[This story contains major spoilers to the season two finale of HBO’s The White Lotus, “Arrivederci.”]
The final episode of The White Lotus delivered on its premiere setup — revealing whose dead body has mysteriously washed ashore at the resort chain’s location in Sicily, Italy.
The hit HBO series has, over the course of the second season’s seven episodes, introduced a who’s who of characters, all of whom arrived at the White Lotus’ shores on their own vacations, but who almost all become intertwined by season’s end. 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)? Did one of sex worker Lucia’s (Simona Tabasco) several hotel clients kill her over money, jealousy or secrecy? Or, could Daphne herself have enacted revenge on her philandering husband, Cameron (Theo James)?
Like a high-stakes game of Clue, all of these theories and more were a possibility heading into the conclusion of Mike White’s whoddunit dramedy, which deliciously explores the rich and miserable. The final hour, however, revealed an ending even more sinister than had been predicted.
Tanya (Coolidge) was revealed to be the dead body who Daphne swam upon, after the fan-favorite character fell to her death from a yacht after coming this close to escaping what appeared to be a hit on her life. In the penultimate episode, Tanya was partying with Quentin (Tom Hollander), the wealthy gay stranger she had been gallivanting around Sicily with ever since her husband, Greg (John Gries) all but left her during their vacation, when she came upon a curious photo of what appeared to many eagle-eyed viewers to be of a young Greg and a young Quentin. 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).
Tanya, however, comes upon the darker truth after a troubling call from her assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) confirms that Quentin and his “nephew” 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. Now stranded on Quentin’s yacht with two of his friends, Tanya is told that the man she slept with the night prior is arriving to take her from the yacht back to the island on a dinghy boat.
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. The surviving man and captain flee for their lives, and when a nervous and scared Tanya makes an attempt to de-board the yacht and make it onto the dinghy, her stiletto catches the railing and she flips over, presumably hitting her head on the way down, and she falls into the water to her death.
As Tanya’s body sinks, the camera zooms in on her face and the shot is scored with operatic music evoking the iconic and tragic Madam Butterfly, which Quentin had taken her to see a few nights prior. The three-act Puccini opera, it turns out, had foreshadowed the tragic death of season two’s heroine.
In an after-the-episode interview with HBO, White explained his decision to center this season around Tanya’s death. 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. Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.” White says he wanted to bring her back for that journey, as a “journey to… death.”
“Not that I really wanted to kill Tanya, because I love her as a character and I obviously love Jennifer, but I just felt like, we’re going to Italy, she’s such a kind of diva, larger-than-life female archetype; it just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story,” he said.
And that’s why she had to be her own demise. “I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic,” he added. “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. It just made me laugh to think that she would take out this cabal of killers and that after she had successfully done that, she just dies this derpy death. And it felt like, that’s just so Tanya.”
White also hinted that the already renewed third season could bring about more answers from the finale, perhaps with the multiple homicide being traced back to Greg. “Maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens,” he teased. 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. It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.”
Coolidge is the only main character who returned in the anthology this season, with both her and Gries reprising their newlyweds from the first Hawaii locale. 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. She’s lost her mom. She’s going through incredible grief. She feels vulnerable. And because she feels so vulnerable, she’s kind of a little bit all over the map. And here comes this guy [in season one]. But now all of a sudden, relationships evolve in a place and sometimes after the honeymoon is over, things change. People change.”
The ending answers the biggest burning question of the season, yet leaves more still to explore surrounding both Tanya’s fate, as well as the endings for the rest of the main ensemble, including the foursome of Daphne and Cameron, and Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza) after a revealing week of infidelity for the two marriages. “When you meet them, even if they don’t realize it, it’s already on the rocks,” Sharpe recently told THR of Ethan and Harper. “The first time you see them, they’re bickering and steadily things get worse. So we definitely did think about where they came from and why it matters for them, and what are they trying to get back to.”
When speaking after the episode, White explained that the “probably” just a kiss between Harper and Cameron, and then “whatever happened” between Ethan and Daphne in the finale allowed Ethan to let go of his jealousy. “It kind of brings back that first sexual charge that happens in the beginning of relationships and sometimes fades away over time. 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.
One thread that is neatly tied up is Portia and Albie (Adam DiMarco), who leave the White Lotus hopeful for a romantic connection after being betrayed by Jack and Lucia, respectively, with the latter being revealed to have conned the American men she sleeps with, also including Albie’s father Dominic.
While Portia and Albie seemed to have hit it off at the beginning of the season, it was clear to everyone — except Albie — that Portia wasn’t as into him as he was into her, which only became more evident when Jack arrived. Speaking to THR ahead of the season, Richardson explained that the trait that drew Portia to Albie is the same thing that turned her off. “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. Portia is the small one in that dynamic. She has all of this woman’s baggage and Albie is the kind of guy who will carry your purse.”
About halfway through the season, she dropped Albie for Jack because he seemed exciting and mysterious. “There’s this very definitely unhealthy, unstable, desperate thing that she wants that Albie will never fulfill, because he’s Albie,” she said. By the end of the season, however, it seems like Portia’s had her fair share of adventure.
Christy Piña contributed to this story.
Dec. 11, 9:30 p.m. Updated to include Mike White’s HBO after-the-episode interview.
Source: Hollywood
