Review | 'The White Lotus' writes white people and their problems well

A still from the Sicily-set Season 2 of 'The White Lotus'.

Death is the end game in The White Lotus, and this is no spoiler. The centrifugal force in creator Mike White’s most excellent series is that by the end of season someone — most likely a fancy guest who has checked into one of the exclusive White Lotus resorts — will be found dead in mysterious circumstances.

The first season of the social satire was set on an island in Hawaii where rich white guests and the hotel staff were juxtaposed, the latter led by the resort Armand (Murray Barlett) who comes undone. The Guardian succinctly summarises the show as being “about the super-rich doing super-bad things in idyllic locations”.

The second season, which just concluded (Disney+ Hotstar), was set on the Italian island of Sicily, with Jennifer Coolidge’s wealthy and highly insecure Tanya as the only returning character. A new season and a new setting brought with it a whole lot more suspense and awe. This time too, after depositing a new set of well-heeled guests to The White Lotus pier, Mike White delivered to the audience the knowledge that one, or many, were going to die. For a pulsating seven episodes, week after week, accentuated by Cristobal Tapia De Veer’s music (the theme song has become a dance-floor hit and TikTok fave), viewers waited to see who was going to meet their watery end.

White brilliantly builds anxiety, for his guests but before that for the audience that can see the train wreck waiting to happen. It’s one of the measures of the show’s success that a social satire, laced with wicked humour, can be so tense and make you care so much for these privileged white guests with their white-people problems.

Be it the crass and insensitive Tanya McQuoid (Coolidge), the arrivistes represented by former college roommates Cameron (Theo James) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) holidaying with their wives Daphne (Mehann Fahy) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza), respectively, the three generations of men from one family, or the resourceful local young women, each one is driven by greed, lust, competition or simply capitalising on a money-making opportunity. The avarice of some can get dark and dangerous, as some characters find out the hard way. Others get embroiled in a twisted game of one-upmanship that has the potential to implode, as seen with Ethan and Harper. There are many running big and bigger scams. Among them one chooses to make the most of the world as she knows it.

This cast of characters sucks you into the drama that unfolds during their brief sojourn. You love them, you hate them, you become voyeurs and, sometimes, you want to reach into the screen and tell them to beware. In Season 2, I felt most invested in Ethan and Harper’s story. The newly-rich couple that starts off being very in sync, occupying a moral ground, sceptical of the lifestyle of the wealthy. They fall out of sync and slowly you see them fall prey to the very things they sneered at, finally subscribing to Daphne’s wisdom — or acceptance — that ignorance is, indeed, bliss.

The weakest track, one that deserved more, is that of resort director Valentina’s (Sabrina Impacciatore) loneliness. The wrap-up was all too convenient as she repeatedly gets manipulated. Yet Impacciatore is handed some of the most hilarious and caustic lines of the show, such as when she describes Tanya’s all-pink outfit as akin to Peppa Pig. Sexuality is a recurring theme in White’s story and so are characters conflicted by their recent entry into the one-percenters club. Ongoing seasons seem likely, set in new resorts, at a new location with new guests and their baggage who remain oblivious to local culture, practices and social norms.

After exploring themes of money and sex, White has hinted that the next season would explore “death and Eastern religion and spirituality” in a satirical way. Should we take a hint from Daphne’s wish in the last episode of Season 2 when she says, “Next year, the Maldives”?

The White Lotus is, arguably, one of the best written shows out there, and Season 3 couldn’t come soon enough.