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• <i>The White Lotus</i> Season 2 Was About Love as Delusion. In the End, It Fooled Viewers Too

The White Lotus Season 2 Was About Love as Delusion. In the End, It Fooled Viewers Too

Spoiler alert: This article discusses, in detail, the White Lotus season 2 finale. If you’ve yet to watch that, do yourself a favor and don’t read this.

“How was Palermo?” Albie (Adam DiMarco) wants to know, in the penultimate scene of the White Lotus season 2 finale, when he runs into Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) at the airport on their way out of Italy. “Not great,” she deadpans. Even though she’s yet to have her worst fears about Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) confirmed, it’s an understatement for the ages.

It also makes you wonder how this tragic vacation might’ve gone differently if things had worked out between her and Albie—two sheepish dupes who finally exchange phone numbers in the season’s final minutes—when they first met. He might never have let Lucia (Simona Tabasco) con him—or his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), the original mark—into giving her €50,000. Dominic might never have convinced Albie to run interference with his mom, apparently saving a marriage that she probably should’ve ended long ago. Portia might not have spent her last day in Sicily afraid for her life, because she wouldn’t have fallen for Jack (Leo Woodall), the earthy pseudo-nephew, lover, and henchman of “high-end gay” fortune hunter Quentin (Tom Hollander). Which would’ve made it tough for Quentin to get Tanya alone on a yacht with a bag containing half the murder weapons from Clue.

Sure, it’s ultimately Madama McQuoid who kills the gays, not the other way around. But in true self-sabotaging style—and taking full advantage of Coolidge’s unmatched physical-comedy prowess—Tanya manages to shoot her way out of the trap, only to end up in a watery grave of her own making. So central was this character to two excellent seasons of Mike White’s luxury-resort misery-fest that her death was unfathomable to just about everyone (including yours truly ) publicly hazarding guesses as to who the corpses in Sunday’s finale would be. In retrospect, it seems fitting that a season about love as a delusion would end by shocking viewers who ignored what our own eyes told us about Tanya’s fate because we adored her.

In fact, the only eyes that seemed to observe much of anything at the Sicilian Lotus were inanimate. A Renaissance painting of St. Sebastian , that creepy fresco from the title sequence, those macabre Testa di Moro statues peeking out from every corner—they were all watching the guests’ every misguided move. Yet the characters themselves couldn’t seem to see anything clearly, least of all the far-from-ideal objects of their affection. Just about everyone got scammed, from Tanya and Portia and the Di Grassos to Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), who’s crushed again when newly hired lounge singer Mia (Beatrice Grannò) confirms their obviously transactional relationship as such, to the two young couples constantly performing romance and jealousy for each other’s benefit. And it all happens because everyone is too busy projecting their own selfish desires and insecurities on each other to fix a critical gaze on their own delusions.

The Di Grasso men are a particularly sad case. Dominic essentially has to bribe a sex worker he personally hired to keep his family from falling apart. Watching Lucia exit with the cash while she thinks he’s sleeping, Albie finally grows up a little. Now that his feminist facade has been shattered by a genuine gold digger, he’s ogling hot girls at the airport right along with his dad and grandpa. Speaking of poor Bert ( F. Murray Abraham ), his big blow came in episode 6, when he discovered that the Di Grasso women of Sicily had no interest in forming a loving bond with a man who’d missed his chance to do right by the Di Grasso women of America.

That’s not to say there aren’t characters who come out of the season better off than they were going into it. Mia got her gig and Lucia got her money; that final shot, in which the two best friends skip off together to make immoderate purchases, might be the closest thing White will ever give us to a happy ending. Jealous Ethan (Will Sharpe) and exasperated Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) have rekindled their romance by allowing their insecurities to transform them into unfaithful, game-playing rich people like Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne (Meghann Fahy). The latter couple is no worse for the wear because their marriage has always been a farce.

And then, lest we forget, there’s Greg (Jon Gries), whose money-motivated deceptions in the honeymoon suite makes Lucia’s scheme look quaint by comparison. We don’t see what becomes of him once Tanya’s body is pulled out of the sea—probably because it’s so easy to guess his fate. His little Double Indemnity gambit works out even better than (as far as we know) he anticipated. Not only does he inherit Tanya’s hundreds of millions, but he doesn’t even have to share them with Quentin and company.

Of course , given the pessimism White’s shown us about love under heteronormative patriarchy, it’s the middle-aged white guy with two smitten, relatively vulnerable admirers wrapped around his finger who comes out on top. Meanwhile, Quentin might be too dastardly to mourn, but it’s worth noting that he dies, and gets a bunch of his friends killed, doing dirty work for a straight guy. That makes Tanya this modern-day opera’s one true tragic heroine. Doomed by her very existence as a lonely, self-conscious single woman of a certain age with a certain astronomical bank balance, she gets her dramatic, if also supremely klutzy, underwater death scene. Season 3 won’t be the same without her. (Does she have a twin sister Coolidge could play? Maybe season 3 can take place at the White Lotus in purgatory?) But would we want to keep coming back if The White Lotus didn’t manage to shock us every time? Like Cam and Daphne and Ethan and Harper, the show needs an element of uncertainty to keep the spark alive.

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'The White Lotus' Season 2 Ending Explained: We All Got Played

It's choppy out there. Let's dive in, shall we?

• Best New Journalist 2019 Australian IT Journalism Awards

Lucia and Mia really turned things around for themselves.

So much for Tanya McQuoid being the connective tissue between the two seasons of  The White Lotus . Obviously, spoilers up ahead for the season 2 finale, in which Jennifer Coolidge's character finds herself on a party boat that definitely isn't a party.

The seventh and final episode of the HBO Max series was a master class in social commentary, witty writing and gorgeous shots from writer/director Mike White. It wrapped up pretty much every loose end, while leaving one dangling strand involving Ethan and Daphne. And keeping that mystery unsolved is the point.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the season 2 finale of The White Lotus.

But first, Tanya. It was always going to stretch credulity having yet another person die at a White Lotus resort, but White chose the wildest and weirdly most believable option. The wealthy Tanya did indeed find a picture of her husband Greg and bankrupt British expat Quentin in cowboy hats together. (Although this isn't explicitly confirmed.) She and her assistant, Portia, conclude that Greg colluded with his ex-lover Quentin to have Tanya killed, because their prenup prevents Greg from taking any of her money if they divorce.

In a truly frightening sequence, a shaking Tanya loses Portia on the phone and has to face a boatful of people who want to kill her. She stalls for as long as possible before Quentin's man arrives to take her to shore and likely murder her on the way. Seizing her one opportunity to save herself, Tanya brazenly grabs her killer-to-be's duffle bag and locks herself in a room. Inside the bag, she finds a gun. As the door is kicked in, Tanya braces herself and squeezes the trigger, shooting anyone who comes at her.

Poor rich Tanya.

In one of many examples of absurd hilarity, Tanya makes sure to ask Quentin before he coughs up blood and dies whether Greg was cheating on her with another woman. Quentin stares at her incredulously, before carking it (dying, that is, in British English). Sadly, as Tanya attempts to climb down off the boat and escape via a dinghy, she slips and smacks her head on the dinghy's railing before crashing into the water, where she drowns. Her colorful dress made it look like the dead body we partially see in episode 1 was wearing bright boardshorts.

Many thought Tanya would be the only character to appear in every season of The White Lotus, which was  renewed for a third outing last month . In one of many smart rug pulls, White has eliminated that possibility. Why would Tanya spend all her time at White Lotus resorts anyway, if they're a hotspot for murder?

Harper and Ethan have fully accepted one another.

He could also potentially use one of the new characters introduced in season 2 as a familiar link. Let's pray it's Aubrey Plaza's Harper, although that seems unlikely. In a bittersweet turn of events, her eye-rolling, at first strongly principled, lawyer assimilates the same performative marriage facade that Cameron and Daphne put on. It's the only way now for her and Ethan to move forward -- whether they believe each other's stories about cheating or not, it doesn't matter. They're both willing to act out a happy marriage and allow each other to hold some level of mystery. Resting in each other's arms at the airport, they look a picture of peace and solidarity.

This is all after Ethan and Cameron have their inevitable showdown in the sea, but maybe it would have been too obvious and extreme if one or both of them died. The more unexpected turn of events involved Daphne taking Ethan to nearby island Isola Bella -- the shot looks like one of those Instagram pictures of couples leading each other down a path. It's left open to interpretation whether something happened between them, but it seems likely, since Daphne was unfazed by Ethan's worry that Cameron and Harper might have cheated together. She suggestively tells Ethan: "You don't have to know everything to love someone. A little mystery? It's kinda sexy..."

The mysterious leading the mysterious.

In a similarly messy situation, the Di Grasso men leave Sicily 50,000 euros poorer, yet they all seem surprisingly unfazed. Young Albie is momentarily put out by the revelation that Lucia was playing him the whole time, but he's swiftly on to the next opportunity: a changed Portia, who's now had her fair share of excitement and wants to settle for nothing more than the safest, most boring romantic option possible. (At least she looks mortified for one short moment about the fact her boss has just drowned to death.)

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Finally, in a nice 180-degree flip, season 2 sees no deaths and an optimistic outcome for the staff of the White Lotus, Sicily. Unlike season 1, this time it's the underprivileged who take advantage of the rich guests. Lucia has had a stellar payday, Mia is living out her dream as a singer and hotel manager Valentina has embarked on her sexual awakening. She's already less bitter in life for it, allowing her previous crush Isabella to work the concierge desk with her grateful fiancé, Rocco.

Best friends Lucia and Mia swirl down the cobblestone streets Elena Ferrante-style, basking in the glow of their accomplishments. Lucia briefly says hello to the now smiling waiter who chased her and the Di Grasso family down in a car, revealing that was all a ruse to convince the three generations of men that she was a hurt puppy in need of rescue.

It was a super satisfying end to an even better season of the genius show, Italy's fountains and volcanoes erupting in perfect climax. Maybe it would have been interesting to see Albie's father's reaction to his son being played, just like he suspected, but other than that, this was a truly immaculate capper to the season.

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Jennifer Coolidge Tried to Get Mike White to Change The White Lotus ’s Ending

“mike likes to stick to reality.”.

Before it aired last night, few people knew what would happen in The White Lotus ’s season finale . At the top of that shortlist sat actress Jennifer Coolidge , who played dotty heiress Tanya McQuoid through a journey of self-discovery in last year’s Maui-set installment, then found herself at the center of a Hitchcockian murder plot on a yacht off the coast of Sicily in the climax of season two.

Following mountains of speculation regarding the identity of the victims at this season’s luxury Italian resort, the seven-episode getaway worked its way up to an astonishing, operatic conclusion: Tanya discovers that the troupe of high-class gays she’s been cavorting with after her husband’s departure are actually planning to murder her on his behalf. When she realizes her only way off the yacht is to fight back, she conquers her enemies in a blaze of tears and gunfire only to go toppling off the side of the boat in a tragic, darkly hilarious accident.

Months before the season started filming , Lotus creator, writer and director Mike White called Coolidge to prepare her for Tanya’s fate. Her response? “Aw, damn it !”

How long did you know Tanya would die? I knew very early on. Even before he was planning for Italy, Mike told me he wanted me in White Lotus two. And then I don’t know how many months after, he called me up one day and said, “Well, I guess I have to tell you this now so you can prepare.” And I said, “What?” And he goes, “You die, Jennifer. You’re gonna die in White Lotus two.” And I said, “Oh, no !” You’ve gotta be kidding me! Really?” I tried to talk him out of it, but Mike is very strong. He said I was going to have a tragic ending, and he stuck to his guns.

Did he tell you how it would happen at that time?  He didn’t tell me how it was going to happen. He did say Greg was going to be behind a plot that was not good for Tanya and that Tanya was going to go out with a bang. He said, “We’re definitely killing you, Jennifer.” And I said, “Aw, damn it ! Okay.”

What did you think when you read the script?  I was surprised! I’ve had a gun before in one other movie, but somehow this was the first time I felt very out of control. I really liked that. When we were shooting it, I felt like I could even have shot myself. Mike is a really good director — he sets up such a good environment where it feels like anything could happen.

Right before we did the scene, Mike was like, “Just remember, Jennifer, Tanya is so much more human than these guys. Just remember that killing something is hard for her.” It’s true. As unattractive as she is at times — she’s such a handful and unlikable — she really isn’t awful. Not like guys who are willing to take someone’s life as if it’s nothing.

There’s such a range of emotions in those final scenes. The shooting is so tense, and the part where you fall off the boat is at once funny, horrible, and surprising. What was it like to shoot that sequence?  I didn’t feel like the boat was that far off the water. I wanted it to be me. I wanted it to be me falling off the boat. I didn’t want it to be a stunt double. Mike was like, “The water’s really cold!” And I said, “I don’t care if the water’s cold! I want to fall off the boat!” He said, “Jennifer, our stunt double has been waiting here all night to do her stunt. It would be weird to say, ‘Hey you can go home now.’”

She was this very cool Italian woman, and she was very funny, so yeah, it would be weird to just send her home. But I was like, I get why Tom Cruise wants to do his own stunts . You think, Well, why can’t I do that? Who cares if the water is cold! But it was this fall between these two boats and insurance and you know. But it would’ve been fun.

The thing that was interesting when I was arguing with Mike — well, not arguing, but talking about the way she loses her life — is he was saying it has to be at the fault of herself and not anyone else. A clumsy moment. I heard Mike telling someone that’s what happens with Tanya because “I think that’s what happens to Jennifer. She locks herself in the bathroom or something. She can get the big stuff done but not small things. Some weird little thing can just mess her up.” There’s something, unfortunately, very unconscious about me.

You know, Mike and I went to Africa together, and we were staying in a tent. I had this experience on the Serengeti where the animals were outside the tent, so you have to have a chaperone take you from the tent to the mess hall where you eat. And sometimes I would open up the tent and walk out and forget that you have to yell for the chaperone. I’m that kind of person. I’m thinking about something else and then I just walk out there with the wild animal.

I saw a lot of responses to the finale that were surprised Tanya didn’t think to take her heels off before jumping off the boat.  Sometimes you don’t do things that are practical when it’s really high stakes. I think if they were pumps, it would be weird.

Ah, because they’d be much easier to take off. Yeah! You’re just having to make a decision, your life is at stake. We shot that a couple different ways, but I don’t think we ever shot it without the heels. It is so weird, though. It’s that panic mode where you’re murdering someone or it’s high stakes and you don’t do that thing — that obvious thing — that anyone would’ve done in normal circumstances.

You do such great improvisational work. Was there any ad-libbing in any of your big finale scenes? I would guess you know that “These gays, they’re trying to murder me” has already taken over the internet.  I don’t know! I don’t know if Mike wrote that or if I improvised it. There were some things like that that did make it, but I don’t know. When in doubt, I want to say it’s Mike White. I add whenever I can, and some of it works. But “These gays are trying to murder me” was to the captain, and I don’t know, I was trying all sorts of stuff. But that could’ve been a Mike White line.

At the moment you fall off the boat, you say, “You’ve got this,” to yourself, which is so moving and funny and tragic.  It was a long shooting day; I was delirious. I think we tried a couple different lines at that moment, and I don’t remember what the other ones were. We were trying to come up with some little thing that would be an encouragement to herself.

Sometimes you have experiences that are so vivid, and you remember every moment. White Lotus two has become this dreamy thing. People ask me what time we shot something or whether it went all night, and I have no idea. We were shooting so fast, trying to get seven episodes in this short amount of time.

So there was a stunt double falling off the boat, but there are also several shots of you in the water. Did you shoot those yourself, or is there a Jennifer Coolidge dummy lying around somewhere?  I was definitely floating in the ocean when Daphne discovers me, that was me floating around. I had to hold my breath for a long time.

You know, I’ve only seen the finale once now. I watched it Sunday night with Mike White. I’m not sure what was me and what was the stunt double. I’m so fascinated.

It must’ve been pretty wild watching it with Mike last night.  It was! I was one of the few people that knew the finale. I knew everything . And yet I thought it was really suspenseful! I thought that was a good sign. I told Mike, “Isn’t it weird that I’m watching it as though I have no idea?” He’s really good at building tension.

He is! I feel so frustrated that Greg is going to get all of Tanya’s money now. Mike told me not only does Greg get all the money, but he doesn’t have to share it with Quentin. Worse, right?

The finale was such a secret. Was it a closed set to avoid any spoilers leaking?  There were so many people on that boat, makeup and hair, and of course everyone is very discreet. But I’m surprised no one leaked it! I thought maybe someone would tell their wife or something. But everyone was so closed-lipped about it. It really blows me away.

Were there other characters whose stories you were particularly invested in this season?  The story that fascinated me the most is the story that I witness the most, and am fascinated by it, and my girlfriends and I talk about it over and over: The story line of the two couples. The betrayal, the cheating — I’m most interested in that topic. How do you have a good relationship, how can you make it last, when there’s infidelity? How can you survive it? I thought it was so well written. I’ve been interested in that topic for 30 years.

With a little distance, how do you feel about this as an ending for Tanya?  Mike White’s very realistic. I don’t think everyone gets to be the hero in the end or everyone gets to live in the end. It’s sad. She’s finally able to forgive her mother in season one and finds this guy, and he ends up being this awful human being. He tries to murder her. It would be so great if I come shooting out of the water and I’m alive at the end, but Mike likes to stick to reality. Tanya was sort of doomed. I think she had to go.

So many of these stories are bad in real life. The guy ends up with all the money. But if you’re asking me, the actress, if I’m sad about it — yes. I am sad about moving on. It’s good to mix it up, though. Mike White is truly the greatest friend. He gave me White Lotus one and two. If he asked me to come back as someone else? Or asked me to do a prequel? I would totally do it.

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'The White Lotus' Season 2 finale: Who died? Who cheated? Who stole? And what does it all mean?

Spoiler alert! The following contains details from the Season 2 finale of "The White Lotus," "Arrivederci."

All is fair in love and war. Except absolutely nothing is fair in either. 

Sunday's Season 2 finale of HBO's Sicily-set satire "The White Lotus" landed with a startling thunk on the side of a boat, as a bombastic episode of television with a murder spree that may not have even been the biggest moment of its 80 minutes.

The "Lotus" finale comes together like a symphony, each scene falling into place like a cascade of musical notes, inevitable yet surprising at the same time. The exquisite finale was impeccably acted and scripted, a fitting ending to a breathtaking story. It is akin to the tragedy of the Season 1 finale, although in many ways Season 2 has outshone its predecessor .

While the first season was an apt exploration of class in a five-star upstairs/downstairs drama, it was still a version of a story we've seen before. In Season 2, creator Mike White molded something all his own, an examination of sexual politics and norms that have radically changed – but also depressingly stayed the same – since the #MeToo movement. Ever astute in his observations of modern life, White offers no answers to the tough questions, or even much hope for our flailing attempts at human connection. But he does provide a ruthless mirror in which to examine ourselves, and a breathless hunger for a third season. 

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Who died in 'The White Lotus' finale?

At the end of the week in the stunning Sicilian resort, we learn the body floating in the sea was Tanya's (Jennifer Coolidge), who fell to her death off the side of Quentin's (Tom Hollander's) yacht while trying to escape what she believed was a murder-for-hire plot and left a trio of dead bodies in her wake. It was a stunner, but it also felt inevitable, as Tanya seemed trapped by each move Quentin and his compatriots made on his yacht.

At the beginning of the episode, her assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) remained stuck far  from Tanya, with Quentin's fake nephew Jack (Leo Woodall), but the pair managed to speak on a brief call that convinces both that their generous companions have been conspiring with Tanya's husband Greg (Jon Gries) to murder her.

Fumbling and bumbling through the motions of socialization after this realization, Tanya attempts to save herself through desperate measures: exclaiming to the non-English speaking captain, delaying tactics and eventually shooting her captors before falling to her death in an ill-conceived attempt to get from the yacht to a dinghy. These scenes ricocheted from slapstick to startling to violent, and Coolidge – already wielding an Emmy for this role in Season 1 – plays it all easily, with Tanya's trademark haplessness. 

Jack leaves Portia scared and suspicious, by the side of the road, but she takes his advice not to get involved. She only hears about the deaths at the resort after running into Albie (Adam DiMarco) at the airport. After the terror Jack put her through, Portia is a lot more amenable to boring, safe Albie, asking for his number before boarding her flight. 

More: Wonderful 'White Lotus' is back for Season 2, and it's not a second too soon

Who got conned?

Albie and the other DiGrasso men (F. Murray Abraham and Michael Imperioli) didn't seem to learn much from their time in their ancestral homeland. In the end, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) was conning Albie, and was never beholden to a pimp or stuck in her life of sex work. She gets 50,000 euros out of him before (with an ounce or two of regret) she leaves him alone in his hotel room to live with the fact that his father was right; Albie was an easy mark. 

Albie's father Dominic (Imperioli) gets what he wanted in the end: an open line of communication with his estranged wife by placating his son, rather than by engaging in any meaningful acts of remorse or penance. And Nonno Bert (Abraham) is still the same old lech he always was, unable to congratulate Mia (Beatrice Grannò) on her gig as the new White Lotus lounge singer without commenting on his own arousal. 

The lack of growth from the DiGrasso men is underlined at the airport, where they're in line for a budget airline no less, when they turn to leer in unison at another woman in a crop top. 

More: Why we're seeing a new 'wave' of wealth satires, from 'White Lotus' to 'Triangle of Sadness'

Who cheated?

We may never know exactly what happened between Cameron (Theo James) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza), although Harper attempts to convince her husband Ethan (Will Sharpe) that the only thing that happened between them was a drunken kiss. 

After his argument with Harper, an enraged Ethan confronts Cameron in the ocean, and almost makes his so-called college roommate and friend the dead body, before their fight is broken up by a bystander. Ethan eventually finds his way to Cameron's wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy), and tells her of his suspicions about their spouses. Fahey proves herself the star of the series in a 30-second, silent reaction to Ethan's revelation, in which Daphne runs through the stages of grief in quick succession. Her happy, playful facade returns, and she lures Ethan to a small island. What they do there isn't clear, but when Ethan returns to Harper later, he suddenly reconnects sexually with his wife, all indiscretion forgiven.

Who got a happy ending

In the end, it's just Lucia, Mia and hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) who are unabashedly happy at the end of the week at The White Lotus in Taormina. 

After finally getting over her own sexual frustrations, Valentina is able to see other sexual harassment in her workplace, if not that she too was behaving inappropriately toward one of her employees. But it's as if her whole body has unclenched after admitting she is a lesbian, down to a slightly unbuttoned blouse and frizzy hair. 

Mia and Lucia, meanwhile, are 50,000 euros richer and strutting through the streets of town in the designer clothes they craved at the beginning of the season. Maybe they deceived and drugged and conned their way to their new positions, but they did it to a gaggle of guests who aimed at exploiting them first. 

The "Lotus" finale raised as many questions as it answered, but the loose ends aren't especially bothersome. White is singularly accomplished at filling his writing with satisfying ambiguity. There are vagaries and injustices in the messy worlds he creates, but just as in the real world, the characters must just move on or get trapped. 

Tanya, for instance, will only leave Sicily in a coffin. 

More: The 50 best TV shows on HBO Max in December: 'The White Lotus' finale and more

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The Extreme Pleasures of the “White Lotus” Season 2 Finale

At the beginning of the second season of “The White Lotus,” Mike White’s hit HBO dramedy, a bright-eyed, slim-hipped strawberry blonde named Daphne (Meghann Fahy), a guest at the White Lotus luxury resort in Sicily, decides to take one last dip in the Mediterranean before her vacation ends and she heads back home, to the U.S. But as she swims in the perfect azure waters, her dreamy immersion is shattered by the sight of a dead body, floating on the waves. She screams, and soon the police are called, and more bodies turn up. Who are they?

“The White Lotus” is peak spoiler TV (and this might be a good place to say that there will be spoilers in this piece). By starting at the end of the story and only then rewinding to the beginning, the show creates an itch that the audience must continuously scratch, and, by Sunday night’s finale, the scratching had become outright clawing. Certainly, in the course of the season, we saw no shortage of conflicts that could have yielded perpetrators and victims: there was the newly rich Ethan (Will Sharpe), seething with jealousy over a possible dalliance between his wife, Harper ( Aubrey Plaza , brittle and excellent), and his dick-swinging finance-bro friend, Cameron (the brutally handsome Theo James), who is married to Daphne; there was Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), a hapless heiress in a loveless marriage who, along with her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), had fallen in with a number of sinister, Palermo-based gay men seemingly intent on stealing her fortune by any means necessary; and there was Albie (Adam DiMarco), a wide-eyed, romantically minded Stanford grad travelling with his philandering father, Dom (Michael Imperioli), and still amorous grandfather, Bert (F. Murray Abraham). Albie had taken up with a local prostitute, Lucia (Simona Tabasco), who, unbeknownst to him, had also slept with his father, and who was being followed by her apparent pimp. And this was before we even considered the more minor characters (Giuseppe, the disgruntled hotel-bar pianist? Lucia’s friend Mia, the aspiring singer-slash-sex-worker?) It was truly anyone’s guess who the hell was going to die here.

I can’t pretend that there wasn’t something extremely pleasurable, on a plot level, in trying to crack this mystery. And yet the deaths also seemed to me like a bit of a beside-the-point hook: an easy entryway into the deeper business of considering how relationships on the series work—which is what White’s project is really about. “The White Lotus” isn’t a completely cynical show: its characters have feelings and doubts and fears that aren’t entirely subsumed by their baser, more mercenary instincts. Still, to my mind, the central point made in the series is that no relationship is detached from the transactional and that power always plays a role in how people deal with one another. Death is significant in the “White Lotus” universe, not because each season has been framed as a murder mystery but because death is the only state in which people can’t jockey for more: more sex, more money, more dominance. As long as you’re still breathing, White tells us, you’re going to keep fighting to get the upper hand, or die trying.

The first season of the show focussed on class, and the conflicts that emerged between the haves and the have-nots at the White Lotus resort in Maui. This time around, the theme was desire, with most of the battles emerging from the characters’ preoccupation with sex. (“The motivation of sex is always primary, I think,” White told me when I spoke to him, earlier in the fall for the New Yorker Radio Hour .) Ethan and Harper are experiencing bed death; Cameron and Daphne have a de-facto don’t-ask-don’t-tell cheating policy; Albie is horny but doesn’t want to be like his father, whose marriage is in ruins owing to his sex addiction. Portia, meanwhile, is drawn to Jack (Leo Woodall), the supposed nephew of Tanya’s new gay friend Quentin (Tom Hollander). Jack is an Essex boy whose touch is much less cautious than that of Albie, with whom Portia shares a couple of bland kisses early on.

Like the world’s most indulgent couples therapist, White deals with all these conflicts in satisfying yet surprising ways. Yes, Harper admits to some form of a hookup with Cameron, something that the season had been setting up since the very first episode; less expected is the response from these characters’ spouses. An aggrieved Ethan attacks Cameron while the latter is going for a swim, resulting in an underwater tussle that verges on the erotic. After a stranger breaks up the fight, preventing the two men from killing each other, Ethan reveals what he knows to Daphne. In one of the season’s more insightful—or, perhaps, depressing—moments, she responds by asserting people’s essential separateness from one another. “We never really know what goes on in people’s minds,” she tells Ethan, in a chipper but no-nonsense tone. (Fahy is fantastic in the role, but especially in this scene.) “You spend every second with somebody, and there’s still this part that’s a mystery. . . . It’s kind of sexy.” Then she and Ethan venture out on what, it is implied, is a sexual engagement of their own, to even the score. (Daphne: “You just do whatever you have to do not to feel like a victim of life.”) Later, Ethan and Harper, each recharged with the sexual attention of someone other than their spouse, finally fuck. But the congress is made possible solely through a complicated calibration whose ante will likely need to be upped.

Lucia, predictably, solicits money from Albie in a roundabout way, implying that it’s the only thing that can save her from her violent pimp. Albie asks his father to wire Lucia fifty thousand euros; in exchange, Albie agrees to put in a good word for Dom with his mother, Dom’s angry ex-wife. “I’ll tell her how sorry you are. . . . and how it seems like you’ve really changed—yada yada,” Albie promises, without much conviction; Dom, he says, should consider the money a “karmic payment” for all the hurt that he has caused his wife, his family, and maybe women in general. Giving your college-age son fifty grand to help out a prostitute might not be the most obvious form of making amends to your wife (and Dom’s main objection to the gambit seems to be animated not by any moral qualms but by the suspicion that Albie is Lucia’s “mark”). In the end, though, the deal seems to work: Dom calls his ex-wife, who agrees to talk to him when he’s back, and resolution appears close at hand. At the airport, however, we see his head—and Albie’s, and Bert’s—swivel in the wake of a pretty young woman who is passing by. Clearly, becoming a changed man might be more challenging than it looks.

Tanya and Portia’s plotline is the most delightfully twisty of the lot. In the fifth episode, we discover that Jack is hiding a secret; Tanya catches him in bed with Quentin. (This leads to what is perhaps the best line of the show, uttered by Tanya, to a horrified Portia, in the season finale: “Well, he was kinda fucking his uncle.”) When Portia asks Jack about the nature of the relationship between himself and his “uncle,” he explains that Quentin helped him out when he was “in a fucking hole.” “No one’s perfect,” he continues. “Sometimes you do things you don’t wanna do.” Even though this credo rings true of Portia’s oft-demeaning experience of working for Tanya, the idea, once articulated, seems completely unpalatable to her. Her goal in life, she told Jack earlier in the episode, is to be “satisfied,” although she’s not sure if such a thing is possible. The fact that no one is ever satisfied—that everyone endlessly tries to get the most in exchange for the least—is not just her view but also White’s. (Portia’s effective abandonment of her boss in the finale and her choice not to alert anyone to Tanya’s disappearance also suggest that she is looking out for No. 1, and that she is perhaps the worst assistant in the history of the job.)

“The prenup, the prenup, the prenup,” Tanya murmurs, recognizing that Quentin, in an attempt to raise money to refurbish his crumbling palazzo, has made a deal with her husband, Greg (Jon Gries), to kill her off. “He’s gonna pay them with my money so they can decorate their houses or some shit!” Tanya fumes. (As in Season 1, Coolidge is a comedy genius.) According to their agreement, if they divorce, Greg will get nothing of Tanya’s fortune. If she dies, however, he will finally have the upper hand, and her will to live, to win, is too strong for that. Panicked by the realization that, as she says, “these gays, they’re trying to murder me,” she goes out, gun blazing, spraying bullets willy-nilly and killing Quentin and his cohort on the yacht where they were planning to get rid of her. Tanya refuses to be what Daphne calls “a victim of life.” But that doesn’t stop her from eventually becoming a victim of fate. “You got this,” she tells herself, moments before tumbling off Quentin’s yacht, slapstick style, and hitting her head on a dinghy.

The last moments of the finale show Lucia and Mia prancing down the street, arm in arm. As Lucia stops to hug a tall, good-looking man, we realize that he is her supposed terrifying “pimp.” (Albie, after waking up in an empty hotel room to the discovery that Lucia has left without saying a word, admits to Portia, at the airport, that he was “played.”) The karmic debt has been paid, and it’s hard not to feel happy for the two girls, free of the pesky Americans who thought that they held the advantage. The song that plays in the background, however—Sam Cooke’s “The Best Things in Life Are Free”—provides an Opposite Day context to the scene. “All the moon belongs to everyone / The best things in life, they’re free,” Cooke sings. “Love can come to everyone / The best things in life, they’re free.” Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true? ♦

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Let’s break down that ‘White Lotus’ finale: Our biggest surprises, disappointments

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Warning: The following contains spoilers from the Season 2 finale of “ The White Lotus.”

The season that launched a thousand theories concluded Sunday night with “Arriverderci,” as “White Lotus” creator Mike White and company bade farewell to Sicily in a super-sized 77-minute finale. Neither predicted the ending correctly (not even close), but columnist Mary McNamara and deputy editor Matt Brennan weren’t too ashamed to break down every twist and turn in the episode. Here’s their postmortem:

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Mary McNamara : Let’s hear it for Mike White, who churned up the Ionian sea with so many red herrings that we couldn’t believe the corpse in the water would be the obvious choice — Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), with the big fortune and the duplicitous husband. (Though there was definitely some, er, fishy editing in the original discovery scene, because I know there was not a hint of hot pink floral in the water.)

None of our predictions were right, Matt! None! In part, I think, because we didn’t believe White would kill off Jennifer Coolidge.

I admit it blinded me from what I knew to be true: From the moment Tom Hollander showed up in full evil-Tom-Hollander drag I knew he was going to try to kill Tanya — ladies, never get on a boat with a jaded Brit named Quentin who has an Italian villa and no discernible income. When Tanya saw the gun in Niccolo’s bag during the penultimate episode, many people assumed (rightly) that the gun would go off in the finale. But I don’t think anyone saw Tanya’s “Dirty Harry” moment coming.

Honestly, the sight of Coolidge blasting her way through that tastefully appointed yacht was so satisfying that I am officially willing to forgive all the ridiculous plot twists and heavy-handed tension-building of this season. And she killed them all with her eyes closed!

That said, I was disappointed when she fell off the yacht to her death. I kept thinking, ‘Why is she jumping? There must be a better way to get down to the dinghy.’ Now Greg inherits! Which doesn’t seem fair at all.

What do you think?

Matt Brennan: After we published theories from the Times’ “White Lotus” watchers on Friday, an HBO insider reached out to me with a cryptic message: “Remember, it’s a tragedy!”

So perhaps I should have known better — and yet I audibly gasped when Tanya’s head hit the railing of the boat where Niccolo had been plotting to do away with her. I even half-expected her to open her eyes as she floated in the water, so fully had I convinced myself that White and Coolidge would never part. And while I am disappointed in the outcome, largely because it’s been such a thrill to see Coolidge win acclaim, an Emmy and new opportunities from the role, I am a student of the Ned Stark School of TV Deaths: To achieve genuine surprise, as White did here, you have to kill your darlings.

Whether it was in support of the most compelling finale he could have crafted from the ocean of possibilities going in is another matter entirely. Just before Tanya started shooting up that boat — the image that popped into my head was De Niro in “Taxi Driver,” for what it’s worth — I found myself checking my watch, a sign of the episode’s tediously portentous construction. Between the close-ups of paintings and sculptures, the slow-motion inserts of crashing and retreating waves and the thunderous thud of Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s score, I finally felt White straining Sunday to keep the plates spinning after a season that roped me in, bit by bit, with its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. And I ended up feeling deflated by the conclusion of just about every subplot.

In a way, Tanya’s death also killed off any possibility of a dramatically satisfying conclusion to the other story lines: Portia’s (Haley Lu Richardson) culminating confrontation with Jack (Leo Woodall) came out as a sad whimper. Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Cameron (Theo James) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza) decided to let bygones be bygones, or pretend to. And the Di Grassos, Bert (F. Murray Abraham), Dominic (Michael Imperioli) and Albie (Adam DiMarco), appear to be headed home to L.A. more or less unchanged, if out of 50,000 euros. Even the season’s “winners,” Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò), we glimpse only briefly, on a Taormina shopping spree, before the credits.

Then again, my own finale theory emphasized the season’s disaffection and ennui. So maybe I should have predicted my own letdown. Were you satisfied by the finale beyond the Kill Tanya conspiracy unraveling (and accidentally succeeding)?

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McNamara: Although last season also began with mention of a murder, it was much more of a social excavation, and satire. This season leaned hard into the larger whodunit renaissance — “Knives Out” meets one of Agatha Christie’s beach resort novels. Pretty much from the word go, the audience was trying to figure out who killed whom with what and why. I thought it was clever of White to dispose of at least one favorite theory — that Ethan killed Cameron — right up front. But I think cleverness worked against this season most of the time.

At the beginning, it seemed that White was going to disembowel the notion of romance (Italy!) as thoroughly as he eviscerated relaxation (Hawaii!). But with murder so predominant, the characters and relationships were interesting only as pieces of a larger puzzle. Fahy made Daphne the series’ most interesting character in part because she actually seemed to be on vacation, and you could see her existing in a Christie novel. (Darling, I simply must have a pink gin.)

The rest of them not so much.

Did I care if Ethan and Harper reignited their marital spark? As much as I love Plaza and found her performance in the early episodes hilarious, I did not. “Do some more sightseeing,” I wanted to scream. “Go somewhere besides the hotel for dinner.”

Nor did I give a fig, or an olive, whether or not the Di Grassos found their long-lost relatives or, in the case of père and grand-père, their equally elusive consciences. (Though I definitely appreciated any scene in which they were not tediously discussing their views on gender or, heaven help us, “The Godfather.”)

Tanya remained a goddess, but Portia was a drip (though I kind of liked Jack). I’m not sure what we were supposed to think about Mia and Lucia — Grannò was lovely to watch and hear, and I suppose I’m glad they “won,” but I’m never a big fan of story lines that suggest women can get ahead by using their feminine wiles.

I agree that the season felt strangely overstuffed and empty. White seemed to want his “Knives Out” and his seven episodes too. There were definitely bright spots — Coolidge rocking taffetta, Hollander dropping insinuating bon mots, Plaza aggressively eating toast and Fahy offering marital advice. But with all the ominous music and shots of those Moorish heads, White seemed determined to make us anxious for the reveal, i.e., the end, which is never a good thing for a character-led drama.

Brennan : Fahy, as if to illustrate your point, lands the finale’s most potent punch with a mere expression, breaking like a wave across her face, as Ethan details his suspicions about Harper and Cam in a conversation with Daphne on the beach shortly after the boys’ wet T-shirt contest... I mean showdown. That character, and that performance, have supplied what pathos there might be in the plight of the rich this season, and Daphne’s advice to Ethan comes with a subtle ache that I wish White had spent more time searching for amid the bombast. “I think,” she says, clearly speaking from experience, “you do whatever you have to not to feel like a victim of life.”

That, for me, was the high-water mark of the season, along with Daphne and Harper’s stoned night in the palazzo and the dueling dates between Albie/Lucia and Portia/Jack — moments that managed the same feat as White’s enduring masterpiece, “Enlightened,” effortlessly weaving together the comedy of human frailty with its infinite sadness. As for the rest, like many resort vacations, I am already struggling to recall it; it’s not that it was unpleasant so much as unremarkable, each episode blurring into the next as surely as those dinners at the restaurant hotel.

I suppose, in a way, this is the point: The class satire you mention is, fundamentally, of wealthy Americans sojourning thousands of miles in search of a carefully curated facsimile of the “foreign,” not an actual face-to-face meeting with local people, cultures or customs. But unlike, say, Luca Guadagnino’s “A Bigger Splash,” “The White Lotus” goes to no great lengths to suggest the world beyond the resort property — Lucia and Mia are largely treated as the molls in White’s own “Godfather,” and Valentina’s (Sabrina Impacciatore) first queer sexual experience comes with a tacit quid to its quo . The series’ vision of Hawaii at least mentioned colonialism. All the Sicilians get are arancini and a volcano.

In the final estimation, then, I found this season much like its characters: too cynical by half, sometimes frustratingly, sometimes fittingly, always a little shallowly. “How are you going to make it in life if you’re this big a mark?” Dominic asks Albie in “Arriverderci” after the latter requests the “karmic payment” to Lucia, but even the season’s biggest naif has learned how to go for the jugular. “Give me 50,” he demands finally, “and I’ll help you with mom.” Maybe this is the tragedy my source at HBO was referring to — the tragedy of people in stunted, transactional, fundamentally dishonest relationships who nonetheless cling to them, because it’s all they have.

That or Greg getting away with Tanya’s money. That sucks.

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Matt Brennan is a Los Angeles Times’ deputy editor for entertainment and arts. Born in the Boston area, educated at USC and an adoptive New Orleanian for nearly 10 years, he returned to Los Angeles in 2019 as the newsroom’s television editor. He previously served as TV editor at Paste Magazine, and his writing has also appeared in Indiewire, Slate, Deadspin and numerous other publications.

Mary McNamara is a culture columnist and critic for the Los Angeles Times. Previously she was assistant managing editor for arts and entertainment following a 12-year stint as television critic and senior culture editor. A Pulitzer Prize winner in 2015 and finalist for criticism in 2013 and 2014, she has won various awards for criticism and feature writing. She is the author of the Hollywood mysteries “Oscar Season” and “The Starlet.” She lives in La Crescenta with her husband, three children and two dogs.

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The Ending of 'The White Lotus' Season 2, Explained

Our breakdown of the finale and those shocking deaths.

The second season of the HBO drama The White Lotus has ended, the surviving characters have boarded their planes, and the viewers are left with...a lot of unfulfilled storylines. Many a fan theory has been left floating in the ether after the finale's big reveal of which hotel guest met their demise, and several ticking time bombs simply fizzled out to become a tightly-kept secret. Still, the season finale delivered in stressful scenes and shocked laughter, as each of the plots among the Sicily resort 's guest and staff came to their conclusions.

For anyone who wants to commiserate on the end of this must-watch TV event, follow along as we go through this finale breakdown group by group.

Harper and Ethan make up through jealously and (possible) mutual cheating.

Oh, Harper and Ethan. The spouses came on this strange trip expecting nothing more than general awkwardness, joining Ethan's asshole college roommate Cameron and his fabulous, complex wife Daphne on a couples' trip where the couples barely know each other. Instead, they got a severe test of their relationship as Ethan was suspected for Cameron's cheating and Harper used Cameron's interest in her to give Ethan a taste of his own medicine. 

Early in the finale, after some nudging from Ethan, Harper caves and admits that Cameron did kiss her when they went up to their rooms alone. She describes the moment as a "drunken, stupid nothing," and insists that's as far as it went since Cameron is, as she rightly points out, "disgusting." Ethan doesn't entirely believe her, but he focuses on the one part of the situation where there's no doubt: Cameron tried to sleep with his wife, just like he hooked up with all of Ethan's college crushes.

With no hesitation (like, not even a word to Harper), Ethan goes straight to the beach where he fights with Cameron. The two men alternate in attempting to drown each other, but a good Samaritan breaks up the fight after Ethan lands one great last punch. He then goes for a walk on the beach, where he runs into Daphne, sunning and oblivious.

Sweet Daphne has just been trying to ignore her husband's cheating and enjoy her vacation. Ethan ruins that when he directly tells her of her Cameron's infidelity, informing her not of the night with some random locals, but with her husband's tryst with Harper, the woman she was hoping to befriend. She looks sad for a second, before she rallies and gives Ethan a similar "do what you have to do to make yourself feel better about it" speech that she previously gave to Harper. The pair then go on a walk to a secluded part of the beach, where it's heavily implied that they hook up themselves.

In addition to showing that Daphne could rule a small country with her cunning optimism, whatever happened between her and Ethan may have saved Ethan and Harper's marriage. Later that night, after the foursome have one final dinner where everything goes unsaid, Harper and Ethan return to their room and Harper asks what will happen to them. Instead of a fight or a sad separation, the couple who haven't touched each other all vacation finally has sex! We next see them at the airport, cuddling with small smiles on their faces and the reassurance that their marriage just might make it after all. 

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Mia becomes the permanent lounge singer.

A quick note for Mia and Valentina, another pairing that could've ended in tragedy but instead finds its way. After their night together in one of the hotel's vacant room, they're woken up by a housekeeper walking in on them. Surprisingly, Valentina just goes back to her post in yesterday's clothes and no one says anything. She makes some major personnel changes with disheveled hair, starting with sending Salvatore back to the beach so Isabella's fiancé Rocco can come back to the front desk. 

Later that day, Mia returns to the resort for her lounge shift, and everything's great between her and Valentina. She even offers to take Valentina to the lesbian bars to find her a real girlfriend. Right after they stop talking, with the hopeful smile still on Valentina's face, Giuseppe comes back! Remember the previous lounge singer who was sent to the hospital after Mia gave him something that definitely wasn't Viagra. He has returned with a full bill of health, only to find Mia at his piano. Luckily for Mia, as soon as the drama is introduced, Valentina solves everything by firing Giuseppe and giving Mia the permanent singing gig. Both Mia and Valentina end the night on top of the world, but between the unjust firing and the dead body that'll be discovered the next morning, Valentina probably won't hold on to her job much longer. (We don't see the aftermath, but that's what headcanons are for.)

Lucia scams the Di Grassos out of 50,000 euros(!!).

Though Daphne is the Internet's favorite character, Lucia is the MVP of Season 2, walking away from a man she only knew for three days with a year's salary in her bank account. After "good guy" Albie promised to help her get away from her "pimp" Alessio in Episode 6, the mark wakes up with big plans, telling her she may be able to come visit him in Los Angeles. He goes to meet Dominic at breakfast with a battle plan, asking his father send 50,000 euros(!!!) to Lucia's account. Albie infuses this ask with a level of entitlement that is something to behold, as Dominic understandably refuses. Instead of backing down, Albie suggests that the money could be "karmic payment" for Dominic's history of cheating on his wife, and the son even says he'll put in a good word with his mother to take Dominic back.

This whole season, Dominic has been trying to change his ways and asking Albie to put in a good word with his mom. Because of this, even though he knows his son is being scammed, Dominic actually sends the money to Lucia's account. He tells Albie at dinner, and the 20-something immediately ditches his family to go receive thanks from Lucia. The sucker and the entrepreneur enjoy a sweet night together, and just when you think that maybe they are in love, Lucia sneaks out of the room in the morning, and Albie wakes up to her closing the door.

The last shot of Lucia and Mia is the last sequence of the episode, and it dispels any remaining doubts that Lucia has pulled off the scam of the century. In a parallel to the pair's first walk to the hotel in the premiere, we follow the women as they walk away down the Taormina street, before they stop to greet Alessio at his post (surprisingly as a doorman at another hotel). He was obviously an accomplice in the scam, not a "pimp" from whom Albie has saved Lucia. So the season ends with the two women on top of the world, and Albie doing just fine at the airport (more on that in a bit).

Portia was definitely kidnapped.

Episode 6 ended with only a general vibe that Portia was in danger, as Jack insisted on keeping her away from his "uncle" Quentin's villa. But within her first few minutes of finale screentime, it's clear that Portia's being held against her will, as she discovers that her phone has "mysteriously" disappeared from where she put it to charge. Jack shrugs off its disappearance, pretending that he did not take it, and later at breakfast he reveals that Tanya's heading back to Taormina via yacht, with Quentin and his posse of gays. Jack's going to drive Portia, who's missing her phone and whose luggage is left abandoned back at the villa.

We're about to see throughout this saga that Portia is not the sharpest assistant, but she actually makes a smart move in taking Jack's phone while he's in the restroom. She calls Tanya, they debrief on everything that's going on (including the reveal that Jack and Quentin were sleeping together), and Portia says over and over that she has a "really creepy feeling" about everything that's going on. Before the two women can come up with anything actually resembling a plan, Jack comes back and snatches the phone away. Poor Portia tries to demand that he takes her back to Taormina immediately, but Jack shrugs it off and takes his sweet time getting her to the car to drive her back.

Now, I do get why Portia would feel like she has nothing to do. When Jack's negging is still gentle, he makes some valid points: she probably brought very little money with her, she doesn't speak the language, and her attempts at assertiveness aren't really...assertive. Still, it's hard not to watch and cringe and yell at her to do something as Jack gets more and more frightening. She even confronts him about hooking up with his "uncle," and when he gives a non-response, she still lets him transport her to another location that obviously won't be the hotel. Instead, he drops her on the side of the road near the airport, saying that she shouldn't go back to the White Lotus because the people who hired him are powerful and not to be messed with.

Whether you think she's right to actually listen to Jack's threat, or wrong for not even trying to help Tanya, Portia does walk straight to the airport. We next see her waiting for the flight back to San Francisco, with nothing but her backpack and her ridiculous outfit. There she runs into Albie, who appears to have shaken off the fact that he was taken for literal tens of thousands of dollars. The last we see of them, the duo are exchanging numbers to assumedly date once they get back home. (Mike White, do not let these two show up married next season, I beg you.) 

Tanya doesn't make it off the yacht alive.

And so we've arrived to the last guest of this season and the last person we thought the show would actually kill off. Tanya McQuoid was in the most danger all season, but still, she was the only recurring character. We love Tanya (and Jennifer Coolidge) which is why I was low-key stressed the entire episode. By the finale, the show was toying with the obvious sinister plot, letting Quentin become fully menacing even before Tanya and Portia connected the dots between him, Greg, and the prenup. The strongest fan theory (besides Lucia's plan) was proven true: Tanya's husband was the cowboy Quentin knew from youth and Greg hired Quentin and co. to kill Tanya so he could get all her money. I'm still surprised that the plan wasn't just to blackmail, but I guess the stakes were high this season.

Unfortunately, by the time Tanya figures out that Quentin wants to kill her, she has already gotten onto the yacht. The big boat drops anchor about half a mile offshore, and Quentin lets Tanya know that Niccolò, the mafia-connected dealer she slept with in Episode 6, is arriving to personally take her to the shore that night. It'll just be the two of them, and she won't make it to the shore. Trapped, Tanya makes a solid attempt to ask the captain to help her, but he doesn't speak English, and he's gay too! (Lots of gay villain jokes in this season, not all of them great.) That's when Niccolò arrives, with his trusty black bag that Tanya already knows carries a gun.

Tanya is a lot more enterprising than Portia in trying to escape. (Seriously, Portia, you at least didn't get your phone back in the three-hour drive?!) She knows to stall out the dinner, and she gets eyes on the bag. When Quentin says that it's time to go, she excuses herself to the restroom, and successfully grabs the bag! The next sequence is jaw-dropping, with Tanya pulling up her inner strength and arming herself with the gun, shooting Niccolò, Quentin, and Didier through tears. It's a scene that'll earn Coolidge another Emmy, as she then confronts Quentin not about the murder plot, but with a question that is sooooo unimportant: "Is Greg having an affair?" Tanya's gonna Tanya, but I was so proud of her for escaping her death...until she can't figure out how to get down to the dinghy. Not knowing to look for the stairs, she climbs over the railing in heels, slips, falls, and drowns.

So it was Tanya's body all along that floated to the White Lotus beach. It's a very classic Tanya way to go, and just like the Season 1 ending, fans are left with nothing to cheer for, feeling conflicted on how every character will move on after their trip to Sicily (except Lucia and Mia, who are living their best lives). There's also just so much that could've happened this season that didn't. Albie never found out that both he and his dad slept with Lucia, and Harper and Ethan ended up moving past their issues without a real discussion. For all the Sicilian characters, it feels like we're leaving them before the really interesting stuff happens. There could be a whole Lucia, Valentina, Mia sequel and a Quentin, Jack & co. prequel made out of my lingering questions, but that's not the way White operates. Instead, we'll now have to wait for a third installment with a new cast that might be a look at "Eastern religion and spirituality." Whatever happens next, we'll be watching.

Quinci is a Contributing Culture Editor who writes pieces and helps to strategize editorial content across TV, movies, music, theater, and pop culture. She contributes interviews with talent, as well as SEO content, features, and trend stories. She fell in love with storytelling at a young age, and eventually discovered her love for cultural criticism and amplifying awareness for underrepresented storytellers across the arts. She previously served as a weekend editor for Harper’s Bazaar , where she covered breaking news and live events for the brand’s website, and helped run the brand’s social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Her freelance writing has also appeared in outlets including HuffPost , The A.V. Club , Elle , Vulture , Salon , Teen Vogue , and others. Quinci earned her degree in English and Psychology from The University of New Mexico. She was a 2021 Eugene O’Neill Critics Institute fellow, and she is a member of the Television Critics Association. She is currently based in her hometown of Los Angeles. When she isn't writing or checking Twitter way too often, you can find her studying Korean while watching the latest K-drama , recommending her favorite shows and films to family and friends, or giving a concert performance while sitting in L.A. traffic.

"Jennifer’s team didn’t want to do it since she was focused on the album and Amazon original video project.”

By Danielle Campoamor Published 25 August 24

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'The White Lotus' Season 2 Finale's Crazy Ending: Explained

Spoilers (and bodies) lurk below

Spoilers below, obviously.

When Tanya McQuoid (the inimitable Jennifer Coolidge) first arrives at The White Lotus resort in Sicily, in episode one of the second series, she remarks: “Whenever I stay at a White Lotus, I always have a memorable time, always!”. Well, this certainly was another memorable trip, in that it’ll be her...

Another spoiler warning, just in case.

... last ever memory!

In that first scene, perhaps you picked up on the fact that she had to be helped off a luxury speedboat by several men, as she was wearing high heels? This maritime faux pas came back to haunt her in the most spectacular fashion in the series finale, after it was finally revealed who the body(ies) were in the water. Like scarpering Hugo in the Ionian sea, let’s take a deep dive.

Tanya McQuoid, RIP, and Portia:

Tanya ultimately tells Portia that she saw Jack and Quentin “like, naked and stuff” and the penny drops for the pair. It’s a set-up. The cowboy theory was legit: Greg had insisted on Sicily as the holiday destination, so he was likely behind it all (and explains why he was so annoyed Tanya had brought her assistant on the trip), especially when Tanya remembers the pre-nup: if she dies, he gets her half-a-billion dollar fortune. Which actually kills the theory of the little red light that appeared to be filming Tanya’s bedroom antics the previous night, with the thought that she might be blackmailed instead. Nope, Greg wants her full on dead. The group just wanted Tanya’s last night on earth to be a bacchanalian orgy (it allowed her would-be hitman, Niccolo, to sidle up to her as well).

When they tell her over a last meal of lasagne and white wine that Niccolo will be taking her back to shore in a dingy, even the clueless Tanya catches on to her imminent danger; she runs, and grabs Niccolo’s bag, finding a gun. The rope and duct tape also confirm the murder plot, so she comes out and shoots Niccolo, Didier, “the other one”, and Quentin dead, but not before she can ask him, pathetically: “Is Greg having an affair?”

Now, she just needs to get off the boat. But even a little self-help mantra (“You’ve got this!”) can’t help her, and she trips on her glittery heels, falls off the boat, cracking her head on the escape vehicle. Just like Madame Puccini – as the music from that very opera plays – she’s dead, floating down into the underworld. Farewell, Tanya McQuoid, we hardly knew thee. It’s not mentioned, but presumably Greg now indeed not only gets all her money, but handily, now no longer has to split it with his hitmen group.

Jack, meanwhile, seems to have a crisis of conscience and reverse Stockholm Syndrome after his drunken confessions . He lets Portia go, telling her not to go back to The White Lotus (solid advice for anyone, really) and get straight on a plane and the hell out of there. She buys a terrible headscarf and sunglasses at the airport, trades numbers with Albie and heads home, probably editing a ‘Come with me on a trip where I almost got murdered in Sicily lol’ TikTok on the way.

Our friendly foursome: Ethan and Harper and Cameron and Daphne

Ethan has been seething with paranoia and resentment for two episodes now , and it finally erupts when he confronts Harper, who admits that yes, they did have a kiss on the day she went back to her room “to get her hat”. Ethan still suspects far worse though, and storms down into the sea to confront Cameron. They have a tussle, and Ethan manages to sock Cameron in the face before they’re separated by another tourist. Cameron laughs. It’s all just a game to him.

Ethan decides to speak to Daphne about it, and she basically rehashes what she told Harper in the previous episode : don’t ask, don’t tell and do whatever you want to make yourself not feel like a victim. She then pointedly asks Ethan to join her on a nearby deserted island, and he goes. Whether they actually get up to anything here isn’t revealed (but there’s a heavy implication). When they have a final dinner together, Cameron and Daphne carry on like the holiday’s not been full of total divorce-worthy behaviour and toast to “friendship” and next year’s group holiday to the Maldives. Not. On. Your. Nelly.

Once back to the hotel room, that sexual spark kicks in – started by Daphne on the beach? – and Harper and Ethan finally have sex. In the throes of passion, a Testa Di Moro head gets smashed; a nod to the traditional Sicilian tales of infidelity that have been threaded through the series.

Waiting in the flight gate home, our two couples have their backs to each other, but mirror each other's body language; the transition into a cheating and lying relationship is complete. Again, another fan theory was that Cameron was after Ethan’s money: nope, looks like this whole trip was simply just to fuck with their heads. Congratulations, it worked!

The Di Grassos

Denied their Sicilian family homecoming – “We don’t need men,” the women astutely shouted at them in the last episode – everyone’s feeling a little deflated. Except Albie, who’s convinced that Lucia is in love with him, and if he could just get her the not insignificant amount of $50,000, he could release her from the grasp of her pimp and she'll be happily ever after his. So he goes to his dad and asks him to cough up the cash as “karmic payment”. But even in this third “woke” generation of the Di Grassos, nothing’s changed. They’re still manipulating women, as Albie offers to put in a good word with his mum about Dominic, his dad. He’ll be lying to her and deceiving her, which is what he’s been challenging his dad about doing all holiday. Plus ça change…

Meanwhile, old nonno’s defied all expectations, and managed to stay alive throughout the entire vacation, and wants everyone to know. “I got a little aroused,” is the vom-worthy line he comes out with after Mia gives him a friendly hug. Then he starts talking about how their Achilles Heel is actually an Achilles Cock.

Lucia is thankful for the money, and then, obviously, bolts. “I’ve been played,” Albie matter of factly tells Portia at the airport, in the manner of a man who’s lost €50 to a pickpocket, and the pair swap numbers. Finally, all three Di Grasso men end up leering at a young woman as she walks past them at the airport, suggesting the men’s “curse” spreads to the younger generation.

Lucia and Mia

Lucia’s in the money after finally being paid by both Cameron and Albie. Life could not be better! Time to hit the shops. As for Mia, her romance with Valentina might have been self-serving, but she’s not only made her smile but – after promising one more night of passion – has offered to hook her up with some fun lesbians who go to cool clubs. And she gets to keep her job as hotel pianist, so see you later Giuseppe, who recovered from Mia spiking him with MDMA. They walk past and hug staff at another hotel, suggesting that this isn’t their first rodeo in the Sicilian hospitality trade. Still, the best friends have come out on top and we love to see it. Now that’s amore!

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The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 5 Recap: That’s Amore

In the second season of ’ The White Lotus ,’ HBO’s biting satirical anthology drama series about the social elites, the setting has changed from Hawaii to Sicily, and the narrative focus has shifted from wealth disparity to sexual politics. In episode 5, titled ‘That’s Amore,’ Ethan (Will Sharpe) confesses to Harper (Aubrey Plaza) about what happened the night she and Daphne (Meghann Fahy) were in Nardò. Albie (Adam DiMarco) and Portia’s (Haley Lu Richardson) paths fork away from each other, as the latter accompanies Tanya to Palermo with Quentin (Tom Hollander) and Jack (Leo Woodall).

Mia (Beatrice Grannò) finally convinces Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) to let her sing for the guests, and Dominic (Michael Imperioli) tries to make his father understand that the rose-tinted view the latter has about his marriage is a creation of the man’s self-delusion. Here is everything you need to know about the ending of ‘The White Lotus’ season 2 episode 5. SPOILERS AHEAD.

The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 5 Recap

As with all other episodes, episode 5 begins at sunrise. This is the second day since Ethan has been in Italy that he doesn’t go out for a run. Instead, as he walks into the bathroom, he finds the condom wrapper that Harper has placed there. Baffled, he speaks to his wife and quickly realizes that she knows. He tells her what happened that night and why he didn’t tell her before, indignantly adding that she should be glad as he didn’t cheat even under those circumstances, as if Harper must applaud him for doing the bare minimum. Harper and Ethan later meet up with Daphne and Cameron (Theo James) and go to Edna for wine tasting, during which Harper’s biting, suggestive remarks make Cameron realize that she knows about that night.

Meanwhile, Albie wakes up with Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and discovers she is a sex worker. However, they still decide that they will keep seeing each other. When Dominic tries to speak to his son about this, Albie brushes it off, ignoring his father’s words of caution in favor of naive idealism.

Dominic finally speaks to Bert (F. Murray Abraham) about the impact the older man had on him. He doesn’t blame his father for his sex addiction, but he knows he can. If one of the parents is a chain smoker, the chances are that their child will begin smoking as a teenager. The same rule applies here. Bert might have thought otherwise, but everyone knew about his infidelity, including his wife, who remained bitter about it until her death. Even now, when Dominic tries to be as honest as possible with his father, the man doesn’t listen and clings to the presumption that he had a happy marriage.

Valentina doesn’t like that Rocco is flirting with Isabella and transfers the former to beach duty. Mia correctly deduces that Valentina is a lesbian and proposes that she (Mia) will sleep with her if the other woman lets her sing. Stunned for a multitude of reasons, Valentina allows Mia to sing until Giuseppe returns from the hospital. Almost predictably, Mia gives an impressive performance.

The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 5 Ending: Are Jack and Quentin Actually Related?

In this episode, Tanya remembers Belinda, the spa manager in Hawaii, and wonders whether she should have invested in the business plan of the other woman. It’s not that she’s feeling guilty about her behavior, but rather, she fears that Belinda, as a healer woman, has put a curse on her. Tanya and Portia join Quentin, Jack, and Quentin’s posse as they travel to Palermo on a yacht. Upon arrival, Tanya is genuinely impressed by the sheer show of wealth that is lazily scattered around her. As she tells Portia, she also feels relieved because her experiences have taught her that people generally want to be her friends because of her wealth. However, with Quentin, that wouldn’t be a problem as he already seems to be ridiculously wealthy. That night, the older members of the group go to see an opera while Portia and Jack visit the town for dinner. Tanya, as disconnected from the rest of the world as she is, thinks that the woman on the box beside them is Sicilian royalty.

It is not entirely convincing that Quentin has no motive to be friends with Tanya. His lifestyle and the mansion in Palermo must require a steep upkeep. Quentin virtually radiates with the old money vibe, and old money tends to dry up as years go by. It’s very possible that the yacht, the mansion, and the opera are all part of a long con.

However, that doesn’t explain what Tanya sees when she wakes up in the middle of the night: Quentin having sex with Jack, his supposed nephew. Admittedly, that scene has lost much of its surprise value because of ‘House of the Dragon,’ which has successfully romanticized incest to a degree.

There is no reason for Jack not to be Quentin’s nephew, even if they are indeed trying to scam Tanya. Quentin’s monologue about beauty and his incessant desire to possess it is likely there to shed some light on this matter.

Is Daphne Cheating on Cameron?

After Cameron learns that Harper knows about the molly and the sex workers, he puts his hands on her legs. Later, Harper tries to speak to Daphne about what happened at the hotel during their absence, but the other woman refuses to listen. She claims that she has found her own way to get back at her husband and has a blonde trainer as her lover. But she shows her children’s photo when she tries to show Harper what the man looks like.

It seems that Daphne is trapped in a situation very similar to that of Dominic’s mother. She is aware of Cameron’s infidelity and believes she should get back at him but hasn’t yet. The story about the trainer is most probably a made-up one.

Read More: The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 4 Recap and Ending, Explained

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The TVLine Performer of the Week: Jennifer Coolidge

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THE PERFORMER | Jennifer Coolidge

THE SHOW | HBO’s The White Lotus

THE EPISODE |  “Mysterious Monkeys” (July 25, 2021)

THE PERFORMANCE | The ship really hit the fan in the third episode of Mike White’s dark social satire, which featured one of the most memorable maritime disasters in TV history. And Coolidge was the captain at the center of the iconic catastrophe.

As boozy socialite Tanya McQuoid, Coolidge has spent much of The White Lotus ‘ first three hours walking a fine line between comedy and drama, leaving viewers guessing as to whether they should be laughing or crying at the grieving billionaire. That tension reached a crescendo on Sunday when Tanya boarded a yacht to scatter her late mother’s ashes, as a captive and soon-to-be traumatized audience of four looked on.

Coolidge deftly planted the seeds for the seafaring calamity to come during the event’s quasi-cocktail reception, as Tanya’s efforts to keep it together emotionally and mentally started springing leaks left and right. “ Heyyyy ,” she randomly, groggily called out to Jake Lacy and Alexandra Daddario’s confused newlyweds, Coolidge imbuing her character’s inflection with a mix of geniality and lunacy. When, moments later, Tanya verbally assaulted them with an uproariously arbitrary “ Wee-hee !,” Coolidge deftly foreshadowed the iceberg, dead ahead.

As she clumsily took her place at the rear of the boat for the main event, Tanya furiously downed what was left in her champagne flute before commencing with her stream-of-conscience eulogy, which went from somewhat coherent to off the rails in record time. And in Coolidge’s capable hands, it was a mental spiral at its most artful.

“She was a nymphomaniac,” Tanya announced, Coolidge steering the tribute’s first sharp detour with hilariously haphazard precision. But as the tangent devolved into darkness, opening old mother-daughter wounds in the process, the actress allowed us to see the real pain beneath her character’s unhinged energy.

When Tanya declared that “I miss my mother even though she was a big jerk!” we felt  the pain behind those words (even as we were guffawing at the sheer inelegance of it all). And when she ultimately broke down in a chaotic fireball of tears and “mother-mother-mother”-narrated convulsions while scattering the ashes, Coolidge officially turned The White Lotus ‘ most impenetrable character into its most relatable.

Which performance(s) knocked your socks off this week? Tell us in Comments!

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Loved Jennifer this week.She was amazing.

Really hope she gets an emmy. I thought her performance of this character was just stellar, SO ACCURATE.

Also someone needs to have her say GAY RIGHTS on camera lol. She’s such a queer icon!!!!

I just knew it would be Jennifer Coolidge and rightfully so.

This series and episode is probably a world away from what she has done prior and is also a revelation.

She is incredible.

Coolidge is very different here than her roles on friends and 2 Broke Girls. Her character amuses me.

Jennifer Coolidge is the perfect choice this week.

Her performance on that boat was fantastic. Unfortunately the rest of the series has been a snoozefest for me.

I also want to shout out Ian Duff as Grover on The Republic of Sarah. The scene with him opening up to his therapist was gut renching. I loved that the camera stayed focused on his face so we can see his emotions.

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‘White Lotus’ Season 2 Ending Explained: Who Dies In The Season Finale?

Where to stream:.

• The White Lotus

The White Lotus Season 2 has promised HBO viewers at least three deaths by the end of the finale. We know that Daphne ( Meghann Fahy ) survives, as she is the guest who discovers a mysterious corpse while she takes one final dip in the sea. We also know that hotel manager Valentina ( Sabrina Impacciatore ) lives. She is seen not only frantically dealing with the body Daphne finds, but also reeling from her nemesis Rocco (Federico Ferrante) telling her that a couple more “guests” were found dead on the resort grounds. So who dies in The White Lotus Season 2 finale? Will creator Mike White actually kill off his muse Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) or will locals like Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) once again suffer at the guests’ whims?

HBO’s official preview for The White Lotus Season 2 teased a number of possible horrific outcomes for this year’s crop of characters. We saw that Ethan (Will Sharpe) was increasingly losing his cool at the thought of Cameron (Theo James) potentially sleeping with Harper (Aubrey Plaza), culminating in an apparent brawl in the water. We also learned that Tanya is increasing danger separated from assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) and that Albie (Adam Di Marco) believes it’s his duty to “save” Lucia from her life in Sicily.

All these plot lines finally collided in The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 7 “Arrivederci.” We finally found out who died and why Quentin (Tom Hollander) seemingly was in love with “Cowboy” Greg (Jon Gries). Who was plotting against Tanya? Would Ethan lose his cool and kill? And was Lucia playing Albie this whole time?

Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of The White Lotus Season 2…starting with who died.

Who Dies in The White Lotus Season 2 Finale?

Tanya does indeed die, but not without putting up one hell of a fight. Over the course of the episode, both Tanya and Portia piece together separate clues that Greg has indeed been plotting with Quentin to stage her murder. Jack (Leo Woodall) has been hired by Quentin to keep Portia far from Tanya so mobster Niccoló (Stefano Gianino) could murder her at sea en route back to the hotel. Even though Jack steals Portia’s phone, she is able to take his and call Tanya who is on the yacht with Quentin et al. Together, the two women piece together the plot. That leaves both ladies, however, in the clutches of Team Greg/Quentin.

Once the yacht arrives close to Taormina, Quentin explains that Niccoló is coming aboard and will take her alone back to shore. Tanya loses her phone trying to call the mainland and has a darkly comic scene with the yacht driver in which she iconically says, “These gays, they’re trying to murder me.” (Lucille Bluth would be so proud.) When that doesn’t work, Tanya tries to delay her eventual trip with death. She sees that Niccoló has a black bag that he’s brought with him. She grabs it en route to the “powder room” and locks the door. In the bag is rope, duct tape, and a gun, thus confirming this is the plot.

Quentin and Niccoló realize Tanya has figured it out and bang on the door. When they push through, Tanya summons some sort of “Final Girl” energy. She keeps shooting and shooting her way out, teary-eyed and panicked the whole time. She kills Niccoló and Didier (Bruno Gouery) and gets Quentin in the back. Hugo (Paolo Camilli) escapes by diving into the water and swimming to shore. Tanya tries to get Quentin to reveal if Greg is cheating on her, but he says nothing.

Tanya then realizes she is stuck on the yacht. She sees the dingy and questions if she can make the jump. After a few awkward attempts, she says, “You’ve got this.” She, in fact, does not. She hits her head as she plunges into the water. After an operatic underwater death scene set to Puccini, we then learn she was the corpse Daphne discovered. The other dead “guests”? The murdered bodies on the yacht. Everyone else survives.

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Hollywood producer carol baum lays into sydney sweeney, says she's "not pretty" and "can't act", 'bridget jones: mad about the boy' casts 'one day' star leo woodall alongside film series favorites renée zellweger, hugh grant and emma thompson, stream it or skip it: ‘montana story’ on hulu, a smart, contemplative movie-for-adults that they really don't make anymore.

Jack drops Portia off at an airport in Catania and warns her not to return to the hotel or ask questions. We next see her donning a terrible disguise at the main Sicily airport where she reconnects with Albie, who reveals that Lucia did indeed extort him out of money. Portia asks Albie for his number and at least one happy thing happens.

Elsewhere Mia gets to keep her job at the White Lotus. Valentina has become more confident in herself and her sexuality. Dominic (Michael Imperioli) is able to reconnect with his wife. And, after beating Cameron up and spending a day with Daphne, Ethan finally f*cks Harper. They break the Moor statue in their love-making.

So Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid-Hunt is the main character who dies in The White Lotus Season 2. Alas, that means she will not be going on to The White Lotus Season 3…

• Ending Explained

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‘The White Lotus’ Season 2 Finale: Sex, Lies, and a Hail of Bullets

By Marlow Stern

Marlow Stern

If there is one incontrovertible truth, it is that Yale produces some of the worst people on planet Earth. I’m talking about Cameron ( Theo James ), the lecherous creep terrorizing Sicily’s Four Seasons Taormina in The White Lotus Season Two. That scholarly revelation is perhaps the least surprising one in the HBO limited series’ nerve-wracking finale, which saw not two, but four of these miserable rich bastards wind up dead.

Warning: Spoilers will follow This “one last rendezvous” as the posh scammer Quentin (a delicious Tom Hollander) calls it, with his typical Rabelaisian wit, opens on Ethan (Will Sharpe) in full-on Othello mode, tortured by visions of his wife Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) and college buddy Cameron having passionate sex in their hotel suite. After Harper calls him “an idiot” over breakfast, a deserved barb if there ever was one, Ethan confronts her in their room, accusing his unfulfilled partner of having sex with his decade-long underminer. She confesses to kissing Cameron in the room after he latched the door shut, but nothing more.

She’s right, of course. Whatever shenanigans the couple’s gotten into at Taormina, from molly and escorts to that hotel-room tryst, pale in comparison to their underlying issue: Ethan and Harper suffer from a lack of desire, exacerbated by their failure to be honest with one another about what they need. Heck, they may not even be right for one another. Plaza, for her part, has done a masterful job of conveying what it feels like to be unwanted, and how that sense of emotional ridicule can lead you down a path of paranoia and despair. An Emmy may be in the cards.

Her admission leads Ethan to attack Cameron, airing out years of frustration with a sharp right hook, and confide in Daphne (Meghann Fahy). The look on Fahy’s face when Ethan tells her exactly what’s on his mind is devastating, and the work of an actress who has completely lost herself in a character. Of all the pampered guests this season, Fahy’s has been the most low-key brilliant turn.

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Whether or not she and Ethan did the deed atop that hill is anyone’s guess, though his return to San Domenico Palace sees him recharged and ready to bang his wife. And thank goodness for that. One of the more implausible parts of Mike White ’s series this season has been Ethan’s refusal to bed Aubrey Plaza ’s looks-serving vixen. It appears that this chaotic trip, and the intervention of Cameron and Daphne, has helped these two more than they’d like to admit. But more importantly: Valentina and Harper got laid! Bravissimo .

Nothing much happens with the Di Grassos, whose storyline has continually lost steam, other than our naïve white knight Albie (Adam DiMarco) demanding his father ( Michael Imperioli ) transfer him 50,000 Euros—“a karmic payment… for all the shit you’ve done”—to pay the escort Lucia (Simona Tabasco) because she rode him like Seabiscuit, in exchange for Albie putting in a good word with his estranged wife. The ungentlemanly agreement results in Albie getting grifted by Lucia, whose pimp dramatics were an obvious ruse from jump.

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We’re left with a scene at the airport, as the Di Grasso men ogle a fetching young Italian woman in unison; Daphne and Cameron give each other a knowing kiss; and Harper and Ethan finally appear to be sorta on the same page as they hold each other close, cracking the same smile. Portia gives Albie her number, while our hero-escorts Lucia and Mia (Beatrice Granno) walk off into the sunset.

That series creator Mike White managed to not only cook up a second season of The White Lotus a year and a half after the first one premiered, but have it surpass the first, tackling more complex topics like desire, intimacy and fidelity with grace and a surfeit of style, is a testament to his ingenuity. Rumor has it that Season Three may be set in Asia. I, for one, cannot wait.

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Jennifer coolidge on the real tragedy of ‘the white lotus’ finale.

"[She] was so close to having a victory — and, an unlikely victory, for someone like her," says the Emmy-winning actress about the conclusion to the second season of the hit HBO series.

By Jackie Strause

Jackie Strause

Managing Editor, East Coast

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[This story contains major spoilers from the season two finale of HBO’s The White Lotus , “Arrivederci .”]

The White Lotus opened its second season with a dead body to tell viewers that someone they will meet at the HBO show’s resort dies. But after seven episodes of getting to know the ensemble in Mike White ‘s anthology return — this time, set in Sicily, Italy — the ending remained unpredictable.

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The only main character to return from season one, Tanya had moved on from the grief of losing her mother and was vacationing as a newlywed with husband Greg (Jon Gries) at the Sicilian resort at the start of season two. But Greg, who was overtly miserable and possibly having a secret affair, left Tanya mid-vacation for business, which led her to spend out the rest of her days with a group of “high-end gays,” led by Quentin (Tom Hollander). After a night of partying and a cocaine-fueled romp with another man, Niccoló (Stefano Gianino), Tanya came upon a picture of a young Greg and Quentin, which was the first clue that pointed viewers to the theory that Greg and Quentin were carrying out an extortion plot so Greg could divorce Tanya over an affair, which would nullify their prenup.

“I wondered if Mike White was reading [these theories] because he would be so impressed with people coming up with these incredibly smart analyses of the possibilities,” Coolidge tells The Hollywood Reporter of the online fervor that built week-to-week as the audience tried to figure out creator White’s whodunnit.

Her final question for a dying Quentin: “Is Greg having an affair?” When she gets no answer, she nervously attempts to get off the yacht and climb down into the dinghy, but her heel catches the railing, and she is flung overboard, hitting her head on the boat and sinking to her death in tragic and operatic fashion — just like the visit to the opera to see Madama Butterfly in the penultimate episode had foreshadowed .

“Tanya was so close to having a victory. And, an unlikely victory for someone like her, that she would have been able to manage a gun and save herself. She’s such a sad character, wouldn’t it have been cool if she survived?” asks Coolidge, when chatting the day after the finale.

Below, in a conversation with THR , the now Emmy-winning star of Legally Blonde , American Pie and Best in Show fame reveals how Tanya’s utterly tragic ending was inspired by a trait that friend White noticed in her. She also shares one possibility for her to return in the already announced third season of The White Lotus and reflects on the wild last two years of her career: “My mind is blown every day.”

When I reached out for this finale interview, I really didn’t think your character was going to be the one to die.

Aw, thank you.

It’s so weird because I thought maybe my friends were faking it when they were all asking, “Who’s going to die?” I was just really surprised that it hadn’t been leaked, or that people hadn’t figured it out. But my friends called me this morning, and actually last night, they were like, “I can’t believe you wouldn’t have told us this. I thought we were going to have a fun night. We didn’t know we were going to have to feel weird at the end of the night.” So I’m glad that people didn’t know; I’m glad.

Creator White crafted this role for you a while back with the first season. And he now explains that he knew he wanted to center season two around Tanya’s death after you spoke the season one finale line about death being the “final immersive experience.” At what point did he clue you in about Tanya’s fate?

Did you have all of the scripts at once, so you were able to see Tanya’s full and tragic arc? Or, was it episode by episode?

I think I had a lot of the script. I think I had the whole thing. It’s so weird because I was doing another job at the time, and to be honest, I feel like my brain is a little fried [in remembering]. The other job, I was definitely getting the scripts sort of dribbled; I was doing The Watcher [with Ryan Murphy for Netflix] right before White Lotus 2 . I think Mike must have had all the scripts done, and I guess I did have the whole thing. That first phone call, he hadn’t figured out how he was going to kill me. But, he did figure it out.

What was the most interesting part about playing out this whodunnit, where you know all along, but Tanya and the viewers are the last ones to figure it out?

What I like about all the theories on Twitter and the different explanations that everyone had, a lot of it was so smart. I would read them and think, “I guess Mike White did leave that clue.” And other things where the clues made such sense. I wondered if Mike was reading this, he would be so impressed with people coming up with these incredibly smart analyses of the possibilities. It was riveting to read this stuff. I would send it to my friends, and they would send me back something they’d seen, and it was like you’d spend the whole day reading this stuff. But it was so entertaining, and some of the stuff people were saying was so funny.

White described Tanya’s ending as a “derpy death,” which is such a great word to encapsulate how she accidentally dies, after becoming a near-hero in her own tragic heroine story. How did you react when you read her death scene and saw how she goes out?

It’s terrible that Tanya dies. Greg [her husband] gets all the money, and he doesn’t even have to share it with Quentin [who was carrying out the hit on her], because Quentin is dead. So it has a sad taste in your mouth. I guess I didn’t like that I was so close to prevailing. But I heard Mike White tell someone else in an interview that he sort of felt like that was stolen from stuff he’s seen about me. When he says, “Jennifer, you can handle the big stuff, but then some small thing will be the unraveling of you. Some small thing that someone else can handle.” He’s fascinated by my inability to navigate technology a lot of the time. We’re all looking at some app, and I can’t get into it. There’s something with me and technology. So it makes sense because I think he stole it from my own ability to ruin something.

What was it like to film her ending, where she is so desperately trying to figure out how to get off this yacht, and then falls into the dinghy to her death?

But it’s sort of funny when you’re an actress. The things that really mess you up are things you don’t think about. Like, “Can you leap from here to here?” That seems easy. And then it’s some other thing that ends up being the biggest challenge of the project. But we had to shoot a lot, it was seven episodes in a very short amount of time in Sicily, and then ending in Rome. And I have to say, I’m amazed Mike was able to make that all happen. To write it all and direct it all, and then be involved in the editing. I don’t know how he did it. But, he did it.

It’s sad to think you wouldn’t be a part of the third season . Have you and White spoken about a way you could still be involved in the show?

Yeah, I mean, Mike is someone where you can’t just talk him out of things. Most of the decisions he makes, I have to say, later I look back and I’m like, “Oh my God, Mike White was right again.” Who knows if people were going to get tired of Tanya? Who knows? My only bummer is that I guess any way to bring back Tanya would have to be a prequel to White Lotus 1.

Or, in flashbacks.

White did hint that perhaps the murders would get traced back to Greg in the third season. Would that bring you some solace, if Greg doesn’t get away with it?

Yeah. I think Greg should get it. He should definitely have to pay for all the misery he caused Tanya. He should definitely get his comeuppance. But I wouldn’t even mind coming back as someone different. You know, you never know.

You’ve had such a successful year after winning an Emmy (for White Lotus ) and coming off of Netflix hit The Watcher — another part that was written specifically for you, by creator Ryan Murphy. And, congrats on your Golden Globe nomination this morning .

I read in your EW “Entertainers of the Year” interview that you felt like your Hollywood offers were “flatlining” before Ariana Grande put you in her  Thank, U Next video in 2019 . How does it feel to be having such a moment at this point in your career?

The petition starts today for you to return to White Lotus 3 in a new role.

( Laughs ) Aw, thank you so much!

RIP, Tanya.

Interview edited for clarity.

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5 White Lotus Filming Locations You Can Visit in Sicily

What makes a good vacation the second season of “the white lotus” says murder, mystery, and a beautiful hotel in taormina..

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Sure, there was a lot of drama on this season of The White Lotus . But did you see the hotel?

Courtesy of HBO

If you are alive, awake, and on the internet (or at least know a netizen who is), chances are you’ve heard of HBO’s The White Lotus television series. Two seasons of the anthology show have been released so far (the first in 2021, the second in 2022), and each focuses on the very wealthy but highly neurotic guests who visit the fictional White Lotus hotels, and the equally zany staff who keep the whole shebang running. But the stunning real-life settings where The White Lotus is filmed? They steal almost every scene.

While the first season was shot in Hawai‘i, the second season moved abroad to Sicily , where it follows a fateful week filled with infidelity, villainous schemes, and murder. Throughout all the drama and intrigue, characters spend time lounging on the beach, venturing outside the hotel walls, and even sailing on a murderer’s yacht. The locales may vary, but the thread that connects them is obvious—they’re all gorgeous. Their appearances on The White Lotus sparked an almost immediate “ set-jetting ” trend (where travelers go to destinations specifically to visit filming locations).

For your next Italian getaway, here are five White Lotus filming locations that you can visit, including a couple of ancient villas and one of the most eye-catching hotels in Sicily:

This season, San Domenico Palace stood in to be the Italian White Lotus .

Photo by Fabio Lovino/HBO

1. San Domenico Palace

Location: Taormina

The hotel that served as this season’s sumptuous White Lotus digs was actually the San Domenico Palace , a Four Seasons Hotel (the first season was also filmed at a Four Seasons, the Resort Maui at Wailea ). Originally constructed in the 15th century as a monastery, the San Domenico Palace is situated on a cliff overlooking the Ionian Sea and offers views of Mount Etna and the Greek theater. In 1896, the convent was transformed into a luxury hotel that later saw Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Sophia Loren, and Audrey Hepburn as guests.

Today, the hotel counts 111 suites (some are converted monk cells), two bars, an outdoor infinity pool, and courtyards and gardens that date back to when monks still roamed the grounds. The interiors of the San Domenico were designed by celebrated Naples-based architect Valentina Pisani —visitors can expect smoked mirrors, lots of marble surfaces, bronze detailing, and both historic and contemporary art. Recommended activity: Grab one of the hotel’s signature cocktails and lounge by the pool next to your can’t-be-bothered husband with a scarf tied around your hair while pretending to be Monica Vitti.

The beach featured in The White Lotus isn’t located outside of the San Domenico Palace—it’s Cefalù Beach.

2. Cefalù Beach

Location: Cefalù

Every season of The White Lotus begins with a death. This time around, Daphne (Meghann Fahy) finds a body floating in the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean in the first episode. Though the hotel scenes were shot at San Domenico Palace, the hotel beach scenes were not filmed there but rather at Sicily’s famed Cefalù Beach, with its Norman Cathedral often peeking out in the background. Cefalù, a northern Sicilian coastal town, is located about a 2.5-hour drive from Taormina and is famous for its sandy beaches, dramatic cliffs, and ancient palazzos and temples, including one dedicated to the Roman goddess of the hunt, Diana .

In real life, Villa Elena is owned by French interior designer Jacques Garcia.

Photo courtesy of Fabio Lovino/HBO

3. Villa Elena

Location: Camastra

This gorgeous property served as the home (and metaphorical albatross) of the scheming Quentin (Tom Hollander), and it nearly overshadowed the characters in every scene with its colorful paintings, frescoes, busts, and antiques. In the show, Quentin tells hapless heiress Tanya (the award-winning Jennifer Coolidge) that he inherited the grand estate from his father, and when Tanya arrives at the villa and sees the lavishness of its interiors she fatefully remarks, “Oh, my God. You must have dumped a fortune into this place.”

In reality, Villa Elena is currently owned by French interior designer Jacques Garcia , who did indeed dump considerable time and cash into restoring the storied estate to its modern-day level of opulence. “This 17th-century monastery is built on a 12th-century Norman villa, which replaced a 10th-century Moorish palace, which replaced a fifth-century Roman house, which replaced a Greek villa of the third century before Jesus Christ,” Garcia said in a 2019 interview with Architectural Digest . Good news for White Lotus fans: Villa Elena is available to rent for your own dastardly Italian vacation plans (price available upon request).

Although The Godfather was filmed at Castello degli Schiavi, there is no Godfather -themed gift shop on the premises.

4. Castello degli Schiavi

Location : Fiumefreddo

In the third episode, Albie (Adam DiMarco), his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), grandfather Bert (F. Murray Abraham), and his new friend Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) visit Castello degli Schiavi , the iconic castle that served as Michael Corleone’s (Al Pacino) refuge in the 1972 film The Godfather . Castello degli Schiavi, which is about 10 miles south of San Domenico Palace, was originally constructed in the 1800s and has an interesting legend associated with its name, which literally translates to “Castle of the Slaves.” In the 1700s, it’s said that a doctor from Palermo saved the Prince of Palagonia’s son and in return, the Prince gave the doctor some land. The doctor constructed a castle for himself and his wife, Rosalia, but they were soon raided and kidnapped by pirates who intended to sell them into slavery. However, they were later rescued by a group of militants led by Rosalia’s lover (in a White Lotus –like turn of events) and the two were saved. The castle was known as Castello degli Schiavi thereafter.

These days, Castello degli Schiavi is privately owned, but the property is available for tours . In real life, however, there isn’t a Godfather -themed gift shop or café located in front of the castle.

Villa Tasca is available to rent on Airbnb.

5. Villa Tasca

Location: Palermo

OK, so your husband’s best friend’s wife (who you don’t even really like) just whisked you away from your weeklong vacation and charming hotel for a surprise girls’ trip without telling you. But can you really be that mad if your accommodations for the night are the Villa Tasca ? Located in sunny Palermo (on the opposite side of Sicily from Taormina), this 16th-century gem is sited in a 20-acre park dotted with citrus trees and has decked interiors featuring lively frescoes, Murano chandeliers, and majolica tiles.

However, Villa Tasca’s appearance on The White Lotus isn’t the property’s first brush with celebrity. Guests like Jacqueline Kennedy and Otto, Prince of Bismarck, have stayed at the dashing palace, and it’s said that Villa Tasca has even inspired the music of classical composers like Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner. Happily, you don’t have to let your palatial Italian dreams be just dreams: the Villa Tasca is available on Airbnb for $5,900 per night.