RIP Madeleine L'Engle You Would've Loved White Lotus Season 3
Chekhov would have, too. (No immediate spoilers! You are safe to click!)
Also: The INSANE wealth of good TV about to hit our screens! FYI, no spoilers for White Lotus until the very end — other than my opinion of the season — and I will warn you CLEARLY when I get to spoilers! But also don’t watch the video right below if you haven’t seen it lol.
“We are tempted to try to avoid not only our own suffering, but also that of our fellow human beings, the suffering of the world, which is part of our own suffering. But … Kafka reminds us that, ‘It may be that this very holding back is the one evil you could have avoided.’” —Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water
Everyone is litigating whether this season of The White Lotus was “good.” Everyone is quibbling where it fits in the now-three-tiered hierarchy.
But — not to sound like Belinda asking if she can just be [redacted] for five minutes — can we just reflect for five minutes? Can we, DARE I SAY IT, hold some space???
White Lotus is not ultimately about the questions “Who died and who did it,” although that is the [perhaps overpowering in this season] framing. White Lotus is about bringing us into a world built so that rich people never need to face discomfort, and asking, “Can you live with yourself? Can you sit with the pain in you and in the world?”
That’s why it’s both so unbearable and so cathartic and so giddy and so hilarious and so clowning and so impossible to look away from.
This is a show about being willing to accept the lessons of suffering and to let self-knowledge change you. In all three seasons, the people who come out the other side better are the ones who accept the gift of moral inventory.
When—*light spoiler*—Chelsea tells Saxon he’s soulless, it causes a transformation because he was actually open to hearing it and allowing a painful thought to change him—*end of light spoiler.* Contrast that to Alexandra Daddario’s character in Season 1, who ultimately decides not to change because the pain and discomfort are too much to face.
The only salvation from the curse of The White Lotus is self-reflection. Those who are unwilling to change are the ones who are ultimately damned. I kept thinking about that Bible verse [You know this A-student didn’t sleep through Sunday School!]: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"1
The first step to losing your soul is just … shutting it off.
Anyways, I think Madeleine L’Engle would’ve loved The White Lotus. As would Anton Chekhov, but we’ll get to that in a moment…
A Note About This Glorious Run of TV Built to Break Us
And God said: “In seven days, I shall deliver:
The Black Mirror Season 7 premiere, and
And on the seventh day, God rested and we had a mental breakdown.
I couldn’t be happier.
A Few More White Lotus Reflections
****WITH SPOILERS****
OK, enough holding space: Reaction time, baby!!!
That ending was the worst one for sure! Both emotionally AND … logistically? Narratively? Logically? Did not love how little the ending worked, but as my friend Nick said, “White Lotus is about the journey, not the destination, babe.”
Let’s do a reactions lightning round: I’ll just say everything that comes to mind at 1 a.m. ET, which is the time at which I’m writing this like a sane human being does, and then I DEMAND your thoughts in the comments!!!
Where does it line up? My emotional favorite is Season 2 [Meghann Fahy hive rise up!], but my storytelling favorite is Season 1 because it was just so unbearably cringe and fresh. So, power rankings: 1, 2, 3. Sorry I’m so organized.
Quote to live by: "One person's fake is another person's good manners."
Yes, I realize this is the opposite of the wisdom I led this post with, but I didn’t say *I* was the hero of The White Lotus! (source: Evan Ross Katz) Season 3 was held back by the Agatha Christie of it all. They had to keep every possibility so open for murder that the plot and character development could only go so far? The internet, too, became waaaaay too obsessed with theorizing instead of just, like … ENJOYING a NICE STORY about GROSS PEOPLE.
There are just too many plot holes. Rick is just going back to the hotel owned by the man he just attacked? Gorgeous-gorgeous-Disney-prince Zion is just fine after running through the water and finding a dead body? Whose dead body? We still don’t know! The seeds aren’t all that poisonous?? Nobody cleans blenders in this family? [Actually, that felt very accurate to how the other half lives when there’s no one there to do the cleaning for them! Perilous!]
Everyone is freaking out about Belinda “doing to Pornchai the same thing Tonya did to her,” but wait, what?! I do agree that Belinda’s story is, by the “Know Thyself” standard we discussed above, a dark timeline. But also, it’s NOT the same as her and Tonya, even though it seems Mike White [writer/creator] clearly wanted it to be. Tonya approached HER; Pornchai approached HER; Belinda didn’t promise him ANYTHING. What is this co-dependent bullshit that she suddenly is responsible for his happiness?? Be so serious!!!!
And speaking of codependent bullshit… I Don’t Think So Honey: The entire internet going gaga for “Rick + Chelsea Forever!!!”??? Um, you really think vibrant, kind, tender Chelsea being in a relationship with asshole Rick who did not listen to a single word she said the entire season — was a beautiful relationship!? Are y’all forgetting that their codependency got her killed, or are we watching different shows?!
Um, everybody is just … chill after witnessing a mass shooting? OK.
We were robbed of seeing Parker Posey’s reaction to whatever was on those phones. Maybe it all blew over, sure. Or maybe we could’ve gotten the crash-out of the DECADE.
Speaking of Parker Posey: Emmys for her non-expression expressions when Piper comes back. No one has ever truly acted before this moment.
And then, only moments after Parker Posey invented acting, Carrie Coon perfected it in THAT MONOLOGUE that finally respected the complexities of female friendship.
Counterpoint: A friend of mine said she hated that speech and thought it was pathetic! Wow!!
Too many death fake-outs. Cowards!
“I am your father” reveal: I guess nobody asked Mike White if he’d seen Star Wars?
Who won the season? Carrie Coon, Parker Posey, and AIMEE LOU WOOD!!!
Surprise of the season: Patrick Schwarzenegger is talented!
I had so many nitpicks and yet I enjoyed it so much. 💜 I’d love to hear your thoughts!!
White Lotus is also obviously about so many things: Class politics, poverty, wealth, consumerism, injustice, sex, drugs, longing, spirituality, human psychology, etc., etc., etc. But all of that sort of pivots on this question of whether, in the face of all that, people are willing to change. Usually, the show posits that they’re not.
One thing that would keep me from watching this season again is having to endure Timothy’s drug-addled spiraling again. So painful and it just draaaaggged. But I also loved Patrick S and can’t wait to see him in something else!
I agree there were plot holes, but the acting! Saxon’s character was surprisingly well-developed. I had a love/hate relationship with the slow burn of the plot, but fell in love with the characters.