White Lotus Season 3 Was Based on a Board Game

At it's best, Season 3 was a game of Snakes & Ladders

In previous seasons of The White Lotus, I was fixated on characters. I was cheering for characters to survive or ascend up the ladder. The line between good and bad was at times muddled, but ultimately there were favorites.

Season 1 has the upstairs/downstairs Downton Abbey quality to it since a significant amount of time is spent in a noir-ish office comedy about the operation of the hotel. I particularly liked the storyline of Belinda trying to get Tanya to invest in her business, which runs all the way through Season 3. That relationship dynamic between hotel employee and guest is the strongest and most enduring of the show and the writers lean into it.

Every thing spins off of that relationship dynamic and it’s most consistently seeded in Season 1 ending with Jack Lacy - a guest who spends the entire season arguing for the Pineapple Suite his MOTHER booked him - killing Murray Bartlett, the manager.

For most of the season, you empathize with the hotel staff dealing with these 1%ers and considering it was filmed in October 2020, it makes sense that there was a bit more moral clarity and conviction in the writing.

The problem with moral clarity and conviction is that it’s usually an illusion. It’s what every executive asks for in a show: clarity, stakes, clear good and bad. But when those things are present, you can almost guarantee the show is tethered to the specific time and will age awkwardly.

I’ve tried to rewatch Season 1 and it peters out for me not because it isn’t a phenomenal show, but because it feels cringe to revisit 2020 where virtue was so tied to identity, class, and circumstance.

As I watched Belinda turned the tables on Pornchai in the Season 3 Finale declining his advances to start a business together, the feeling that 2020 was a virtue signaling shut-in fever dream performed by click farmers started to rattle around my brain.

Literally nothing has aged well from 2020. I dunno maybe I’ll rock these wreath jeans at my girl’s 2020-themed bday party in 10 years like I rocked NBA Jeans to her Y2K Bday.

That would be the absolute best case scenario for 2020.

Season 2 on the other hand is about sex and power. Every one’s storyline pivots on their desire and ability to satisfy themselves sexually. It’s also in my opinion the most well-acted season of White Lotus. Aubrey Plaza, Michael Imperioli, Will Sharpe, Theo James, F. Murray Abraham, Leo Woodall, literally every one crushes. There isn’t a dead spot in the cast and the characters themselves are distinct and authentic.

The characters are 1%ers and much has been written about how repulsive they are, but I didn’t find them so. Maybe Theo James’ Cameron was repulsive barking at the constantly fumbling Asian homie, Ethan, but I understood his particular brand of evil and it was Ethan’s own fault not recognizing his power in the dynamic. The Tom Wolfe-level infiltration and commentary on modern aristocracy through sexual deviance in this Season was chef’s kiss.

I’d watch Season 2 forever and I commend Mike White for his ability to straddle the audience’s consciousness and the characters’. For me, the relationships drove Season 2 as opposed to any larger overarching treatise on class or income inequality which felt settled in Season 1.

But Season 3…