Who’s going to die in The White Lotus season 2?
With the season 2 finale of Mike White’s HBO series fast approaching, A.V. Club staffers place their bets on who won’t make it out of Sicily alive
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This season of The White Lotus has built to a fever pitch, with multiple (multiple, you guys!) murders on the horizon, if we’re to take what Rocco (Federico Ferrante) was apparently told in episode one as gospel. So now that the season finale airs on Sunday night, what are we all thinking? Who will bite the dust? Will it be Lucia (Simona Tabasco)? (And by the way, what game is she playing with Albie [Adam DiMarco], anyway?) Or douche-bro Cameron (Theo James)? Or … someone else entirely? Let us know your theories in the comments. And look out for Manuel Betancourt’s recap of the finale, as well as our staff breakdown of how it all wrapped up, first thing Monday.
Does The Godfather point the way?
Hattie Lindert: Despite my desperation to watch twerpiest husband in America, Ethan Spiller, bite the bullet, last week’s pressure cooker of an episode (and the post-credits tease of his underwater brawl with Cameron) leaves him more prone to kill than be killed. But when it comes to White Lotus Death Watch 2022, I’m prescribing to an outlandish theory based on a T-shirt Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) wore in episode six.
Here’s how I see it: In the last episode, Portia donned a T-shirt from The Godfather, a movie we know she hasn’t seen given an episode three conversation. The tee depicts a scene in The Godfather in which Michael’s wife, by error, becomes the victim of a car-bombing meant for her husband. Portia’s clearly no Coppola aficionado, and with Jack on her arm off-resort it’s also unlikely she’s trying to gain Albie’s brownie points. Therefore, I’m convinced the shirt indicates someone who isn’t meant to die stands to perish—and if last season tells us anything, death finds White Lotus guests in the darndest ways.
So who, exactly, stands to become the wrong hit? There are clearly dirty dealings afoot surrounding Tanya—to me, that means both Jack (Leo Woodall) and Portia are at risk. But if The Godfather also serves as a veiled reference to the DiGrasso Three, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) may face danger. Albie, his father, and grandfather have all proven their penchant for saviorism, and we know Albie has an eye on Alessio (we don’t know whether or not he’s truly a threat, as Alessio and Lucia’s conversations are never afforded subtitles, which feels purposeful.) No matter whose head ends up on the chopping block, knowing Daphne (Meghann Fahy) was shown alive in episode one gives me the comfort I need to survive each sleep until Sunday.
Counting on Cameron (then again, maybe not)
Saloni Gajjar: Congratulations to Mike White on a commendable job of confusing the fuck out of me when it comes to predicting who will die in The White Lotus. I’ve spent so many weeks theorizing over character motivations and desires (is Daphne the real mastermind? How far will Lucia go to scam Albie?) that mulling over the victim’s identity almost took a backseat. The fascinating second season has ruined almost everyone’s vacation, and any of the resort guests could eat it. My strongest bets heading into the finale are Jack, Cameron (Theo James), and potentially Lucia. I know, Lucia doesn’t count as one of “the few guests” who dies—as Rocco tells Valentina in the premiere—but at this point, she’s constantly at the resort, so it’s easy enough to call her a patron mistakenly. Lucia could be Albie’s victim (or Albie and his dad together?), especially if we consider how she spoke about being punished for her profession earlier.
Season one ended with no one mourning Armond’s death, and the guests left Hawai’i without much remorse over it (not even Jake Lacy’s Shane). With that in mind, Jack, unfortunately, fits the bill. He’s clearly not Quentin’s “nephew” but a distraction hired to keep Portia away from Tanya. Jack also has a rough past (as he reveals in episode six), and he could end up being collateral damage in a fight that’s not his. The trailer for episode seven hints at Tanya, Quentin & Co. spending time on a yacht. An “accident” could lead to multiple people drowning, too.
As for Cameron, I was confident he wouldn’t be the body Daphne finds floating in the water because her reaction would be worse if it were her husband. But each passing episode has revealed she’s a smart player who could be playing the long game. Daphne may not necessarily kill him, but she could help someone who did (Ethan? Harper?) to her advantage. Then again, if an asshole like Shane walked away scot-free, maybe Cameron could too? The foursome has been the most enticing part of season two for me, and there’s no telling how their journey will end. The anticipation and speculation is exactly why The White Lotus is appointment viewing, huh?
Steering clear of the obvious
Cindy White: I’m going to go against what I suspect might be a trend of predictions that someone involved in Tanya’s storyline will be the one washing ashore and focus on someone else. My out-of-left-field guess is Dominic (Michael Imperioli). I haven’t heard his name come up a lot in the death-pool talk so far, which makes him an unexpected victim (and I don’t see Mike White taking the obvious route). I’m basing this all on Lucia’s scheme to get Albie to take her to Los Angeles. Being the white knight he is, I can see Albie falling for her ploy with Alessio, who isn’t really the threat she makes him out to be. The one obstacle she’s not counting on is Dominic. He’s willing to tolerate her hanging out with his son in Italy, but he may not be willing for it to go any further than that. Last season, the death was the result of an accident, not premeditated murder, and I think the show might go this way again (for at least one of the deaths). So a heated confrontation between Dominic and Lucia that gets out of hand makes sense to me. My guess for the second victim? I can also see Ethan absolutely snapping and getting revenge on Cameron.
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My money’s on Harper, the victim of her own plot to make Ethan think she’s fucking Cam. Sicily ain’t Venice, but all of the references to Moors throughout the season could be a hint at an Othello-like death of an innocent (mostly innocent?) caused by the green-eyed monster. She’s both Iago and Desdemona. Maybe they argue at the edge of the cliff and, blinded by jealousy and rage, Ethan gives her a shove? Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well,
Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe;
I’ve been thinking about Othello, too, and about that cliff. There have been too many establishing shots of the cliffs, plus the story Quentin told of the widow who refused to give up her house on the island only to later be found dead at the base of the cliffs, for the cliffs not to figure into at least one of the deaths.
Congrats to Mike White for writing so many characters that we hope get killed off in the last episode.
Not Aubrey Plaza.
“Our guests are dying” …it’s the two local girls. She had to call them “guests” like that to cover her tracks, because the dudes with whom they were supposedly staying were already gone.
I’m going for a left-field pick. Tania. Perhaps she was the link between S1 and S2, and they’ll dispose of her, and for S3 we’ll get one of the other Sicily characters at another resort – maybe Aubrey Plaza.
I’m so torn; there are three ways I’d love to see this show go:1. Tanya dies or otherwise doesn’t carry over to the next season.2. Tanya survives and is the sole carryover every White Lotus season.3. Same as 2, but every season retains a different vacationer for the next season, and by season 12 everyone looks around and asks “why do I keep vacationing with the same strangers” and they all go in on a class action suit against the chain of resorts where people keep dying.
I would love to see #3 happen. One character each season gets to carry over and have their story extended. I’m a bit over Tanya (and Jennifer Coolidge’s portrayal of her, tbh). I like the idea of one holdover linking each season to the next.
If #2, then every guest at any White Lotus that sees her must immediately pale, quaver, and shit themselves, for they have felt the icy hand of Death upon their shoulder.
We called it!
I didn’t actually expect it! I genuinely thought she was the safest person going into the finale.
“Despite my desperation to watch twerpiest husband in America, Ethan Spiller, bite the bullet….”The idiom “bite the bullet” does not mean “die” – I think you may be confusing it with similar phrases like “bite the dust” or “take a bullet”. “Bite the bullet” means “stoically take on an unpleasant but necessary task”. As in: “I’ve been avoiding Thanksgiving at my awful in-laws’ house for five years now, but my wife says we’ve just got to bite the bullet and show up this year.” It comes from pre-anaesthesia battlefield surgery, where soldiers undergoing amputation would purportedly bite down on a bullet to power through the pain.
I can’t help but think that it’s going to end up being like last season, where – for lack of a better descriptor – it’s “the poors” who are really in mortal danger. Last season, it was Armond who paid the ultimate price, but the other non-affluent characters were consistently left a little worse off than before the week started, too. The 1% will go back to their regular lives, still quietly miserable and rebellious in their own ways, knowingly/unknowingly manipulating other peoples’ lives for their own amusement, but largely undamaged by the week’s events. So to me, that puts Portia, Lucia, Mia, Jack, and maybe the piano player (whose name I can’t remember since we haven’t seen him since he was rushed off in an ambulance, and I don’t remember him being in the opening scene) as the prime targets.
Playing off the Godfather reference and T-shirt, I think Portia gets what is meant for Tanya, just as Apollonia got what was meant for Michael Corleone.Her husband Greg and Quentin have plotted to kill Tanya for her money, or at least filmed her tryst in the last episode to nullify the prenup. Something goes wrong and Portia goes bye-bye.
Armond wasn’t a poor – he was middle management, the petite bourgeoisie. He saw himself as put-upon by the rich guests, but he actually wielded a lot of power in the hotel. He is an intimidating enough presence that the pregnant employee felt she had to hide her pregnancy from him. And of course he harassed and abused the hot pool guy. His story is about how he pretends he’s a victim but is totally blind to the privilege he has.
My guess is all the Godfather symbolism (specifically returning to the exploding car scene in the two subsequent costume cues) points to a bystanding innocent being killed instead to the intended target. Maybe Lucia’s pimp tries to jump Albie and Portia ends up in the crossfire? And Bert has a heart attack at the shock?
Welp, clearly no one should ever look to me for great insight on where White Lotus plots will go! 😉
Interesting that one writer referred to Shane as the “asshole who walked away scot free” in Season 1. Shane was a privileged jerk in general- but he wasn’t wrong. The killing was accidental and the manager WAS seriously fucking with him and his mother over the booking and refund. Shane was actually very patient in getting what he was reasonably owed. What I also find interesting is how White has changed Tanya’s character around,probably in fan service to Jennifer Coolidge. Tanya was a self-centered, privileged, ignoramus who screwed over the spa manager in Season 1. Now she’s been re-positioned to make us , what, root for her against the flamboyant grifting squad? She’s still a degrading jerk to Portia, and is an absolutely facile character who really appeals to a certain fanbase and just irritates the remainder. Please, no more in Season 3. The grifting plot has been stretched a mile wide and half-an-inch thin over all these weeks. Portia should have had more to do over the last three episodes than waste so much screen time stumbling with the drunken Brit f***boi, but the plot doesn’t have any meat to it. She’s a good actress – it would have been a nice opportunity for her and the story for her to have discovered something two episodes back, and begun working to extricate her and Tanya from the potential danger. Now, it’s just going to get crammed in to one episode with everything else.
Is it weird that the whole “murder mystery” part of the show is what I’m least interested in?
It’s funny to me that this is the only reason I watch.
no, that’s by design. it’s a fun thing to remember here and there while you’re watching, but it’s not what it’s ‘about’.
The show is so aware of and cheeky with the specter of death hovering over everything that I feel similar. I don’t begrudge anyone excitedly theorizing, but the show puts me in an opposite place where I just want to watch it unfold.
I didn’t even think about it after the first scene. I was reading a recap about episode 6 and though ‘oh yeah I forgot, multiple people die’
no murder mystery here, just a show about a really dumb rich adult women who really was pathetic. no wonder her husband wanted to donk her off. imagine leaving with someone that dumb.
I’m a little surprised that nobody mentioned Bert. He seemed in the most recent episode to suffer a pretty complete emotional collapse, finally realizing the state of his family and his own relationships. Not getting the homecoming that he expected in his hometown shattered the illusion he was living in. The trip that he anticipated would be a joyous, family reunion has failed in all regards. Members of his family have stayed home. His son and grandson are at odds. His son is running around with hookers. And his potential relatives reject him forcefully. To top it all off, Dominic exposes the lie at the heart of Bert’s marriage and relationship with his wife, a lie that Bert has let himself believe for his whole life. To me, seeing Bert this week crushed under the weight of these revelations was pretty heartbreaking. In that moment, I thought there was the very real possibility that he doesn’t survive the trip, either because he offs himself (could he go over the cliffs?) or because he goes to swim and has an episode or a heart attack and drowns. I don’t think anyone kills Bert, but it could be an accident or suicide.
It was also so cool to see one of our greatest living actors do some real ACTING with that heartbreaking “no homecoming for me” line.
The fact that Bert keeps hitting his head seems like foreshadowing but could just be a red herring. Valentina doesn’t initially seem all that upset about the body that Daphne finds, which could reflect Bert’s age (an elderly guest dying can’t be THAT unusual an occurrence for a longtime hotel employee like Valentina)
Lucia sleeping with Bert would complete the Di Grasso set, further cementing a closeness despite wanting to think they’re different. Bert has a heart attack, Lucia freaks out and tries to flee the scene, runs into Dominic on her way out, he tries to prevent her from leaving, pimp (who has been close by) intervenes and kills Dominic. This theory could also bring Laura Dern in for a scene who comes out to the resort to comfort and escort Albie home. And I wants me some Dern!
As for the body in the water, I still think it’s going to be someone who takes the wrong pills from Daphne after she upgrades from Harper’s aspirin to pain killers for her sore back. They don’t realize what they’re taking, they go swimming, boom, accidental death. That person might actually be Harper.. which would suck since I’d love to follow her into season 3, but I can see the worst of the foursome (Daphne, Cam, and Ethan) getting away with being assholes while the odd one out, the one who doesn’t deserve comeuppance, pays the price.
The trailer for the next episode kind of spoils some of it. Cam is shown in a headlock underwater and also show Daphne ominously following Ethan, so I can see Cam getting killed by Ethan in a fit of rage. Can also see Bert or Dominic accidentally getting killed trying to save Albie from the guys trailing Lucia. Or maybe the piano singer attacks and kills Mia for drugging him and taking his job? Or Valentina going full Armond and kills someone, maybe Mia when she realizes she’s getting played by her.
Playing off the Godfather reference and T-shirt, I think Portia gets what is meant for Tanya, just as Apollonia got what was meant for Michael Corleone.Her husband Greg and Quentin have plotted to kill Tanya for her money, or at least filmed her tryst in the last episode to nullify the prenup. Something goes wrong and Portia goes bye-bye.
When I think about that scene from Episode 1 where Rocco reminds Valentina about the “other dead guests,” I feel like the fact she needs reminding of that information would suggest the guests died somewhere else than the resort, or died of natural causes in the night. Guests dying on premise poses much greater stresses for Valentina given the potential liability, whereas guests – like Tanya and Portia – who die while off galavanting with non-guests like Quentin and Jack, are wholly not their responsibility. If the scene of Daphne finding the body is meant to occur on that final day, that would mean that it happened during the day; given that Tanya and Portia would not leave Palermo until the morning of this 7th day, there is no way their boat would make it back to Taormina in time for something to happen to them and the body wash up on the beach. All this is to say: my theory is that the granddad, depressed by the reality of his relatives, dies in his sleep. Then, sometime that morning, Portia is killed in a car accident planned for Tanya, or as a means to get her out of the way and stop her from revealing the truth of Quentin’s scheming. Valentina is notified of this from afar. That would leave either Harper, Ethan, Cameron, Mia, Lucia or the DiGrasso boys in the water, but given Daphne’s reaction, I’m going to go with Mia. It would be too on the nose for Lucia to die given what she says about prostitutes always paying for their sins, but Mia dying feels poetically right. Mia dying causes pain for Lucia and Valentina, the two “poor” working class people in the group. Mia had promise and love for life, she is love as a force for good in a sense, whereas Harper/Ethan and Daphne/Cameron’s love is the kind of sad, twisted emptiness that in reality goes on forever, even when it’s clearly wrong. I can see Mia dying at Cameron’s hands, potentially after Lucia and Mia’s final efforts to get their money lead to Daphne learning the truth (and thus explaining why she is on the beach alone in the opening scene, her needing time away to get out her feelings before returning to her shiny happy bubble.)
Why do you feel that Rocco is reminding Valentina? It sounds to me that she is aware that there is an emergency but not aware of any of the deaths. It does not mention location outside of the ocean, you’re right
Mike White said in an interview that the opening credits provide clues about the character’s trajectories. The actor playing Ethan is associated with the image of a man offering grain to a woman, who rejects the offering. The woman rejecting the offering is obviously Ceres/Demeter, goddess of agriculture, fertility and motherhood, mother of Proserpina/Persephone, whose cult had as particularly strong showing in Sicily, the site of her most ancient sanctuary.
Some implications are fairly straightforward. Since Ceres rejects Ethan, his union with Harper won’t be blessed with offspring. They talked about kids, but it’s clearly not happening, because Ethan doesn’t seem to be very keen on procreation. He hasn’t been too honest about this with Harper so far, because when the topic comes up with Daphne and Cameron, Ethan and Harper talk as if kids were still on the table. Ceres will gladly accept modest offerings, as long as they are pure. But Ethan’s offerings aren’t pure. He’s lying, stringing Harper along, pretending to maybe want a family with her, but not really putting his heart (and dick) in it.
There is another interesting angle to Ceres: She is also the protector of plebeians. Plebeians could come to her temple and seek justice when they were mistreated by patricians. The dynamic between Ethan and Cameron is very much about status – Ethan is new money, Cameron is old money, Cameron likes to lord it over Ethan, Ethan still feels like the underdog. But here to, Ceres won’t protect Ethan. Ethan can no longer appeal to her, as he’s too keen on leaving behind his plebeian roots; he wants to finally lord it over Cameron in turn, yet still keep acting the underdog. And that’s just another thing Ethan can’t admit (when Harper suggests that they’re just here so he can finally win that dick measuring contest, he denies it). Again, Ethan is lying. His offerings aren’t pure.
Gain is not the only thing thing you could offer to Ceres. She’s also strongly associated with animal sacrifice. Her sacrificial animal is the pig. Indeed, the opening credits also show a pig being killed. So the question for me is: Who is the pig that will be sacrificed to Ceres?
Traditionally, people used sows for that purpose. I do think that in this case, however, it will be a boar (Frankly, I wouldn’t bet on my ability to tell a sow from a boar, but I’m going to claim the pig in the opening credit looks more like a boar, doesn’t it?). And whose thoughts wouldn’t immediately jump to Cameron?
In the opening credits, Cameron is associated with a the statue of an idealized male. He represents the pinnacle of a certain, much envied form of masculinity. The opening credits close on the image of a male statue, not at all dismiliar to the one used to represented Cameron, toppled and shattered. This does seem to suggest a bad ending for him.
Ceres/Demeter is also the mother of Prosperina, abducted by Pluto/Hades. Albie’s grandpa gleefully recounts the story to Portia on their outing in the second episode. What he leaves out is the part where Ceres/Demeters in her rage about the rape of her daughter is ready to doom all life on earth, refusing to let anything grow and bringing about eternal winter, until Zeus/Iuppiter intervens and forces Pluto to work out a compromise with Ceres. The story is ultimately about the devastating potential of female, and more specifically, maternal wrath (and also suggests that Ceres doesn’t care much about collateral damage).
Some of this is echoed by the local legend about the moor’s head, the stranger killed by his deceived paramour. Sure these are stories about men taking whatever they want by all means necessary, and thinking they can get away with. But in these specific stories, they very much don’t.
And isn’t it interesting that in the opening credits, Daphne is represented by the image of two babies? Clearly, she is the character in this show most strongly associated with motherhood and fertility…. and she does have some reason to be unhappy with Cameron.
In the trailer for the final episode we see Cameron in dicey situations twice – attacked by Ethan in a lavender shirt, and then once again kicked down in the pool by someone in a blue shirt. I think the trailer shows them in the wrong order. The pool scene comes first. In the trailor we see that the person with the blue shirt is Harper. Cameron sneaks up on her in the pool, as he did in the second episode, to prank her (or, maybe more likely, he playfully throws her into the pool, as he did with Ethan in the third episode, which is why she’s actually still wearing the shirt and not a bathing suit); her defense instincts kick in, and she kicks him down while struggling free from his grasp. He comes up to the surface quickly and tries to play it off as a joke, and Harper’s ready to go along. But Ethan is less ready to let this go. So that’s another straw that eventually culminates to their fight at the beach. Which is however, probably pretty anti-climactic, because Cameron still seems well enough at dinner.
I think that finally getting to punch Cameron in the face might be enough for Ethan to get it out of his system. He might not be the one to kill Cameron.
But at this point there are probably quite a few people who have witnessed Ethan and Cameron fighting. Which would probably make Ethan a likely suspect should Cameron be murdered. Which might be very convenient for Daphne. All this time she’s been practically pushing Harper towards an affair with her husband, taking her to the palazzo to get her out of the way, so that Cameron could compromise Ethan and undermine his relationship with Harper, speedrunning intimacy with Harper by revealing darker and darker secrets, planting and continuously re-inforcing the idea that extra-marital affairs are the best way to regain power in the relationship, and then making herself rare in a convenient moment, to give Harper and Cameron an opportunity for a little flirtation. I thought she did that in accordance with Cameron, so that they could neutralize the threat of Harper, who would probably veto Ethan’s investments in Cameron’s projects. But maybe her true aim was to manipulate Ethan into lashing out at Cameron, to have a convenient fall-guy… Cameron seems the type to be blissfully unware how much Ethan must truly loathe him and just doesn’t realize that he’s playing with fire, but Daphne is probably a lot more perceptive, and might find a way to use that to her advantage.
tl;dr
In keeping with The Godfather theme, if you happen to spot a character eating an orange then you know that’s the character about to die. I don’t care if they just wearing an orange polo that character is about to go gonzo.
Who will die? I’m hoping it’s
We can assume that Greg and Quentin are scamming Tanya. We’ve been shown that Greg doesn’t care about Tanya and his actions are suspect at best. Greg freaks out that Portia is there, saying that Portia will get in the way of their vacation together, when clearly he doesn’t want to spend any time with Tanya. Tanya said that Greg insisted that they come to Sicily.Quentin and Greg have either a blackmail or death plan to separate Tanya from her money.My hope is that once dopey Portia will continue to blossom into the responsible one and will save Tanya from doom.My Guess ( as of this minute), is that Portia fights her way back to the Palazzo and kills Quentin to save Tanya. Quentin is the body in the sea from episode 1.
“I know, Lucia doesn’t count as one of “the few guests” who dies […] but at this point, she’s constantly at the resort, so it’s easy enough to call her a patron mistakenly.”Dominic had Valentina register Lucia and Mia as guests for easy access back in episode one or two, which could be considered Chekhov’s check-in.
“Chekhov’s check-in” Brilliant!
My initial prediction when the season was only a few episodes in was that it would be Bert and Greg that bite it, but I’ll go with a backup prediction and say both Jack and Mia are in danger. Jack for obvious reasons, including Lucia’s quote about saying it’s always them who pay in the end and the Godfather allusions (though Portia is also an obvious consideration here), and Mia also because of the quote and because she appears right now peripheral to any danger (outside of maybe the pianist coming back for some kind of revenge for the drugging). Mia could be an unintended victim of Lucia’s scheming of Albie. This would also fit in with the themes from last season where it’s never really the guests who pay any steep price for their gross, privileged behavior and subsequent drama.However, neither of these are “guests” of the hotel (though Rocco probably does think Mia is a guest when he’s telling Valentina since she’s signed in as one to Dominic’s room), and Rocco calls the body in the water a guest (though he again could be mistaken) and that there are multiple dead guests back in the hotel, suggesting we have at minimum three dead bodies. Also, rewatching the opening scene from the season with the idea that Daphne could have orhestrated something I think there is definitely something there in her behavior. At 2:57 she gives a very suspicious sideways glance after walking away from the two women, and in the water she does seem pretty self-satisfied and acts quite unburdened (though again, a possible red herring and she’s just doing a final unwind as the vacation ends, or it’s about something else she’s done).I think in the final episode we’re going to get teased with the possibility of every character’s death because White has meticulously set it up that way. Albie will certainly confront Allessio and maybe even Cam, with Dominic (and probably Bert) stepping in to help his son since he’s shown a proclivity now of being protective of Lucia and also wanting to desperately win back his son’s good graces, before it comes out he also slept with Lucia and we get the father-son confrontation or Albie-Lucia confrontation. Ethan will certainly come to blows with Cam, and the spectre of Daphne’s secret is still there. Tanya and Portia are in obvious danger. In the end though, I will stick with Bert, Mia, and either Greg or Jack as my prediction for the victims.
As a reply to my own comment – heh – I just realized it could actually be Daphne who slyly orchestrates the entire Ethan-Cam-Harper situation. I’d have to rewatch the season, but she at least sets up the Harper staying one night away from Ethan scenario, knowing full well what Cam would probably get both of them into. Maybe Ethan doesn’t actually go through with killing Cam, but the public fight between them gives her the room to do it herself and still have Ethan come out as the primary suspect. Maybe Harper ends up an unintended victim of this scheming, as I haven’t throught of her as one of the potential victims at all. It’s possible we get unintentional victims from all three schemes: Jack/Portia/Greg, Mia, and Harper.
Oh, I’m all in on Daphne being the mastermind behind a potential demise of Cameron! And my death-pool money is also on Jack and (to a lesser degree) Mia, for very convoluted reasons.
I was desperately avoiding work yesterday and got lost in Art-History/White-Lotus-conspiracy-theory TikTok. The paintings in the hotel rooms seem to hold a lot of clues to the themes, etc.
There are for instance, two paintings depicting Lucrezia/The Rape of Lucrezia – one shown in a scene of Harper in her hotel room, one shown in a scene with Tanya in Quentin’s palazzo. Lucrezia is a Roman noblewoman, whose marital fidelity is “tested” by the prince Tarquinius. He assaults her in her bedroom and blackmails her by threatening her reputation. Lucrezia tells her husband, and then kills herself – the husband in turn kills the prince.
It’s easo to see parallels to both Harper and in Tanya. Cameron certainly struts around like a prince, and he has been testing Harper’s fidelity since episode one. He clearly isn’t terribly concerned with consent. He might try to escalate his flirtation with Harper, intending to play it off as another prank in case she’s not up for it (like sneaking up on her in the water, or entering her room through that door and surprising her in her bed when Ethan isn’t there). He could also try to blackmail her (eg. to overcome her resistance, or to get her support for an investment into his lastest scheme) – Ethan suspects infidelity already, and Cameron could easily claim that he really went into their room that time to have sex with her.
Tanya also has her marital fidelity tested by Quentin, who probably wants to help Greg exploit the infidelity clause in their pre-nup and intends to blackmail her with video footage of her adventure with the Italian stud.
The Lucretia-story also reenforces the suicide allusions. I think that one of the deaths will be suicide, but I don’t see that danger for Harper or Tanya. The Lucretia-painting shown in Tanya’s scene doesn’t seem to be an original, but version of the motif specifically created for the show in that particular style. Lucretia is shown naked and holding a knife, like most Lucretias in art, usually depicted in the moment before killing themselves. This Lucretia however looks like she very much intends to kill someone other than herself. I do think Harper and Tanya are not entirely defenseless.
The person who’s more likely to die is Tarquinius, the prince – either killed by the avenging husband, or this time, by Lucretia herself. I could also see Quentin killing himself, when he realizes that his plot failed and he will have to sell the villa. I don’t think that Cameron would be outright revenge-killed by either Harper or Ethan, but he could very much die as a result of fucking around and finding out, killed more or less accidentially. (Eg. he and Harper are walking near a cliff, he comes on too strongly, she shoves him off – whops, over the cliff he goes. Or he “pranks” Harper again, Ethan sees it, doesn’t think it’s funny, gets more and more aggressive – accidentially kills Cameron in a fight, or challenges him to another speedboating race, or some similiar stunt of that nature, and they both die).
There’s also an opera about the Rape of Lucretia, which adds another interesting angle. In the opera, the whole thing is set up by another character, Junius, a friend of Tarquinius, who gives him the entire idea about the fidelity test in the first place, fully intending to bait him into reckless behavior likely to earn him the hostility of Lucretia’s husband. Because Junius knows that Tarquinius will fuck up, and he wants to use his very likely crime to get him killed and spark a rebellion against the King. Which is exactly how the story ends – a happy ending for Junius.
This would fit perfectly with my “Daphne is the mastermind”-theory. She has been very enabling, when it comes to Harper and Cameron, to say the least. Her modus operandi so far is definitely along the lines of “giving people ideas”. And in this version of the story, too, she might be the one to get her happy ending. At least we definitely know she survives.
Also, Cameron is so totally the pig in the opening credits that will be sacrificed to Ceres – I’ve just rewatched a scene where he even calls himself “a materialist pig”.
He also probably doomed, because he’s got a bird tatoo. Birds are associated with Harper (who is shown as a bird, fighting another bird). They are also used as ominuous omens throughout the show (people looking at birds when the mood turns somber, birds being shown immediately after flash-forward with the corpse). Finally they are associated with Zeus – the swan in Leda and the swan, seduction by false pretense, betrayal, which results in suicide or murder in many of the stories already alluded to.
Another person with a bird tattoo is Jack, who is also very high on my list of likely corpses. Portia was wearing a sweater with swans on it in one of the first episodes. His courtship of her certainly relies on him hiding his true form from her, pretending to be someone else.
Mia is maybe the most obvious swan for a Leda, wearing a feathery white outfit when hooking up with Valentina, but I hope that’s where the parallels end. But she seems more at risk than Lucia according to this pattern. And she’s got the masterkey, which might tempt her into being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Great write-up! I wonder if the Lucretia painting could be pointing to a Greg suicide, after – what I think – is a feint by Tanya that exposes his plan. It’s surprising no one is thinking of a murder or suicide when it comes to their relationship, with Greg as the ‘victim’ in this scenario. Quentin could even be the one that commits a murder-suicide against Greg if their plan fails, in line with his “do anything” for him/beauty statement.
Hasn’t anyone noticed that Daphne and Lucia have EXACTLY the same hair style? I suspect an accidental murder of one of them – with the murdered targeting the other but having a case of mistaken identity.
“This season of The White Lotus has built to a fever pitch, with multiple (multiple, you guys!) murders on the horizon”I think most commenters understand this, but this quote at the start of the piece says the writer doesn’t: It might not be murders, people! In fact the first season’s mystery death ended up being an accident (though the plots of the season created the circumstances where the accident could happen).That said, my bad guess is that Quentin and some of his gang are dead and in the water, after falling somehow off their yacht anchored off the beach. One sticking point is whether Quentin and his gang are actually hotel guests?
Greg was supposed to be back “in two days” yet Tanya has been in Palermo the two days with her gays. Going with complete deflection – maybe Greg was the good guy in the marriage – he rushed back and he’s hurt and he’s pissed and decides to go postal on Tanya – she lives to go to White Lotus 3, but there’s numerous collateral damage involving guests who may or may not have been named, but the important collateral damage is, of course, Quentin (this IS Italy, home of tragic opera), at which Greg kills himself. If we could somehow extend the tragedy to either Rocco or Isabella (who, for my money is the unsung beauty of this show, but this is tragic opera so she cannot end being happy), while the skeevy Cameron and Daphne skate home unscathed.
The rich don’t die.
Anyone else remember ep 1 where the hotel manager said made mention of a few people dying? She said it as the hotel owner pulled up and the ambulance was taking one of the deceased away. I don’t think it’s just one this season.
Am I the only one that doesn’t hate Ethan? Maybe it’s because I identify with his ‘avoiding conflict at all costs even if it ends up hurting you more in the end’ tendencies. I’ve gotten a lot better about it over the years but I still see exactly why he does the things he does. I wouldn’t necessarily lie to my wife in those situations, but had plenty of times where it would be better to confront a situation head on and don’t and then it blows up in my face. I don’t see him as a bad person, just flawed.
My money is on Alissio and Ethan being the dead bodies, with Jack as a possible third. The Degrasso family takes a hit out the former, and Cameron (or Harper) kills Ethan after Ethan catches them fucking (he is the Moor from the legend).
Jack is my bonus pick, because of prostitute tropes… but I do not think Mike White will kill Mia and Lucia. Audiences will not see Jack as someone putting themselves in danger in the same way, or his awful performative drunkenness as trauma and vulnerability.
Ugh. Just saw the finale and hated, hated, hated it.
I thought it was surprisingly funny.
You’re not the first person to say that. I guess I have no sense of humor. I didn’t find it funny. I didn’t find it satisfying.
This won’t be a popular opinion, but Tanya, her adult dumb as a 4 yr old act, was getting old and overplayed. It was so freaking boring watching this last episode. Her dumb act wasn’t funny, relative, empathatic, etc. She was just too dumb to root for. Oh, don’t get me started on Albie. Rich kids….enough said