White Lotus

The White Lotus season 2 finale revealed who died in the HBO resort drama's mystery plot, from creator Mike White.

“He’s not the thing that takes up all of the energy, and she’s there because of this woman [Tanya] who takes up all of the space and all of the energy. When speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the start of the season, Coolidge described Tanya and Greg’s relationship: “He’s come into her life and is kind of filling it up. By the end you’re like, well, maybe what Ethan and Harper need was just a small dash of what Cameron and Daphne have.” And while White has hopes for Dominic (Michael Imperioli) to change, given his wife’s (voiced by Laura Dern) final phone call, he is less hopeful that Cameron ever will. But now all of a sudden, relationships evolve in a place and sometimes after the honeymoon is over, things change. The creator said the idea came to him in the first season finale when Tanya said to Greg, “I’ve had every kind of treatment over the of years. Terrified for her life, Tanya swipes the bag her “paramour” brought with him, uncovers a gun and shoots and kills her attacker, along with Quentin and one of the other men. [nephew](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/the-white-lotus-episode-5-haley-lu-richardson-1235272521/)” Jack (Leo Woodall) are indeed not who they appear to be, and Tanya realizes Greg has likely put a hit out on her over the money. And because she feels so vulnerable, she’s kind of a little bit all over the map. The first season highlighted money and the second sex, and White says the third season will be a “satirical and funny look at death and eastern religion and spirituality. The leading theory heading into the finale was that Quentin was working with Greg to facilitate Tanya having an affair, so Greg could gain access to her money in a divorce (the pair had a pre-nup). The only person who was confirmed to survive was vacationing wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy), who uncovered the body while taking a dip in the water. Could the deceased be a result of the presumed extortion plot surrounding heiress Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge)?

After weeks of fervent speculation and close examination of costumes and props, viewers finally got their answer.

[wild theories about bloody endings](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/who-will-die-in-the-white-lotus-season-2-finale) (Cameron and Ethan jet ski accident? But even though The White Lotus isn’t about death, it was about Jennifer Coolidge—and with a [third season officially coming](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/the-white-lotus-season-3-everything-we-know-so-far), it’s time to start reimagining exactly what that might look like. White has been frank that the dead body conspicuously placed at the beginning of each White Lotus season is a tool for luring in audiences. The rich and privileged are, once again, escaping with all their privileges intact, and the spirit of Tanya lives on in Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), who escaped whatever role was intended for her in the murder plot and wears a very Tanya-worthy head scarf for her flight home. The season ends, just as the first one did, with all the major players in the airport and on their way home. The body count began on Quentin’s yacht, where Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) sussed out what viewers had suspected: those gays, as she told the boat captain, were trying to kill her.

As the star-studded cast cruises into the final episode of Season 2, Boston.com staff and readers outlined who they think will die in the season finale.

His son is getting things off his chest that he’s never told him and when Bert says he’ll never have his homecoming it’s really him coming to terms with the end of his life. Lucia also dies at Albie’s hands to continue the cycle of Di Grasso men’s poor treatment of women, and as a cautionary tale to Mia about what you sacrifice for your dreams. After the events of the last episode, he is definitely a spring ready to pop, and we haven’t seen the brunt of his aggression in full yet (besides taking out his masculine melancholy through those long swims and runs). That leaves a handful of other characters I think are contenders for the killings, intentionally or unintentionally. What Mike White has managed to build in two short seasons is nothing but a masterclass in character writing, with each player in the game fleshed out and complex. From her fling with the fragile Valentina, to the unpaid debt from Cameron, to the piano player she unintentionally (but let’s be real, semi-intentionally) sent to the hospital, Mia has a lot on her plate this season. In Season 1, Shane is the first character we meet and we later learn that he kills troubled hotel manager Armand. Perhaps it will be the mysterious pimp Lucia likely hired to get more out of Albie. My guess is White will continue to bring home the message from the “White Lotus” series that rich folk can get away with a lot of things, including killing innocent people. Underneath all this beauty, creator Mike White and his team have done a stupendous job of slowly ratcheting up the tension, incrementally laying out the ways that this vacation could get violent. It’s easy to get swept up in all of this week to week without remembering that body bags need to be filled. In a surprise twist, I think the killer will be sweet Albie Di Grasso.

Jennifer Coolidge dies in 'The White Lotus' Season 2 finale. Tanya is able to kill Quentin and Niccolo on the yacht, but falls and hits her head trying to ...

Alas, that means she will not be going on to The White Lotus Season 3… She kills Niccoló and Didier (Bruno Gouery) and gets Quentin in the back. Elsewhere Mia gets to keep her job at the White Lotus. The murdered bodies on the yacht. Tanya then realizes she is stuck on the yacht. We next see her donning a terrible disguise at the main Sicily airport where she reconnects with Albie, who reveals that Lucia did indeed extort him out of money. She grabs it en route to the “powder room” and locks the door. She sees the dingy and questions if she can make the jump. She keeps shooting and shooting her way out, teary-eyed and panicked the whole time. We know that Daphne ( [Meghann Fahy](https://decider.com/tag/meghann-fahy/)) survives, as [she is the guest who discovers a mysterious corpse](https://decider.com/2022/10/31/who-dies-in-the-white-lotus-season-2/) while she takes one final dip in the sea. Together, the two women piece together the plot. We also know that hotel manager Valentina ( [Sabrina Impacciatore](https://decider.com/tag/sabrina-impacciatore/)) lives.

The internet posted its way through the season 2 finale of The White Lotus, starring Jennifer Coolidge, Aubrey Plaza, and a gun.

The season 2 finale of The White Lotus had thrills, chills, ammo clips, Meghan Fahy’s freckles. Everyone is leaving the White Lotus Sicily a little (or a lot) different from when they arrived. And Mia is thriving(?) as a hotel lounge singer.

Ben Lee Made a White Lotus theme song/Megan Thee Stallion “Thot Shit” Mashup, because tonight is the finale, and we demand body-ody-odies.

And Albie would respectfully muse on the sex-positive feminism of Meg. But do you have a sun-room DJ setup to help process those feelings of excitement? We don’t know who’s going to die, but we can guess who would vibe with this mashup.

So Mike White has once again shown us some penises in White Lotus. Am I supposed to be impressed? At this point, a penis is as common fodder for HBO as the ...

White Lotus showing hole of any variety would set forth a shift in how we perceive the body in media. I imagine that even with the use of prosthetics, the task of showing hole is still quite the ask for any actor. But what is the role of the actor if not a vessel through which norms can be defied and dogmas can be questioned? (Not to mention more inclusive of the many types of sex people have). Sebastian Stan’s [talking penis in Pam & Tommy](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/robert-siegel-pam-and-tommy-interview) was fake, as was Taylor Zakhar Perez’s in Minx. In fact, it would even seem appropriate for hole to appear on a show like Euphoria, where it would quickly become absorbed by the broader stunt and spectacle of the series itself. [home to the most dick-shots of any show in history](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/euphoria-dicks-most-penises-on-tv-ever). In Season Two, we saw penis once more on Theo James who has [since described the prosthetic used](https://www.nme.com/news/tv/theo-james-ginormous-prosthetic-penis-the-white-lotus-3362377) as looking like it were stolen “off a donkey on a field”—it was nine inches long and four inches wide. [Earlier this year, I lamented that](https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/golden-age-of-male-nudity-fraud) the majority of penises we’ve seen in mainstream shows and movies have been prosthetic. A flaccid penis is a symbol of a lack of horniness, while a vagina or anus can still be perceived as erotic whether it’s aroused or not. It was a symbol not just of his masculinity, but the fragility of his sense of self as he aged as both a father and a husband. It’s a duty we ought to encourage him to fulfill.

Mike White's HBO show offers a few answers and a whole lot of questions in the Season 2 finale.

Nonetheless, “The White Lotus” remains something of a triumph. He eventually convinces Dominic Di Grasso (Michael Imperioli), calling it a “karmic payment” to make up for all his dad’s ills and by promising to try to urge his mother to take him back. The character of Tanya already strained credulity to some degree, such as when she finds a photo of Greg in Quentin’s home and allows herself to be convinced it’s actually of an acid-dropping cowboy fisherman named Steve. Earlier in the season Cameron has sex with a prostitute, while he and Ethan are having a guy’s night out. He and his band of art-loving friends weren’t the rich world travelers they claimed to be. In lesser hands, the dead bodies might feel like a cynical carrot leading the viewer to the final episode.

The second season finale of HBO's acclaimed Sicily-set series gave us tearful confessions, scams, and several dead bodies. All hail Aubrey Plaza.

That series creator Mike White managed to not only cook up a second season of The White Lotus a year and a half after the first one premiered, but have it surpass the first, tackling more complex topics like desire, intimacy and fidelity with grace and a surfeit of style, is a testament to his ingenuity. Just when you think she’s made it to safety, however, she slips off the railing, hits her head on the side of the dinghy, and slowly sinks to the bottom of the ocean. The former is slowly, painfully piecing together that Quentin and her estranged hubby Greg (Jon Gries) are after her fortune as she once again observes their framed Brokeback Mountain-esque photo. Portia, meanwhile, is slowly, painfully piecing together the fact that her weepy Essex lover Jack (Leo Woodall) is nothing more than Quentin’s rent-boy henchman. [Mike White](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/mike-white/)’s series this season has been Ethan’s refusal to bed [Aubrey Plaza](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/aubrey-plaza/)’s looks-serving vixen. [Michael Imperioli](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/michael-imperioli-sopranos-emmy-scorsese-first-time-1266650/)) transfer him 50,000 Euros—“a karmic payment… [Jennifer Coolidge](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/jennifer-coolidge-white-lotus-interview-1234622497/)) and Portia ( [Haley Lu Richardson](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/haley-lu-richardson-first-time-video-1076695/)). It appears that this chaotic trip, and the intervention of Cameron and Daphne, has helped these two more than they’d like to admit. Her admission leads Ethan to attack Cameron, airing out years of frustration with a sharp right hook, and confide in Daphne (Meghann Fahy). That scholarly revelation is perhaps the least surprising one in the [HBO](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/hbo/) limited series’ nerve-wracking finale, which saw not two, but four of these miserable rich bastards wind up dead. One of the more implausible parts of It was a drunk, dumb nothing!” she exclaims, adding, “And the real issue is, you’re not attracted to me anyway!”

SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the Season 2 finale of HBO's The White Lotus. The slow-burn second season of HBO's The White Lotus continued ...

It just made me laugh to think like she would like take out this cabal of killers and after she successfully does that and she just dies this derpy death and that’s so Tanya,” he added. White also addressed what might happen in Season 3 of the show, which was picked up last month. “The end of the show, you see three generations of men and there’s this attractive woman who crosses. Lucia and Mia emerged as the biggest winners of Season 2. Cameron was taking a swim, and the two wrestled, with each coming close to drowning but eventually beachgoers broke up the fight. At the same time, there’s some time that isn’t really accounted for and I think that’s why it’s eating at Ethan,” White said. It feels like Cameron to me is one of those guys that’s not really going to change. “It felt like she needed to give her best fight back and that she, in a way had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her. Quentin tried to throw her off in the finale by claiming the name of the guy was Steve but the signs were already there. Tanya realized that her prenup would leave all her money to Greg if she dies, while a divorce would leave him with nothing. “Not that I really wanted to kill Tanya because I love her as a character and obviously love Jennifer, but we’re going to Italy, she’s such a diva, a larger-than-life female archetype, it felt maybe we could devise our own operatic conclusion to her life and story.” The vacation didn’t start well for Tanya when her husband Greg left and she discovered that he may be cheating on her.

"The White Lotus" just wrapped up its second season, but creator Mike White already has his eyes set on Season 3.

White continued, “I was thinking, it’d be so fun to bring Tanya back because she’s such a great character, but maybe that’s the journey for her, a journey to death. “The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. And she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years, death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.'”

In 'The White Lotus' season two finale 'Arrivederci', we learn who was dead in the water, and the answer uses Mike White's favorite symbolic image to ...

And why else would Niccolo be taking her back to shore with a bag full of rope, duct tape, and a gun? She’s different from a character like Daphne, who sees the storm and swims parallel to it, charting her own path through the chaos. [Mysterious Monkeys](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-white-lotus-episode-3-recap-mysterious-monkeys.html),” she is hysterically upset — her face frozen in a mask of agony and resentment. In The White Lotus, there’s something comforting about our personal irrelevance in tension with other people’s choices, Daphne seems to say, because it gives us freedom to decide for ourselves how we act and react. [95 percent of it](https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/ocean-exploration) that remains uncharted and unexplored by humans, entire ecosystems in which we have no part. One of the final scenes of “Departures” is Quinn on a Hawaiian-style outrigger boat paddling far away from the shore (and his old life) and moving toward the sun and something new. Those opening-scene deaths signaled a different approach: Gone was an aquatic environment as restorative or welcoming, and in its place was the ocean as mysterious and impenetrable — not too far off from what Daphne says to Ethan about marriage in “Arrivederci.” When Daphne observes, “We never really know what goes on in people’s minds or what they do … Water is a well-established symbol of rebirth in art and literature, and White has recurrently evoked that meaning in his own work with additional layers of fantasy and surreality. [Arrivederci](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-white-lotus-season-2-finale-recap-arrivederci.html),” it is returning White Lotus guest Tanya who is found drowned, marked for death by her frilly, pink, floral dress — so similar to the one worn by the dummy version of Michael Corleone’s first wife, Apollonia, at The Godfather tourist attraction visited by Portia. The first time she tries to scatter her mother’s ashes while on a chartered boat in “ And at the end of “ [The White Lotus](https://www.vulture.com/tv/the-white-lotus), Mike White has made us wonder: Who’s in the water?

Another installment of the buzzed-about HBO anthology is coming, but who are the new crop of islanders and where could they be heading next?

[Entertainment Weekly](https://ew.com/tv/the-white-lotus-season-2-preview-mike-white-aubrey-plaza-theo-james/) that he originally centered season two around politics and power, rather than sex and relationships. But [Jennifer Coolidge](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/07/jennifer-coolidge-the-white-lotus-interview), returning from the Emmy-winning first season, had another standout showing—the question of whether she could she reprise the role of Tanya again, however, was [answered in the season 2 finale](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/white-lotus-season-2-who-dies). What will [the credits sound like](https://www.vanityfair.com/preview/articles/63936881081d9a38b8646aa3?status=draft&t=1670605153247)? So I need to figure out how to unplug and refresh or something.” May we suggest…a vacation? And will the guests venture beyond the resort [to eat](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/the-rich-people-on-the-white-lotus-have-terrible-dining-habits)? “I don’t have a lot of gas in the tank. “I need to reboot a little bit,” White told Couric A piece of casting didn’t work in the second season and we’re hoping to [do] that in the third season. “I felt like it should be more focused on men and women and relationships and adultery and have an operatic feel to it, so I pivoted.” Still, the writer-director maintains he could still do his initial idea “down the road maybe, if they give us a third season.” [twist-filled second season of The White Lotus](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/the-white-lotus-season-2-easter-eggs) (and shocking answers to the question of [who dies](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/12/who-will-die-in-the-white-lotus-season-2-finale)) yet another edition of [Mike White’s anthology series](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/photos/2022/11/white-lotus-gift-guide-2022) is on the itinerary. “He wanted me to be in the second season, and there was an idea that I loved for the character,” she told I have to beg off to be honest because I don't really know.”

Speculation on where The White Lotus season 3 will be set has begun online, with fans wanting a ski lodge season. Mike White wants to look at Eastern ...

[TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRVhjvJt/) is [awash](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRVh2CJ1/) with The White Lotus ski lodge dream casts. “I think the third season, it would be maybe a kind of satirical and funny look at death in Eastern religion and spirituality, it feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.” So are we looking at Asia? puts Carmen Sandiego behind bars figures out where Mike White is setting The White Lotus season 3 will get a free trip anywhere in the lower 48 states!

The seventh and final episode of the HBO Max series was a masterclass of social commentary, witty writing and gorgeous shots from writer/director Mike White. It ...

It was a super satisfying end to an even better season of the genius show, Italy's fountains and volcanoes erupting in perfect climax. Best friends Lucia and Mia swirl down the cobblestone streets Elena Ferrante-style, basking in the glow of their accomplishments. Resting in each other's arms at the airport, they look a picture of peace and solidarity. This is all after Ethan and Cameron have their inevitable showdown in the sea, but maybe it would have been too obvious and extreme if one or both of them died. In a truly frightening sequence, a shaking Tanya loses Portia on the phone, and has to face a boatful of people who want to kill her. Seizing her one opportunity to save herself, Tanya brazenly grabs her killer's duffle bag and locks herself in a room.

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers up through Episode 7 of “The White Lotus,” airing Sundays on HBO and streaming on HBO Max.

White continued, “I was thinking, it’d be so fun to bring Tanya back because she’s such a great character, but maybe that’s the journey for her, a journey to death. “The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. And she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years, death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.'”

Which would've made it tough for Quentin to get Tanya alone on a yacht with a bag containing half the murder weapons from Clue. Adam DiMarco and Haley ...

Maybe season 3 can take place at the White Lotus in purgatory?) But would we want to keep coming back if The White Lotus didn’t manage to shock us every time? Like Cam and Daphne and Ethan and Harper, the show needs an element of uncertainty to keep the spark alive. [White Lotus season 2](https://time.com/6223583/the-white-lotus-season-2-review/) finale, when he runs into Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) at the airport on their way out of Italy. Jealous Ethan (Will Sharpe) and exasperated Harper ( Not only does he inherit Tanya’s hundreds of millions, but he doesn’t even have to share them with Quentin and company. The latter couple is no worse for the wear because their marriage has always been a farce. That’s not to say there aren’t characters who come out of the season better off than they were going into it. Just about everyone got scammed, from Tanya and Portia and the Di Grassos to Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), who’s crushed again when newly hired lounge singer Mia (Beatrice Grannò) confirms their obviously transactional relationship as such, to the two young couples constantly performing romance and jealousy for each other’s benefit. Now that his feminist facade has been shattered by a genuine gold digger, he’s ogling hot girls at the airport right along with his dad and grandpa. He might never have let Lucia (Simona Tabasco) con him—or his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), the original mark—into giving her €50,000. Sebastian](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-white-lotus-artwork), that creepy fresco from the title sequence, those macabre Testa di Moro statues peeking out from every corner—they were all watching the guests’ every misguided move. Even though she’s yet to have her worst fears about Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) confirmed, it’s an understatement for the ages.

The White Lotus has blossomed into a truly massive hit for HBO, as gripping each week as any episode of Game of Thrones ever was, and now after last night?

While we have no direct link between them and Greg, I do wonder if there is literally some sort of evil Legion of Doom being built behind the scenes of The White Lotus with Greg at the apex, which does not seem like such a wild theory after last night. Also, we still don’t know who Greg was talking to on the phone, saying he loved them. Portia, however, was the wrench thrown into the plan, as you’ll recall Greg was agitated that he brought her assistant along. But we do know he’s either somewhat wealthy himself or has wealthy-appearing friends, given his past relationship with Quentin, which was revealed in the past two episodes. These friends, in theory, could have been the group of gays from season 2. In season 1, Greg says he’s in Hawaii on a fishing trip with friends, rich friends, you would imagine, if they can afford to go fishing in Hawaii.

Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) met her watery demise in the season finale, as did practically a full yacht's worth of conspiring gay men. As episode six hinted at, ...

But here, all along, Daphne defied the odds and found a way. Upward mobility isn’t usually rewarded in The White Lotus, as we saw with Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) from season one, and Quentin and his cohort this year. [ biggest shift this season](https://www.vox.com/culture/23425402/white-lotus-review-credits-explained-murder) was how The White Lotus transitioned from feeling like a show about unaware and unchecked privilege with a little murder mystery hanging over it, to murder mystery with a bit of unaware and unchecked privilege on the side. When we first meet her on the beach chatting up the two women on vacation, there’s a sense that she’s kind of a rich dumb-dumb. When she tells Daphne as much as she can without spelling out all the details, Daphne doesn’t even flinch. When Cameron and Daphne tell her they don’t read or watch the news, she’s shocked at their incuriosity about the world. Knowing that his college roommate at the very least kissed his wife, Ethan tackles Cameron (Theo James) in the ocean and punches him in the face. (No, I am not making this up.) Tanya Wick just has to make it to the attached dinghy, but instead of taking the stairs, she decides to jump — whacking her head on the side of the boat and drowning. We never find out what exactly that relationship is, but Tanya — after a frantic call from the subtly abducted Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) — believes that Quentin and his crew were in cahoots with Greg to kill her and cash in an inheritance. And as a result of accidentally drugging the resident pianist, Mia convinces hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) to fire him. Tanya is convinced Niccolò and the gays are going to kill her (“These gays are trying to kill me,” she whisper-hisses, perfectly). And speaking of sex workers, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) got a real happily ever after.

It also reminded us that not all subplots are created equal, and that the sophomore season of Mike White's hit show was destined to run out of steam.

But even a memorably violent and sexy finale can’t entirely cover for the rest of the season’s flaws. Quentin and two of his friends die, and while Greg may inherit Tanya’s fortune, the manner in which she died was messy enough to warrant a further investigation than if the killing had gone as planned. Murray Abraham) proudly talks about how the family’s “Achilles Heel is an Achilles Cock.” Dom (Michael Imperioli) again tries to recommit to his wife, but can’t stop himself from gawking at a younger woman at the airport. It remained a highlight in the finale, creating more questions than answers, but in a way that perfectly fit the themes of that subplot about the compromises that go into any relationship, even when you’re impossibly rich. And Daphne and Cameron’s unspoken agreements about their marriage — coupled with hints of pure sociopathy from Cameron — allow them to power through infidelities, brawls in the Ionian Sea, and whatever other bumps they hit. Do a murder-for-hire plot and a burst of gun violence entirely fit the tone of this show? But as a set piece, it was bravura in a way that much of this Sicilian jaunt had proven to be before now — simultaneously a thriller parody and the genuine article. Though Dern had cameoed in this season as the voice of Dom’s wife on the phone, when we see him in the finale looking at an image of the whole family, his wife looks nothing like Dern. (Or, at least, it made us understand them.) In a similar fashion, this whole set-up, where Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his pals are planning to murder Tanya on behalf of her garbage husband Greg as a way around his prenup, is kind of ridiculous. Though both finales featured the death of a central character — last year it was Armond the contempt-filled resort manager, this time it’s Tanya the narcissistic heiress — and the bloody end of Jennifer Coolidge’s character was played much more for suspense than the Lotus employee’s excremental escapade in the Pineapple Suite. Once “Departures” had revealed her apparent depths as affectations to be cast aside along with the people she uses, there was simply nothing more to be said about her as a character. If anything, it sent her out as even more of a joke, since she dies of a head injury after foolishly trying to jump from Quentin’s yacht onto a dinghy, rather than looking for the ladder or stairs(*).

Speaking to TODAY.com, Aubrey Plaza, Leo Woodall, Haley Lu Richardson and Adam DiMarco — who learned of the finale months before the rest of us did — all share ...

Niccolo, the Italian local who she had met at the palazzo party, shows up on the yacht to bring her back to the shore on a small boat — carrying with him a mysterious black bag. I was evil laughing the whole time I was reading it.” It all unravels into a shootout that leaves Quentin and several of his associates dead. She grabs Niccolo’s bag and locks herself in a bedroom. Under the limits of their prenup, Greg can only inherit her millions if she dies. “I was quite sad that I couldn’t read further and keep going,” he continued. As day turns to night, Tanya's anxiety reaches an all-time high. “My mouth, my jaw kept dropping — but it was so fun to read. It's dark. It's maniacal. You kind of forget it, but then it’s a lingering thing. “But you do forget it, just like the show.

"The White Lotus" has finally revealed which characters die in the finale, and Tanya doesn't go down without a fight.

Albie swiftly transferred the funds to Lucia (Simona Tabasco), a local sex worker he caught feelings for and was worried she was in danger from another local after he followed them on a trip to explore their family's heritage. “The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. The next day, Daphne (Meghann Fahy) is the one to find her body in the water, just as depicted in the first episode. She locks herself inside of a bedroom on the yacht, and grabs the gun out of the bag in tears. She miscalculates the jump, and bangs her head against the side of the boat before falling into the Ionian Sea. “It is somewhat of a happy ending although there’s dark clouds on the horizon too.” At the same time, there’s some time that isn’t really accounted for and I think that’s why it’s eating at Ethan,” White said. Quentin begins knocking on the door, and eventually breaks it down. Tanya begins to fear for her life, and the anxiety increases as the vessel slowly makes its way back to Taormina. Meanwhile, Tanya's assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), cannot find her phone in her hotel room, despite plugging it in to charge the night before. Episode Seven, the Season Two finale, begins the morning after a wild night for Tanya partying at a palazzo in Palermo. She asks for more wine to delay the end of dinner, before she runs to the bathroom and grabs Niccolo’s bag.

Now that HBO's second season of 'The White Lotus' has wrapped up, here are some TV shows and movies to watch next, including ones starring Jennifer Coolidge ...

If you only knew Mike White pre-Lotus as “that guy from The Amazing Race” or “that guy from School of Rock,” you’re in for a real treat. [Nine Perfect Strangers](https://www.vulture.com/article/nine-perfect-strangers-hulu-series-review.html) for you, the 2018 miniseries from David E. It has all the chaos of a typical teen show (sex, drugs, the occasional murder), but a smart, nuanced script helps it stand above the rest. With its nonstop twists and turns, the series is far more plot-driven than Lotus but just as entertaining. Although Succession follows a family and not a group of vacationing strangers, there’s still plenty of overlap, particularly in the biting dialogue, excessive spending, and intergenerational tensions. Consider the films Lotus Lite and enjoy attempting to figure out their secrets before the characters do. The titular resort in The White Lotus is a satirical dramedy about a group of very wealthy people on an isolated resort. Triangle of Sadness is a satirical dramedy about a group of very wealthy people on an isolated boat. The second year of Mike White’s anthology series lived up to the excellence of the first, offering a new round of compellingly flawed characters, razor-shop writing, and Jennifer Coolidge whisper-sighs. Here are 13 movies and shows to check out now that the credits have rolled on Lotus season two. And, of course, there was murder afoot, hinted at in the premiere and fully revealed in last night’s finale as — spoiler alert — our beloved Tanya finally unraveled, taking out the “gays trying to kill me” before falling overboard to her watery grave.

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Season 2 of 'The White Lotus.' Jennifer Coolidge, we miss you already.

Here’s how Twitter reacted as we said arrivederci to “The White Lotus.” Stay up to date on all the latest news from Boston.com Stay up to date with everything Boston.

The British actor dishes on the thrilling finale of HBO's anthology satire, Cameron's fetish for “dominating” Ethan, and why that kid may not be his.

That’s how he operates in the world, in his work, and how he tries to operate in his marriage. You got a taste of fame early on in your career with the Divergent series, but then that underperformed and fizzled out. Cameron and Daphne are deeply in love but there’s an open element to their relationship, and that may work for them, and who are we to judge that? We got some dinners and drinks because Ethan and Cameron are supposed to be old friends, and Cameron and Meghann have to be in love and have an ease about them. He wants to isolate Ethan and control Ethan, and one of the best ways he can is to try to manipulate his wife sexually. It’s gently touched upon—the suggestion that perhaps the coloring of the second child is completely different from Cameron’s and identical to that of the trainer. With Will and with Meghann, over the first few weeks I was trying to pack in as much time to get to know each other as possible. He wants to dominate him, he wants to control him, and he wants to win. The way he handles Ethan, his wife, the people around them—he physically holds them and is dominant in conversations—but in the end, it’s an emotional manipulation with the gaslighting. Daphne’s ultimate manipulation of that is a commentary on that type of masculinity being defunct because Cameron loses in the end. He loves his wife wholeheartedly, but he’s also so privileged and toxic that he thinks he should be allowed to do these things because of how successful he is. Their Four Seasons Taormina getaway ends with the most awkward of dinners wherein Cameron rubs everyone’s noses in his misdeeds one last time, toasting, “And Harper, it has been fantastic to finally get to know you properly.”

Theo James on what he thinks really happened between Cameron and Harper in season two of 'The White Lotus' and whether his children with Daphne are actually ...

There are videos making the rounds of you all dancing behind the scenes and generally having a good time. We wanted to make you think, Is it just a combination of Ethan’s paranoia and jealousy? But then I even forgot about the yogurt, so when you just said that, I was like, Jesus Christ, he’s unapologetically such a bad person. That’s why we ultimately wanted that fight to come from a place where Cameron gets confronted and is like, No, what the fuck? They’ve evolved away from each other as friends and now have basically polar opposite visions of the world in front of them. I haven’t seen the episode yet, but Cameron doesn’t give a shit. We did that scene toward the end of the shoot, and we did different versions. He does love his friend, even though he’s competitive with him and wants to dominate him, and he does love his wife. He’s trying to own his friend and own his wife in a search for control. Is that why Cameron was pushing Ethan to get with Mia and Lucia? Although Cameron has elements of being controlling and domineering, he is also loving in his own way, which, for me, made him compelling. “When you do a character, you have to find some way to identify with them,” he tells Vulture.

In an interview with NPR's Fresh Air last week, the writer and director Mike White suggested that his hit HBO series The White Lotus had less in common with ...

The impulse to follow in the footsteps of high-status people, emulating their experiences and then, by sharing, being emulated in turn? Week by week, The White Lotus achieved what only HBO series, [Taylor Swift ](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/taylor-swift-midnights-album-review/671811/) [album drops](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/taylor-swift-midnights-album-review/671811/), and Florence Pugh’s Instagram seem to be able to manage these days: taking over the discourse and leaving very few unsatisfied. (Even Mia and Lucia walked down a busy shopping street arm in arm, jubilant in floral dresses, waving at the notably nonviolent Alessio, just as they had in the first episode.) Meanwhile, Jack, the muscle-bound Essex boy charged with distracting (and possibly doing away with) Portia while Tanya was being dealt with, dropped her on an empty street by the airport instead, his COCK baseball cap seeming to linger unnervingly in one’s memory like the Cheshire Cat’s smile. [Season 2](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/10/white-lotus-season-2-review/671938/), including the questions of why Lucia and Mia, the sex worker and the wannabe pianist, seemed physically stuck at the hotel, sleeping on sun loungers instead of going home; why every guest at the White Lotus went to Sicily—Sicily!—only to eat all their meals in the same anemic on-site restaurant; and what happened to Tanya in the finale. Season 2 of The White Lotus, in particular, felt like an aggregation of different source materials, many as fascinatingly cerebral as they were delightfully familiar.

Will Sharpe speaks with IndieWire about Ethan and Harper's strained relationship and letting out "the animal" in the finale.

Ethan and Daphne barely interact before the finale, when they share “a moment of intimacy…and openness with each other,” the rest of which is left open to interpretation. “Regardless of what physically happened, there is a moment of connection there,” Sharpe said. “We really wanted to have a sense for ourselves of Ethan and Harper’s history,” Sharpe said. I was mindful of that in the playing of him through the series, whilst also trying to [get to] the truth in each moment and having an eye on the long game.” Later episodes also tasked Sharpe and Plaza with multiple layers of deception, as their characters manipulate and gaslight one another while also daring the audience to think them capable of murder. (He didn’t!) By the time Episode 7, “Arrivederci,” begins, Ethan has gone from soft-spoken and diplomatic to full-on violent rage.

First, the plot. In L'Avventura, Vitti plays Claudia, who joins her friend Anna and Anna's boyfriend on a yachting jaunt in the Mediterranean. During a brief ...

And while we don’t know if Greg is cheating on her, we know that Tanya’s preoccupied with that question even after she’s discovered he hired people to kill her for her money—tragically, they are too full of the bullets she’s just pumped into them to answer—which does seem like a kind of madness, perhaps even enough to distract her when she makes her slip-and-fall plunge off the boat and kills herself. You don’t have to let your partner sleep with someone else, but you can’t expect them not to want to, and if you can’t handle the answers, there’s nothing wrong with not asking the questions. In the finale, tensions between the season’s two married couples come to a head as Ethan, whom Harper suspects of having had sex with a prostitute while she was away for the night with Daphne, comes to suspect Harper of having had sex with Cameron. [Eros is sick](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/100-lavventura-cannes-statement)” and humanity was in the grip of a “rigid and stereotyped morality.” For all of their intellectual ideas and formal majesty, Antonioni’s movies have endured in part because of—not to put too fine a point on it—the extreme hotness of their leading actors. Daphne has some experience in these matters, and she gives Ethan the same advice she gave Harper: Do whatever you need to do to feel as if you’re even. But the shift from her customary passive aggression to open hostility—she calls Cameron “an idiot” over dinner—sets Ethan on edge, and he presses Harper until she confesses: The two did get drunk, and they did go back to their rooms, and they did kiss. (Tanya, as well as a bunch of “these gays.”) We find out that Lucia (Simona Tabasco) was definitely playing Albie (Adam DiMarco) and the man who played the part of the pimp she needed 50,000 Euros to escape is just a doorman at a nearby hotel. [hot to trot](https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/white-lotus-season-2-aubrey-plaza-jennifer-coolidge.html), but they can’t seem to get on the same page, sexually speaking. Uncertain whether their spouses have had sex but knowing for sure that they came close, Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) walk across the low-tide sand to Isola Bella, disappearing into the forest as the camera watches from a distance. It’s Plaza’s Harper who gets the charged looks in that L’Avventura pastiche and Tanya who ends up disappearing off a boat, even if it doesn’t take that long for her body to be found. The scene in which a woman walks through a Sicilian courtyard and is menacingly leered at by a gathering crowd of men was re-created in the same location and reenacted shot for shot, with Aubrey Plaza standing in for the iconic Monica Vitti. As she and Anna’s boyfriend search for Anna, who it’s speculated may have died by suicide, they develop an attraction to each other and eventually have sex, although Claudia is consumed with feelings of betrayal toward her missing friend.

Early in the episode, Ethan accuses Harper of cheating on him with Cameron. After confronting Cameron—and nearly drowning him in the process!—he finds Daphne to ...

Maybe just the thought of Harper sleeping with his friend (which, for the record, she swears didn’t happen) was enough to reignite the flame. Do Ethan and Daphne go there to decompress, or do they sleep with each other in a fit of revenge? The camera cuts away before we see what happens next, but boy, do they leave a lot to the imagination. Maybe she simply feels for Etha—who is experiencing that level of betrayal for the first time? After confronting Cameron—and nearly drowning him in the process!—he finds Daphne to deliver the news. Early in the episode, Ethan accuses Harper of cheating on him with Cameron.