Spoilers…
Seriously, spoilers.
I watched the finale of The White Lotus last night, along with everyone else, to see if my predictions had come true. Not really. I think we all sort of knew how one storyline would play out. At the last minute, I envisioned a massive Tsunami would arrive to wipe everyone out. I was watching The White Lotus with so many other people, fans on TikTok, and friends of mine who love the show. I guess I wasn’t prepared for what this finale, and this whole season, was really about.
I sat down today to watch the finale again. I noticed certain plot points I hadn’t been aware of, and more importantly, I could see the thing that tied all of the characters together—the WHY of it all. We’re all so caught up in the drama like we’re watching a suspenseful thriller play out. It works that way in the first and second seasons, though they are very different from each other. This one, though, required something else.
When the younger son, Lochlan (Sam Nivola), became the only child of the Ratliffs to seemingly die and miraculously come back to life, I was hit with a thunderbolt. It sounds silly to say, but I burst into tears. Twisted-up ugly crying is never something anyone asks for. But there it was. What was happening? I’d already seen the episode. I knew what was going to happen. And yet, I had an involuntary emotional response to the drama playing out.
It was, I now realize, catharsis. It came from watching Jason Isaacs smile at the end. Why is he smiling? Because he is the one who has been on the spiritual quest, not his daughter. He was the one who was open to the Buddhist monk who explained to them their interpretation of death. We all thought that was because he was contemplating suicide, but it wasn’t. He was looking for deeper meaning in life.
That is why he tells Lochlan not to drink the poisoned Pina Colada. He’s the only one he spared because the other three told him they could not live without their wealth. His wife, Parker Posey, would rather die. His daughter needed organic food and air conditioning. His older son’s entire life was wrapped up in the work he did with his father.
It was just the young son who was the pure soul, the only one who could be redeemed, which is why he spared his life or thought he did. In the end, he could not go through with it. But when he saw his younger son might have drunk the poison after all, his entire world almost collapsed—not because he was embroiled in a financial scandal, but because he would have lost the only good thing, the pure soul—his son.
When he hugged his boy close to him, that was the moment when it all came through in dazzling clarity: this is what matters. Nothing else does. Nothing. He could rot in jail for the rest of his life. They could be broke and living in an apartment. But his boy would be alive. His smile at the end is that he now knows he can save his family, not by killing himself or killing them. Not by making them rich. But by teaching them to survive without it. Without the money. He is given a second chance as a father and a husband to do that.
For most of the episodes we see him fretting and ruminating on how to tell them. But what we come to see is that his inner turmoil is about more than just financial ruin. It’s suddenly becoming aware of what his family is, what matters to them, what kinds of people they are. And maybe that is, at least partly, why he contemplates killing them.
But when his son almost dies and then is brought back to life, it is a gift. It is impossible not to see that as something transcendent even for the most cynical and bitter among us. He was spared because his child was spared. His family will be upset, no doubt, but that will set them on a better path, he knows it will. We know it too.
Only some storytellers can get catharsis exactly right. They have to be aware of the manufactured illusion that will then be shattered to let the light in: catharsis. Mike White knows this instinctually because he has been ruminating on all things spiritual. How do we define ourselves? What does it mean to be a good person? What is our purpose here? What is the point of any of it?
The catharsis I wasn’t expecting hit me hard. For a while, I could not stop crying. I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to. Every scene after that – from Chelsea and Rick to the three friends sitting together, to Gaitok finally getting his promotion and the girl, to the death of Rick’s father – it all came together, and I understood what this season has been about.
Whatever you think is bad in your life, whatever you worry about, whatever drives you insane, whatever makes you angry, whatever makes you feel like you don’t have enough — wealth, sex, love, admiration. You aren’t thin enough, young enough, nice enough…none of it really matters in the end. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
From there, it all began to make sense. It doesn’t matter as much that your best friend slept with the guy you liked. What matters is that you’re friends. It doesn’t matter if one of them might have voted for Trump. It doesn’t even matter if you feel lesser than around them. The human connection- the gift of friendship and life- matters more.
For Rick (Walton Goggins), he had everything he could ever want in Chelsea, and it still wasn’t enough. He believed that his resentment against his father and the anger he carried around with him was more important than anything else. And, of course, he learned the hard way that it wasn’t.
So much of the discourse seemed to revolve around identity-focused interpretations or self-help gobbledegook, like reducing Chelsea and Rick to “toxic masculinity” or an abusive guy and his compliant girlfriend. Maybe it’s that. But maybe they are yin and yang, two sides of all of us wrestling with our better angels daily. Their struggle is about the pull in two directions—love and forgiveness vs. bitterness and vengeance.
Casting LaLisa Manobal as Mook also seemed to throw people off. They thought casting such a famous K-pop idol meant she would have to be the shooter or have a bigger part. But you have to figure out that for Baitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) to risk everything, rise to the occasion, be a man, and get the promotion, his prize would be a beautiful and desirable woman.
The White Lotus Season 3 was deceptively simple. Some characters begin cynical and remain cynical, like Gary. Or Rick’s father. Some begin with a lack of self-awareness and end in the same way, a flatline – like Fabien (Christian Friedel) or Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon).
Even Lochlan holds steady because he isn’t someone in need of transformation. But Saxon is. He begins the series as an arrogant asshole, but he goes through a transformation with his brother, and that sends him on a path toward some kind of enlightened self-awareness, which is why he is drawn to Chelsea, the embodiment of love. Saxon comes in soulless, but he leaves in desperate need of one.
We don’t hear much about catharsis these days. I don’t know why. The art of storytelling seems to have been lost. Maybe there are too many easy answers and too much finger-pointing. But it is why we need art. It is necessary to the human condition. It’s how we process things that build up inside us—grief, anger, desire, sadness—by watching other characters go through something profound.
We did see it at the end of Anora. That’s what Ani experiences in that moment. And because she experiences it, we do too.
I was not looking close enough at the characters. I was not trying to see what Mike White was trying to say. I was looking for some kind of gossip and scandal, to see the characters not as real people but as caricatures to be picked apart and mocked on social media. And because of that, I was unprepared for catharsis. It hit me hard, but I needed it.
I needed to remember what really matters in life, that life is short, and not to destroy what remaining time I have awash in conflict and misery. Much of that has to do with how much time I spend online.
The characters in this episode did not have their phones. They were disconnected from the crazy, messy, noisy, distracting world online. That drove them to find books to read, and maybe just that alone was transformative because you have just one pathway for information to get in, as opposed to a thousand points of light firing at you at once.
I’ve been in a fog in many ways while writing about film lately. I find almost everything to be too careful. There isn’t as much a desire to tell good stories – it can’t all be on Mike White and yet it somehow is. He is able to still write well at a time when almost no one else can.
Mike White hit it out of the park again, even though it took me a while to figure that out. Brilliant work all around.
