What fate awaits Rick (Walton Goggins) in the White Lotus season finale?
As this season heads into its supersized conclusion tonight, here are a few questions that need answers.
Season 3 of The White Lotus has been the show’s longest, with creator Mike White spending eight episodes instead of six or seven to tell the stories of super-rich tourists and their messed-up personal problems. The extra time has allowed White to slow the pace a bit, to match the more meditative vibes of the high-end Thailand resort where this season takes place.
But has there been violence? Oh yes. Kinky sex? The kinkiest. Unsolved mysteries? Of course. Everything fans have come to expect from The White Lotus has been abundant this season. Episode 1 began with gunshots, and in the weeks since we have seen armed robbery, white-collar crime, multiple violent threats and arguments and – yikes – fraternal incest.
As this season heads into its supersized finale – at around 90 minutes, it will be the show’s longest episode to date – here are a few of the questions we hope will get some answers.
This may not seem like the most urgent issue facing the White Lotus characters this year, but I think that by the time the season ends, it will turn out to be very important. Granted, one of the biggest complaints about this season – especially as compared with Seasons 1 and 2 – is that White has not integrated the resort’s staff into the action as well as he usually does. But from week to week, front gate security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) has been moving closer to the heart of the plot. In Episode 7, he realised that a major heist at the resort earlier this season was likely perpetrated by a fellow employee, Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius), and his two Russian friends.
Gaitok has been in trouble with his bosses since the robbery. He has wrestled with self-doubt, wondering if he is too soft to follow his dream and become one of the well-paid bodyguards to the resort’s married owners, Jim (Scott Glenn) and Sritala Hollinger (Patravadi Mejudhon). Busting the Russians could be just what Gaitok’s career needs – and could also win the heart of his love interest, Mook (Lalisa Manobal), a co-worker with ambitions of her own.
Is landing a plum job with a sizable salary the key to happiness? This is one of the big questions The White Lotus asks every season, and it is also why Gaitok’s storyline matters.
In last week’s episode, three lifelong friends – the celebrity actor, Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), the conservative tech mogul’s wife, Kate (Leslie Bibb), and the divorced New York lawyer, Laurie (Carrie Coon) – had a bitter argument, after Jaclyn hooked up with Valentin, someone Laurie had been flirting with. Laurie stormed off and had a bummer of a night, hanging out with Valentin and his grifter Russian buddies at a Muay Thai fight – and ultimately fleeing half-dressed from one of their angry girlfriends – while Jaclyn and Kate stayed behind and bickered some more.
So this decadent girls’ trip must be a bust, right? Maybe not. Throughout this season, Laurie has said that something like this happens every time they get together. Jaclyn plays the instigator, tries to get her friends to loosen up and be wild, and then Jaclyn ends up grabbing the spotlight back, leaving Laurie and Kate fuming. Yet the ladies keep reuniting every few years.
My prediction? The gal pals will be fine. These three enjoy a bond only shared by people who, deep down, kind of hate each other.
Just as his family’s Thai vacation was beginning, North Carolina tycoon Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) learned that his company back home was falling apart. It seems Tim made some shady international business deal – the details are still unclear – and as a result, his assets have been seized and the Government is combing through his finances. After a few episodes, Tim stopped checking in with his lawyer and his employees and started escaping into whiskey, pills and suicidal daydreams.
The last Tim heard, he was facing jail time and complete financial ruin. But is it possible that some miracle occurred during the days he was offline? That would not be out of line for this show. White has been known to put his characters through hell and then grant them a reset.
The whole reason the Ratliffs came to Thailand is because Tim’s college-age daughter, Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), claimed to be working on a thesis about a local monk. She later admitted she really just wanted to check out the nearby temple, because she is planning to spend up to a year – or perhaps more – living and meditating with the Buddhists. Her younger brother, Lochlan (Sam Nivola), who has self-confidence issues and sexual hang-ups, has said he wants to join Piper on this spiritual journey.
Will either of them follow through? Or is their mother, Victoria (Parker Posey), right that they are too accustomed to upper-class creature comforts to settle for a life of prayer? Here’s a radical thought: maybe their ruthlessly materialistic older brother, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), will take a cue from Piper and embrace a new way to live. Saxon was rattled by an evening of drinking, drugs and sex that he and Lochlan experienced, which included some incestuous kissing and groping between the two brothers. Both boys may want to disappear for a while.
Tim could also be a candidate for conversion, given that he may be about to lose everything. (Also, he spoke with Piper’s favourite monk and liked what he heard.) The one Ratliff unlikely to try a new religion? That would be Victoria, a proud if mostly non-practising Christian, who has been praying for Piper to turn back to the Ratliffs’ preferred lord, saying, “Maybe Jesus will save her from those Buddhists.”
One of the stranger sub-plots this season has involved a troubled man of mystery, Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins), who presents as some kind of violent criminal or mercenary, although we don’t really know much about his past. Rick was told by his mother that his father was murdered before he was born and that Jim Hollinger was responsible for his death, after Rick’s father defied one of Jim’s Thailand land-grabs. Rick arrived at the White Lotus with his much younger, much sweeter, much more soulful girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), then almost immediately abandoned her to pop over to Bangkok, to confront Jim.
Rick cooked up a scheme where he pretended to be a movie producer alongside an old friend, Frank (Sam Rockwell), in order to get to Jim through Sritala Hollinger, a retired actress and singer. But when the time came to punish Jim, Rick flinched, choosing instead to push the old man down and then flee. The Hollingers know Rick is a White Lotus guest. It seems highly likely that they will head back to the property in the season finale, and make Rick answer for his aggression.
Each White Lotus season has brought back at least one character from a previous year. In Season 3, the main familiar face is Belinda Lindsey (Natasha Rothwell), a spa manager at the Hawaii White Lotus, featured in Season 1. Belinda befriended one of that resort’s guests, Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge), who was going to bankroll Belinda’s independent spa business until Tanya instead ran off with a man, Greg Hunt (Jon Gries). Tanya and Greg were Season 2’s returning characters, and the season ended with Tanya accidentally dying while trying to thwart a murder plot, apparently arranged by Greg’s associates.
In Season 3, Belinda comes to Thailand on a work retreat, joined by her son, Zion (Nicholas Duvernay). There, she is surprised to find Greg – now going by the name “Gary” – living in a fancy house near the resort with his jet-setting French Canadian girlfriend, Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon). Greg is surprised to see Belinda as well, and in Episode 7 he pulls her aside at a party to offer a deal: he will give her $100,000 if she agrees to let him keep living a life of luxury and peace in Thailand.
As we head into the finale, Belinda has not decided whether to take Greg’s offer. Zion is very strongly urging her to do it. All of this matters because of our last important question.
Like the previous two White Lotus seasons, Season 3 begins with a flash-forward. We see Zion having a therapy session, interrupted by the sound of gunshots. While racing off to find his mother, Zion sees various unidentified people running, then sees a body floating in a pond. Presuming this is a corpse – and on The White Lotus, it is always a corpse – we still need to find out who it belongs to.
Keep in mind that the death may not be a murder, and it may not be the result of those gunshots. (Early in the season, several White Lotus staffers warned the guests to be careful with the local flora and fauna, because there are dangerous animals and vegetation around.) Still, something terrible is definitely about to happen. Nearly every character this season is in some kind of danger, whether because of the people they have crossed or their own deep despair. A reckoning is coming. It arrives tonight.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Noel Murray
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
He founded Auckland’s Theatre Corporate in 1974.