Pop Culture Happy Hour - The White Lotus

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Season three of The White Lotus just wrapped up, but not before serving up a tropical buffet of sex, betrayal, violence, revenge, privilege, incest, drugs, death, and spirituality. We finally found out whose dead body was floating in the pond way back in the season premiere. From creator Mike White, this season stars Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Natasha Rothwell, Aimee Lou Wood, Parker Posey, and Lisa of BLACKPINK fame.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The latest season of The White Lotus just wrapped up, but not before serving up a tropical buffet of sex, betrayal, violence, revenge, privilege, incest, drugs, death, and this at least was new, spirituality. Yes, and in keeping with White Lotus tradition, we finally found out whose dead body was floating in the pond way back in the season premiere. I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Glenn Weldon. It's just the two of us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour,

and we've got so much to talk about. So the White Lotus is the creation of Mike White. Y'all know this, and each season has featured egregiously privileged white folk coming into contact with cultures not their own. That contact always starts out indirect because the white folk in question are staying at luxury hotels. So there's a buffer. But before the season is over, the walls of privilege inevitably crumble. This season was no different.

It was set in Thailand. And look, we want to concentrate on the finale, of course. But there's so much to talk about, I think the best way to handle this season, Aisha and all the revelations of the finale is to tackle each storyline one by one. You up for that? Yeah. Yep. Let's do this.

Let's do it. So we've got to start with Rick and Chelsea, played by Walton Goggins and Amy Lou Wood. I think we're going to be together forever, don't you? That's a plan. Oof, I say. Oof. It turns out, of course, that they're the ones

who end up in the pond at the beginning of the season. Rick came to Thailand to find the men who killed his father. In the finale, Rick kills that man, but that man actually turned out to be his father. It's giving Luke Skywalker. This leads to a gun battle in the crossfire. Chelsea is killed. And as Rick is walking away with her body,

he is shot and killed by the hotel security guard, Guy Talk. We'll talk more about Guy talk in a bit. Ayesha, what did you make of how this long Rick Chelsea storyline concluded? Yeah. I mean, look, this entire series and this season especially, there's a lot of signposting that's always how. right from the very first episode.

It wasn't necessarily that I thought that the twist was going to be that this guy could be his father in the first episode or the first time he actually talks about why he's there, because I don't think we learn until maybe a little bit later into the series. But, like, I did kind of figure it out by the penultimate episode when Rick goes and he's, posing as the movie producer. And he has that confrontation with him. And I was like, this guy's going to be his actual father. I know it.

Yeah, of course. And so, like, I was like, oh, this is so obvious. And when that reveal finally happened, I threw my hands up in the air. I was just like, what are we doing here? Why is this show so obvious? And the Chelsea moment as well, which you just heard, where she's like, we're going to be together forever. I was like, oh, she's going to die. Or he's going to die.

Someone's going to die. Glenn, I don't know, it felt clunky. But, you know, how did that play it for you? Were you into this storyline at all? Not the, you killed my father's storyline at all. But into the Rick Chelsea relationship a little bit. Although I will say, the biggest critique about the season I'm seeing online is how sluggish and bloated it felt, which makes sense, because the show keeps getting longer. Season 1 was 6 episodes.

Season 2 was 7. The season was 8. And if you had that critique going into this season, going into this finale, certainly fed into that because it's a lot of buildup, a lot of fakeouts, and then the last 15 minutes, everything happens. Yeah. You say signpost, I say set up. Early in the season, Chelsea says, bad things happen in threes. At first, she has a brush with violence during the robbery. then she gets bitten by a snake

and then she dies because he can't keep his revenge in his pants, right? Right. And I think one of the funniest jokes and one of the most kind of emblematic jokes in the season is Chelsea saying at one point that her relationship with Rick is a yin-yang one. It's like we're in this yin and yang battle and I'm hope

and Rick is pain and eventually one of us all win. Right there. See, that was the moment I knew she was doomed. because that is a very smart way of illustrating how our culture co-ops other cultures by turning something like balance, the concept of balance itself into a zero-sum game. And I just didn't get this relationship for most of the season for reasons like that because they don't make sense together. Right. Mike White needs to show us Rick as someone who is distracted and consumed by revenge. But he also has to show us a Chelsea who is in every other part of her life a deeply emotionally intelligent person.

She can read people. And I kept wondering why she didn't see how poorly he was treating her, how he never made eye contact with her, how he dismissed her. And then I remember all the people I know in my life who give great relationship advice but are in lousy relationships themselves. And it's like, okay. And that moment we just had in the finale, she says, we'll be together forever. And then he says, that's a plan, giving her nothing, giving her less than a crumb. And what you couldn't see in that clip was her reaction, which is like he just made the biggest, grandest romantic gesture in the world. that's when she goes from being just doomed to a tragic figure.

Look, I do find it a little hard to understand that relationship, but I also have seen those types of relationships play out. Usually there's a money component to it oftentimes. And there's a money component here, sure. There is, too, but they really kind of downplayed, and she is, you know, unlike some of the other women on this show who are clearly in relationships because of money, Mike White goes out of his way to make sure that, like, we understand that Chelsea sees something. in him. When it comes down to it, I think most of us don't actually care who dies at the end of it.

Like, it's the journey. But then the journey for me was not that enlightening here. And as much as I love Walton Gagins and Amy Lou Wood in these roles, it just felt sort of perfunctory to me. But whatever. I get that. So Guy Talk is the guy who actually killed Rick. Guy Tuck and Mook are another couple. They work at the hotel. They are played by Tame Tapp Tim Tong and Lisa, whom listeners might recognize from the pop group Black Pink. Guy Talk's whole character is he wants to be harder. Mook's whole character is she wants him to be harder too. That's the entirety of character.

Things turn out pretty well for Guy Tuck on this plane of existence anyway, but he's a spiritual guy. And although killing Rick earns him respect and a new position as the bodyguard for the hotel's owner, and it also earns him the love of Mook, because of course it does. It all happens at the cost of his beliefs. How'd that hit you? I think my biggest issue with White Lotus as a series is the fact that the people who work at these hotels, especially if they are people of color, tend to be very flattened, very one-dimensional.

I think Belinda, the Natasha Rothwell character who we'll talk about later, her character in the first season was like an exception to that. But here it just felt as though there was nothing really going on here. My biggest critique is that I would have liked to see far less of all the white people at this resort and more of the dynamics of everyone who was working. at this resort. Look, Guy Talk and Mook, on paper, they look like a beautiful couple, but this just felt like a storyline from like 50, 60 years ago. It's like, it's not even just about wanting Guy Talk to be harder. It's like she wants him to advance in his role at the hotel to the point where like he's making money and he has more power. Like it's about that too. It's about this very, again, capitalism rules everything. But there was just not a lot to do. And Mook,

we were talking about this before we started recording, really, really, like, not a lot of screen crime. And I'm sure people, Black Pink fans were probably like, what's going on here? Where is she? I mean, she comes off, like, the woman in the ad for Charles Atlas bodybuilding who dismisses the skinny guy when he gets sand kicked in his face,

but when he comes back and he's jacked, she's all over him. Yeah. Which is a very, to your point, a very aggressive depiction of women, you know, there's a possibility that I might buy it if she was given any specificity, any characterization. anything that made her distinct. And I don't know if it's in Mike White's wheelhouse to kind of do that for some of these characters that he's portraying as being objectified and victimized by the white folk. But like that's the extent of who they are.

And that's, that sucks. Yeah. I do wonder what it would be like if he did actually try to write these non-white characters in more interesting ways. But then I'm like, do I want to find that out? I don't know. Yeah. See, that's the thing. Yeah.

He is in his wheelhouse with the rat. Let's talk about the ratlifts. They are an obscenely rich North Carolina couple with three kids. And throughout the season, we see that the father, Tim, knows that the feds are onto his shady business deals. He's played by Jason Isaacs. He doesn't tell his family that prison is waiting for him when he returns home or that the family has lost everything, basically. And in the finale, Tim finally surrenders to the despair he's been spiraling into all season long as he attempts to poison everyone but his youngest son, Lachlan, only to come to his senses at the last. minute. But then the next morning, it's Lockland who polishes off a poison smoothie, and we get a

very cheap fake-out death that the kid seems to bounce back from awfully quickly. Lockland is played by Sam Navola. The other two kids, Piper. Piper, no, and Saxon, are played by Sarah Catherine Cook at Patrick Schwarzenegger, and their mother, Victoria, is played by Parker Posey. I just don't think, at this age, I'm meant to live an uncomfortable life. I don't have the will. Aisha, what was your big rat lift takeaway here? Okay, so I am in the bag for anything Parker Posey has ever done, even when it's something as bloated and messy and mostly not interesting as the season of white loaded.

This is why we get along, Aisha, because you are a gay man at heart. I really am. I thought the scene in this final episode where Piper finally admits that she is only meant to live the soft life, she can't actually commit to, you know, full-on Buddhism or any sort of spirituality. Like the food, I mean, it was vegetarian, but it, I don't know, you could tell it, like, wasn't organic and just kind of bland and, I don't know, was kind of like, could I, like, really eat this? For all here. The look on Victoria's face of like, yes, yes, finally, finally we won. It was like a really great moment. Like I was laughing the whole time.

And the whole family dynamic here, it did overall feel a little bit like a retread of season one with the family that's led by Connie Britton as a matriarch. Obviously not a one-to-one, but like it felt like it was exploring the same thing, especially the Sidney Sweeney character versus Piper. and this like quest for feeling enlightened in a way. But like this was the second twist slash fakeout that I saw coming from a mile away because of course the poisonous fruit was kind of like it was made the Chekhov's gun in the first episode. Like they were- Check-Ubs punk-pong.

Yes. And you know, the hotel worker is telling them they're poisonous, they will kill you. And then when she reiterates it again in this final episode, they call it a suicide tree. I was like, okay, they're harping a thorn. this a little too much. And as soon as Lachlan, being a young adult kid who clearly would never wash a dish

in his life, has never done it. And the idea of him being felt by the fact that he was too lazy to clean out the blender before using it is like, he's not going to die. Even when he was swimming in the water, it was like, he's not going to die. That's just too much. Glenn, were you on board with me? Did you also

kind of have that sense that it was possible that they weren't actually going to die? I knew that the family wasn't going to die. I did think that Lachlan was going to die. I was faked out effectively. Yeah. Because I remember there was gunplay, but I thought that was going to be a complete red herring, the gun stuff and that the body was something to do something else. That's what I probably would have done, but that's, you know, that's me.

The Lachlan and Saxon stuff in the storyline. I just want to say to folks, I'm seeing a lot about this online. If you were grossed out by the brother-on-brother stuff in the show, but you took the brother-on-sister stuff in Game of Thrones in stride, you are telling on yourself and you shouldn't work on that. Indeed. But I do like that storyline because it's there for a reason. It's not just there for people to kind of post memes about. It is there to point up what happens when you live in a bubble like these characters live in

and are constantly told that you are good people. You are quality people and the people outside the bubble are beneath you. When you're told that often enough by the Victoria's in your life, you're going to believe it. So that's what gives you Lachlan, you know, entering his flowers in the world. the attic era. And it also gives you, not for nothing, a few hundred years of British and European aristocracy, right? A few hundred years of history is where this goes. But to the Parker posy of it all, I'm going to join you. This is a synergy of actor and role because Victoria on paper is kind of a cartoon and my gal Parker is known to go big, as you say. It is dangerous. But when

in that finale, Victoria says, yes, we are lucky. No one in the history of the world. And has lived better than we have, even the old kings and queens. The least we can do is enjoy it. If we don't, it's offensive. That is such great writing because it's close to the line of broad satire. That is entitlement distilled to its essence. The thing we owe to others is to keep to ourselves and never think about them. That is the prosperity gospel.

That is God wants me to be wealthy. It is a cancer. And it is embedded in American life of people like the Ractyliffs. And they seem broadly satiric at the beginning of this show. And then they became less and less so as the season progressed. They are matched to this time in a very strange way. Yes, I agree. I guess I just like, after three seasons of this, I'm just like, what more can we explore?

And while it felt very on brand and on point, it was also just like in service of what? At this point, we've seen this not just in. this show, but in plenty of other series about rich people, again, I guess I'm just a little kind of tapped out on this stating the obvious. And when I read something like an article in the Atlantic where they're calling this the first great post-woke piece of art, I'm just like, what are we doing here? Like, how are we talking about this show and how is the show actually playing out? That's just not being able to read satire. Yes. Look, we've got a lot more to unpack here. We're going to talk about the great Carrie Coon, the great and good.

Natasha Rothwell in a bit. We'll be back after a quick break. And we're back. Let's start up again with the three gal pals. They grew up together, but they now live very different lives. Kate is a Texas supermom. She's played by Leslie Bibb. Carrie Coon is Lori, a divorced lawyer, who's guzzles Chardonnay by the bucket. And Jacqueline is a famous actress with a trophy husband. She's played by Michelle Monaghan. Their time together at The White Lotus is marked by pettiness, bickering, and jealousy, but it ended on a note of Well, Aisha, you tell me, what did you make of Lurie's speech? We started this life together. I mean, we're going through it apart, but we're still together. And I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful. Was that an epiphany that signals some kind of real healing among the three of them? Or was it just more of the kind of faky and sincerity that we've been seeing all season from them?

I think it was deliberately ambiguous. And this was kind of where I assumed it would end. up. Yeah. That obviousness, at least from my point of view, was actually, I was okay with that. Okay. They were the most interesting part of this show for me. I loved their dynamic. You could tell what it was right off the bat. I love the way it kind of unravels, in part over a man. Valentin. I think that Lori sort of breakdown at the end for me said, they're going to paper over all of this. I don't think any of them have really changed. They're just kind of, because they haven't really, they never really had like a moment where they're like airing everything out, at least not in a way that like you feel as if they've moved forward. They kind of paper over everything. Like they might confront each other, but then it's like, okay, well, we spend some time apart and then then we come back together. I liked the way that ended. My vision is that they're probably going to go back to their lives and then like not talk again for a very long time. It's like, because that's what happens sometimes when you go on these trips that bring out so much leftover.

animosity. But Glenn, I'm curious what you thought about this. I didn't see any ambiguity in it because I bought that speech completely because it had the benefit of being delivered by Carrie Coon. Because on paper, I don't, I think there is ambiguity in it, but I just bought the way she was delivering. And I was also surprised by it because I thought I was being set up for Lori to take them both down. I thought, I expected Lori to get out the fillet knife and just go to town. What she delivered instead was gratitude and humility. And yeah, A very sad expression of what her life is like.

An acknowledgement that life is unfair, but that she's, I don't know, coming to terms with it. Or she keeps saying, you know, it's not about God. It's not about religion. It's about time. And that kind of seems like she's the only one there who's come to peace with anything. Was that earned by the one moment we saw her watching Kate and Jacqueline in the pool and smiling? I don't know if it was earned by that, but it worked for me in the moment completely. Yeah, okay.

I take that back. I should clarify that I did believe Lori's speech. What I don't believe is that they've actually like come together. It's going to change anything. Like it's going to change anything. Like I still feel as though the Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan characters have not have the same journey that she has. You know?

No. Has anything punctured like the surface of what was going on there? I'm not sure. Yeah. Well, something changed certainly for Belinda. So White Lotus has always been about how wealth corrupts people. But this was the first season we saw it kind of making even non-wealthy wealthy people. people abandoning their beliefs, not just Guy Talk, who did completely, but also the great and good

Natasha Rothwell, who returned from season one as Belinda. She made a deal with John Grise from the first two seasons. He plays Greg, who was Jennifer Coolidge's shady as hell husband. He's now living in Thailand, going by Gary. Belinda knows who Gary Gregg is. And essentially, even though she kind of backs into it, she essentially extorts him to give her $5 million. So I'm torn here, I issue because, you know, she abandoned her principles. But, oh, she seems happy about it, doesn't she? I mean, after all that Jennifer Coolidge put her through at season one, I'm just like, you know what?

Why not? See, this was, again, this entire storyline was for me a missed opportunity because I was hoping that in the first episode when Belinda sees that black couple from afar and like she just does like the wave and she's like, oh, it's lovely. I've had that exact same experience at like it while vacationing where it's like, oh, you see another black couple and you're like, oh, like, we're out here. It's great. And like, you might do the nod or you might wave as this happened to me. Like, you might even actually talk to them and have conversations with them and befriend them. And I wanted to see more of that. And this is,

again, if we're going to do another season, which, you know, they've confirmed they are. Again, I don't know if Mike White is up to this. But like, let's see actual, like, what it's like to travel in these luxury spaces as a person of color and interact, especially if you were a black person And if you were, you know, say in like a black country in the Caribbean or something, like that would be interesting. Miss opportunity, but I did love seeing Belinda kind of get her come up. It's also, I did enjoy the scene with Zion, played by Nicholas DuVernay as her son. When he, like, is trying to negotiate in hardball with Gary slash Greg, and he starts just throwing in Blinks and Hughes's A Dream DeFern. It's like, okay, this is a fun moment.

Like, I enjoyed that. You know, she would need to feel like her dream is coming true, like, full on. I mean, you got your dream here. She's got to get hers, right? I mean, what happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? I liked that scene, and then I love that we do get, like, a little fake out there where we think she's, like, too above this. And then she's like, no, I'm walking away so that you can go and close a steal.

Like, I enjoyed that. So I was content with the way that it did. Yeah, I think, though, for her to go back to Porn Chai, was that. the masseuse played by Don Hedekumkep. Yeah. She's doing to Pornchai what Koolage's character did to her in season one. Yeah. It paralleled, but it didn't land with any weight whatsoever because while Belinda was a point-of-view

character in season one, Porchai barely registered at all. He was, you know, some pecks. That's not on the actor. That's the writing or the lack of it. And it just didn't, like, if you're going to do that, you need to lay track. And no track was laid for that moment. Yes. Again, so many characters, so few.

of them were actually fleshed out in any meaningful way. I also just thought, like, overall, the way we get that final montage, and all of a sudden, there is literally a mass shooting at this hotel. And no one, and again, this episode was already long as it is. I get it. Like, I didn't necessarily need, like, 10 minutes of, like, everyone finding out what happened at the hotel. But it does seem weird to go from, like, Lachlan just may or may not have almost died. And, like, multiple people were shot and some were killed at this hotel. And all of a sudden, like, everyone's just like on the boat leaving the island and like happy as a clam. Like, what?

Yeah. I mean, like that place would be on total lockdown and nobody would be leaving. And the fact that, you know, it's one thing that Belinda is waving goodbye to folks. But then we see the folks waving goodbye to her and they're all smiling. It's like, yes, we're doomed. This is going to take down the entire franchise, the entire chain of hotels. but that's fine. Bye-bye. Yeah, the three ladies just literally saw the hotel owner get shot right in front of them,

and then they're just like commuting on the boat. Yes. Okay. There's a word for them. They are witnesses. And boy, anyway, tell us what you think about season three of the White Lotus. Are you on board for season four? Find us at Facebook at facebook.com slash P-C-H-H.

And one other thing before we go, this weekend in our podcast feed, we'll have another monthly mailbag bonus episode for our Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus supporters. Aisha and I will be talking about movie theater etiquette. We have thoughts on thoughts, on thoughts. So, so many thoughts. So sign up for Popculture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.npr.org slash happy. That brings us to the end of our show.

Aisha Harris, my friend. Thank you so much for being here. I'm glad you have a beautiful face. I'm glad you have a beautiful life, Glenn. Oh, God. from your mouth. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Mike Katzv, Hafsafathema, and Lenin Sherburn,

and edited by Jessica Reedy, and alokam-in provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.