The White Lotus: who’s dead - and whodunnit?

I want to go out on a limb here and may regret this, but I don't think Fabian can be either the killer or the victim. So this is the fusspot. Resort manager is so annoying. Speaking as a German, you can say that I could never say that The White Lotus is where television is at right now. Show creator Mike White captured international attention in twenty twenty one with season one of The White Lotus, a production which arose out of coronavirus lockdown and the need to shoot something

That was interrupted by a distant gunfire. Ma'am man, that's a gun and then the appearance of that floating corpse. Fuck.

Zion's immediate fear is that his mum, Belinda, is the victim. Now, Belinda was the SPA manager from White Lotus Maui. She's here in Thailand, honest, konman, and that's how she got to know the very buff and very charming Paunchai Zion appears to see the corpse floating past him in episode one, and he doesn't react with the horror you might expect

Yeah, there is something to be said for the fact that Belinda almost felt too obvious.

Would Mike White.

Really make it the person who in the opening scenes we thought it would be, and then to build it up with a different threat, which appears to be from Gary, who is also a returning character and in fact the only character to have appeared in all three seasons.

But then is it Okham's razor? Did we know the answer from the get go? Okay?

So Gary, he's the mysterious rich guy who Belinda is worried about. She recognizes him by another name as Greg. That was the character he played in seasons one and two when he was the husband of Tanya mccaud, the flamboyant heiress played so brilliantly by Jennifer Coolidge, and she died at the end of season two.

I know it sounds crazy, but my husband he brought me to Sicily and then he left so he could have an alibi. Then they take me after Palermo, and then they set me up with this guy who's in the mafia, and he's coming here, I think, to try to throw me.

Off the boat. Please Liz Geese.

They're trying to murder me.

So Belinda has worked out that Gary is in fact Greg and is wanted by authorities in Italy for questioning over the death of his wife. But we know, don't we as viewers, and this is something Belinda doesn't know that although Greg was plodding to murder Tenure at the end of season two, ultimately she died by accident.

Yes, it did ultimately come down to happenstance and a bit of slippering footing on Jennifer Coulig's part.

I think if Gary isn't the shooter, he's almost the greatest red Herring ever. From the very beginning, we're all kind of picking him to be the guy waving the gun around at the end of the season. So in episode six, we're not quite sure how Gary's found out, but he has come to the understanding that his partner Chloe, has slept with at least one of the brothers.

So, Chloe is a French Canadian former model and she was feeling neglected and bored. She described Gary as an old geezer. She said that he didn't want to have sex with her anymore, and that's kind of what drove her into the arms of this sweet, innocent teenager Lachlan who's in Thailand on holiday with his family. But the twist in episode six is that while it looked like she was going to have sex with Lachlan, she seems to have hooked up with both the brothers, doesn't she.

That's right, and the brothers seem to have hooked up with each other as well. Episode six is the moment in the series as well where we finally see this sort of happy, go lucky, care free dynamic between Chloe and Chelsea and Lachlan and Saxon that comes to a crashing end.

The dynamic between those two brothers, the Ratliffe brothers, Lachlan and Saxon. There's been a hint from the very beginning that there was something sexual about Saxon's interest in his younger brother.

Yeah cool, I'm Saxon, by the way. Yeah, that's my little brother, Lachlan.

Yeah, guys just eighteen in November, so.

Just saying he is legal.

The ben moments of kind of overt nudity. He's been talking about sex a lot. He's expressed a quite weird interest in their sisters sexual history, So I wondered if that was going to go anywhere, And in episode six it really did go somewhere. Didn't it an accidental sort of sexual encounter between the brothers.

I wondered if all of that build up with Saxon and Lachlan, and Saxon's apparent interest in his brother was not so much an interest in actually that coming to fruition,

What you just hit on, I think is a real theme in this show, where you have all these characters that are driven by certain impulses that when those impulses actually collide with the real world, they're absolutely not prepared

She does allude to Gary's let's see though shook the four of us just.

Now?

Or why would he kill you?

Oh?

Well, Gary might kill me.

I honestly think he's capable of it.

Okay, let's talk about young Lachlan. I mean, he is so sweet and innocent. He is really more like a thirteen year old or a twelve year old than the eighteen year old who he is supposed to be. He's you can tell going to be handsome, but he's not really there yet because he's like a poached egg. He's so sort of unformed, and he's this season's kind of version of the innocent Abroad like he's yet to be corrupted like all the other revolting rich people around him.

Could Lachlan be the victim?

I wonder if when it comes down to it, Lachlan has enough wilds or enough innocence maybe to make himself scarce. I wonder if when his parents inevitably have this blow up that is coming over their financial situation, that he is at the pool or something else.

Let's talk about Saxon.

As I've just had a massage. You're setting me back?

How can you be so viper?

I thought you had one.

Too, Yeah, but it kind of suck.

Why what was wrong with it?

And no happy end?

Ah? What aren't they all supposed to be a little specially speci.

He is the greatest douche ever played by Patrick Schwarzenegger. I think, absolutely brilliantly and I've kind of come to love Saxon.

Yeah, he's been fantastic, and I think the arc that Mike White has given him has been quite sophisticated.

Under that surface.

Level debauchery that he seems to be at the center of all over the place.

You kind of have been wondering too, if he's all taught, you know, he talks a lot about sex, but we'd never seen him having any until now.

Yes, he seems more concerned with getting a blender into the villa so that he can have his protein chacks than it does to actually put in the time and effort of a god for a bit of conversation with one of these women that he's ogling the entire time he's on screen. So I think he's a really interesting manifestation of where the world is at the moment, especially being a character from a southern state. I can imagine

I love this idea too, that you can take somebody like a Saxon, and you can take somebody like a Jacqueline, and all you have to do is put them on a plane, fly them to another country, take their electronic devices away, and you seem to completely knock the screws loose on the way that they behave in the world.

I think that harks back to another really interesting part of Mike White's career. Mike White actually came runner up on a series of Survivor called David and Goliath.

For me, I'm a survivor obsessive fanatic. Everybody in my business wants the Oscar. It's like, you know, losers like I want to win Survivor.

Wow, And what is survivor? You take a bunch of strangers, particularly in a David and Goliath setting. Some people, I imagine are quite physically capable, others are more psychologically.

Observantwn cur season.

Exactly, and you drop them onto an island in the middle of nowhere with no devices, and you tell them to survive. And with the greatest of respect to Mike White, I don't think he was there as a goliath. He was there as an observer of people, and he almost

I didn't know that, Yeah, that's amazing it.

Came on up.

Let's talk about where Saxon and Lachlan come from. Mum and Dad Ratliffe are Victoria and Tim. She's a hyper anxious Southern bell played by Parker Posey.

Why would you encourage her to move to a monastery?

What's next? You want to shave her head and start being a bongo in Times Square.

Her main concern in life seems to be the location of her larazepam, a little orange bottle of tranquilizers that have disappeared from her handbag. Only will the audience know that they've actually been stolen by her husband, Tim.

Maybe they just focus on the money and you just serve a few months, oh just a few months in prison, you fucking retord Federal present. Most of them are too bad. I know if you do come out, fine, I can put you in touch.

With the road or die. Understand me, I would rather fucking die.

Every time he manages to get his mobile phone back from the very controlling sort of wellness you know, Camp Commandant Pam, he finds out more about the fact that his life is unraveling back at home, a corporate nightmare. So Tim is suicidal at the prospect of losing his status as a pillar of society, and he's stolen a gun.

That's such an incredibly written moment when we see Tim steel Gaytok's gun, but the clock is winding down for Gaytok to find that gun, and as we see in episode six, he does reclaim that gun, which is perfect timing for Gaytok because he is then able to show up to target practice with his superior later that afternoon.

She depicts herself or frames herself, as someone who couldn't possibly live without handbags and money and the status that they have, because she, out of all of them, is the most miserable. She's addicted to tranquilizers, she's complaining about everything. You know, she doesn't seem to actually be enjoying her wealth.

Yeah, she doesn't appear to be enjoying it. And you have to wonder if this flip from Tim to suddenly understanding not only his own position and predicament, But to understanding his daughter's motivation for wanting distance from the life at home. If that is motivation enough, knowing that there is a weapon out there to go and get it back.

Okay, let's talk about Gayetok. He's the sweet natured security guard. He was supposed to be in charge of that weapon. He was distracted by his infatuation with the beautiful young resort worker Mook, and the gun was a new addition to the resort. It was acquired by the security team after robbers invaded the hotel and ransacked the gift shop, apparently with the assistance of Russian wellness coach Valentine, who we see distracting Gaytok at the boongate when the robbers

Sweet, you know.

I can imagine him not turning evil or being secretly evil, but killing.

Someone in an active kind of righteous vengeance.

I see him on a sort of hero trajectory. I think he could be the cape wearing guy who saves the day, or at least maybe he saves Milk's life. But as we saw at the end, of episode six, it was Gayetok who did finally go to the range and seem to have a pretty steady hand, which makes you think that maybe he's a little more experienced than he lets on.

I think I'm somewhere in the middle with Gaytok in that to me, he is a guy who appears lovely on the surface, and then it kind of occurred to me that this is a guy who cannot handle rejection.

Well, Mook never agrees to go on a date with him, and I've found it really intriguing. She's played, incidentally by li Lisa Mannibal, who is probably the most famous person in this entire show. She's a member of the K pop supergroup Black Pink and as a rapper of massive renown in Asia in her own right. So her character Mook really keeps going talk dangling. She never says yes, she never says no. She does go looking for his attention all the time. She invites him to come and

Or is she a woman who knows she can't say no to this man if he is a guy with a steady end.

I think you're being very unfair to I like.

The hero trajectory, but you've definitely got me questioning my thoughts on that.

We'll just replay the tape.

Coming up. Is this a murder or a blood bath?

And who's the prime suspect? That's after the break. I'm dying to talk about Valentine. We knew he was going to have sex with one of the Golden Girls. Eventually it ends up being Jacqueline, even though he seemed to have a more genuine connection with Laurie and his mates from back home in flate of oostalk. I'm seriously sketchy, aren't they?

I love them?

Hey, how are you doing? My friends Alexey and ladd.

Hi, who also have some wildly jealous Russian girlfriends in Toe.

Yeah, there was a really interesting moment with Jacqueline and the angry Russian girlfriends at the nightclub where she was dancing very close to all the guys in this group while kind of having this unbroken eye contact with the girlfriends, knowing that they would be hating this, but yet nobody's intervening, nobody's doing anything to stop it.

Jacqueline's a monster.

I mean, she is as narcissistic as Saxon and is kind of driven by sex, but it seems that she does actually want the sex that comes from her outrageous behavior. And what happens in Thailand case and Thailand, Oh what does that mean?

It means what?

Not dead? Yet?

All right? We would still be young and hot and fun, okay.

Valentine is such a great character. I love the way that the writers of the show use him as a tool to expose Jacqueline as this total monster and as this sort of chaos agent in the Golden Girls group. She's the one who is sort of encouraging Laurie to pursue Valentine. She's the one that seems to be trying to make that romance happen. But then when push comes

Okay, Sri Taala is the resort owner and a former tie diva. She's like the ty Jacqueline you know, plus thirty years married to an enigmatic American Jim Hollings who's played by Scott Glenn.

He is kept sort of secret right until.

The end, isn't he But he's the one who Rick believes to have murdered his father.

So my theory on this is there's three parts to destruction. Rick has had the motive to murder from very early on in the series, when it is established that he at least believes that this man in Bangkok is the killer of his father. At the end of episode six, Rick is on Jim's doorstep. He's armed. It doesn't look good for Jim at that point. I'd say Rick's probably my favorite character in this series and I love his

You guys go out and don't do anything. My buddy is sober, so fucking annoying.

Oh yeah, it must be so annoying me caring about you.

How do you stand it?

Please come back.

I mean, she's always very affectionate towards him, but I think she sensors that something really bad is afoot and she is essentially trying to rescue him from himself on his path to destruction. In this series, then, I think we have this path to destruction, which is the Ratliffe family. You've got Tim and by the end of episode six it's established that he's had thoughts of motor suicide. The third part to destruction is the dinner party at Gregg's house. Interestingly,

Can't wait, guys, I think we need a watch party for the final episode.

Great idea.

Yeah, we might see if the boat's available.

Thanks for joining us on the front.

Our team is Jasper League, Kristin amiot leat Zamaglue, Tiffany Dimac, Joshua Burton, Stephanie Coombs and me Claire Harvey. And we've got Arts and Entertainment Journalism twenty four to seven at the Australian dot Com dot a U Slash Review