In the White Lotus Finale, Only One Character Achieved Nirvana

Perhaps those complaining that this season of HBO’s The White Lotus was a little slow were at least partially satisfied by Sunday night’s action-packed finale, which ended with a gun battle and the second-highest body count we’ve yet seen on the series.

Unlike last year’s ludicrous bang-bang ending, with Jennifer Coolidge shooting her way out of a gay murder boat (only to trip, fall, bang her head, and die anyway), this melee was a graver, more earnestly tragic affair. Rick (Walton Goggins) thought he was avenging his father’s murder, only to get his girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) killed in the crossfire. Rick went down too, he and his lover doomed by his inability to move on from the pain of the past.

That was one major thematic inquiry of the season: a look at the mad, sad, messy scramble for purpose in a world that increasingly seems to be both cruel and pointless. Rick thought he could heal himself through violent reprisal, but instead became the thing he most hated. Chelsea at least died somewhat enlightened and in love, but her death was ultimately yet another random and brutal twist of fate.

For much of the finale episode, it seemed that mortal ruin was going to bear down on another huddle of hotel guests: the Ratliffs of North Carolina. Creator Mike White had been hinting all season that patriarch Timothy (Jason Isaacs) might be a family annihilator in the making. And indeed, in the final episode, Timothy planned to poison all but one member of his immediate family. He chose to spare young Lochlan (Sam Nivola), whom he maybe deemed the purest of the group, the one who could most contentedly live the life of penury that Timothy had suddenly cast them into.

But in an ironic and very nearly tragic accident, Lochlan was the only one who drank a dosed smoothie. It seemed that White was going to sacrifice the golden child so that Timothy might live in some kind of grieving penitence. But White is not quite that mean, and so Lochlan eventually awoke—leaving the family to drift off together into a terribly uncertain future. Some might see it as a bit of a cop-out that Lochlan lived, and the Ratliffs sailed away mostly unscathed. But I think that is a hallmark White Lotus conclusion: that people like Timothy and Victoria (Parker Posey) rarely suffer the worst fate. They endure—not because they are good, but because they are just that ruthlessly lucky.

Lochlan may not be long for the family, though. When he roused from his smoothie coma, he told his father he had seen God, which I’d imagine would change his worldview some. White gave us no hints about what Lochlan’s path forward might be; unlike the apostate teenage boy of the first season, this kid stayed with his people.

In season three, White also changed his approach to the hired help. Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) compromised his beliefs but got ahead because of it, snagging a fancy new gig and his lady fair, Mook (Lalisa Manobal), after he broke from Buddhist teaching to kill a fleeing Rick. As he and Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) proved, class is transcended by an abnegation of principle. The woman who was once betrayed by Coolidge’s Tanya negotiated a whopping $5 million payout to keep silent about Greg/Gary’s whereabouts. She and her son Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) may get to enjoy a new standard of living, but I’d imagine her leveraging of a sinister system might eventually start to eat away at her.

Or not. Maybe Belinda’s storyline was an entirely positive one about a trod-upon person finally getting their bag, even if it meant letting a nefarious guy go free. But it’s certainly not an accident that Belinda ended up doing to Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) what Tanya did to Belinda in season one: breaking plans to go into business together, figuring her money would be better spent elsewhere. On this show, no one gets away with a totally clean soul.

Though I suppose you could make the argument that Laurie (Carrie Coon) does. In the finale, she rather abruptly but movingly came to the realization that she doesn’t need religion or romance or anything else so grand and defining to give her life shape and meaning. Instead, Laurie says—in a monologue masterfully delivered by Coon—that the purpose of her life is just to have a life, to spend time with her friends and enjoy their shared bond and be at peace with their inequities. White’s writing here was wise and poignant and unexpectedly hopeful. So much cynicism stalked Laurie’s arc this season, and yet White surprisingly chose to bestow the most significant catharsis upon her. Maybe when you have an actor of Coon’s caliber, it’s hard to resist giving her the glory.

Stunning and summative of the season’s big questions as Laurie’s monologue moment was, I’m not entirely sure that White connected all of his themes as neatly as he has in previous seasons. Death, spirituality, and a hunger of the soul did inform each storyline to some degree, but I think I wanted a more unified argument, something that really wove all the plot threads together. This was a sadder, more contemplative season, and I wish White had leaned into that even further, to give us something sweeping and declarative about the state of humanity today.

But maybe that’s just not White’s style. He did, at least, deliver a tense and propulsive ending, one that made up for the more plodding, listless episodes earlier in the season. The White Lotus is still easily one of the best shows on television, a sharply acted and lyrically written series that, with grim humor and melancholy, reflects a particularly modern anxiety and malaise. And, hey, season three offered at least a glimmer of optimism about people transcending their station. Sure, they had to kill and blackmail to do it. But that might just be what this sorry and punishing world demands.