ most nerve-wracking moments so far. As of this season’s fourth episode, we have learned that he is involved in money laundering, embezzlement and fraud and that his co-conspirator Kenny Nguyen is cooperating with the FBI, meaning he could be facing prison time, something he said in the episode that he would rather die than do.
But his plotline has left multiple questions that viewers want answered, including what exactly it is he has done, how his family will react when they find out, who is responsible for calling the FBI on him, and what his fate will be.
What Will Happen to Belinda, and Her Son Zion Lindsey?
Viewers first met Belinda Lindsey (Natasha Rothwell) in the first season of the show, working at the White Lotus in Maui. Now she’s at the White Lotus in Thailand, and the most recent episode saw her find out that Greg, now going by Gary who is living on the Koh Samui island above the White Lotus hotel, is the same Greg she met back in Maui with Tanya and that he is wanted by police in connection with his wife’s death in Italy.
And if that wasn’t sticky enough, in the very first episode of the season, before gunshots begin and we see a body floating in the water, we meet her son Zion Lindsey (Nicholas Duverney) who has arrived at the resort and says he’s worried about his mother. Viewers are naturally speculating whether something sinister is in the pipeline for Belinda and her son.
And What Will Happen to Greg?
Greg is arguably the most hated character in the series, and that’s no small feat. Now going by the alias Gary, presumably because law enforcement is looking into him for his role in his wife’s death, the last episode saw him Googling Belinda and her son. Belinda had previously confronted him and asked if they had met before which Greg denied, but at the end of the last episode, we learn that he did in fact recognize her.
Fans have been left wondering what’s going to happen to Greg. Will he face any consequences for killing his wife? And does Belinda knowing who he is mean that she and her son are in danger?
What Happens Next
The White Lotus airs on Sunday nights on HBO at 9 p.m.
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