What did you think of The White Lotus‘ season 2 finale?
This latest batch of episodes went out with a bang (and a splash). So how are we feeling about "Arrivederci"?
TV Features Daphne
[Editor’s note: Do not read on until you’ve seen all of season 2 of The White Lotus. Obviously.]
The White Lotus wrapped up its second season last evening with “Arrivederci,” an operatic, bloody, and quite quotable final bow that saw some folks played by players (sorry, Albie and Portia) and others reach their final demises (ditto, Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya, arguably the most beloved character on the series). (Said demise happened in the most darkly funny, pathetic way possible, thankfully, keeping true to the show’s spirit.) Now that we’ve had a good night’s sleep and can already start debating who from season two should make it to the next one, let’s take a moment to unpack the Sicilian chapter of Mike White’s ongoing HBO project.
Lauren Chval
Our own Madame Butterfly went out not with a bang but a splash in what Mike White himself called a “derpy” death. I gasped when Tanya went over the side of the yacht because I simply could not believe The White Lotus would kill off the magnificent Jennifer Coolidge and its only returning character. (In this house, we do not recognize Greg.) But before she went, she gave us iconic lines such as “These gays, they’re trying to murder me” and “Well, he was kinda fucking his uncle.” The other storylines were full of red herrings (Cameron ultimately just slides Lucia her envelope of cash without a problem, and Giuseppe’s rage at being replaced at the piano by Mia goes nowhere), but all the signs pointed to the actual violence resulting from Greg’s plot to get Tanya’s money.
Mia and Lucia emerge as the season’s victors, although the Di Grasso men seem unruffled at losing €50,000 just like that. But my mind will wander forever around the complex turns of the Cameron-Harper-Ethan-Daphne dynamic. While the violence between the men was out in the open, we’ll never know what transpired between Ethan and Daphne or Cameron and Harper, just as we’ll never know if those little blond babies are truly Cameron’s. As Daphne says, “We never really know what goes on in people’s minds or what they do, right? You can spend every second with someone, and there’s still this part that’s a mystery.” Meghann Fahy has been low-key turning in a standout performance all season, but she reaches another level during the scene where Ethan shares his suspicions. It’s ultimately her mentality that the show adopts as its own: Do what you have to do to not be a victim.
Christina Izzo
Never, ever count out Jennifer Coolidge: Much of the social-media griping during The White Lotus season two run has been that, as enjoyable as it is to watch the ever-iconic actor do, well, anything really, Tanya McQuoid’s storyline this time around was lackluster in comparison to, say, our sweet but scheming Sicilian sex workers or the increasingly paranoid—and increasingly naked—quartet of Cameron, Daphne, Harper, and Ethan. By contrast, our breathy-voiced, Oreo cake-loving socialite spent much of her Italian vacation simply being lovebombed and lavished upon by a gaggle of European gays (as anyone who looks and acts like Jennifer Coolidge should).
Fast-forward to Sunday night’s fervently speculated finale and that very same lovable “Did you knit your little cap?” dimwit is now a gun-toting caftan queen emptying a clip into a cabal of criminals on a luxury yacht. And it’s entirely plausible because, whether it’s spa treatments, cocaine binges, transactional marriages, bowls of pasta made by blind nuns, or, yes, gunfights, Tanya always dove headfirst into life experiences—and, in the case of her own demise, quite literally, smashing her skull and drowning in the ocean while trying to escape said shootout in a dinghy. “Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried,” she foreshadowed all the way back in season one. And though our hilariously tragic heroine may have lost in the grand scheme of this whodunit—in what idyllic world do we see Portia getting her shit together and coming back next season to avenge her old boss and murder that newly wealthy widower Greg?—at least Tanya McQuoid finally, truly got to try it all. Start shining that Emmy now.
Cindy White
I know that the guessing game of who’s going to die in the finale of The White Lotus is one of the things that has made it such a buzzy hit these past two seasons, but for me that’s actually the least interesting part of the show. It’s so much more than a murder mystery, and this season especially it felt like that aspect sometimes overshadowed the themes Mike White set out to explore—like the politics of sex, transactional relationships, the traps our fantasies can lead us into, and (in continuity with the first season) the ways in which privilege and wealth insulate those who have it from the rest of the world.
This final episode did bring home some of those ideas, but also leaned heavily into the red herrings it had set up, heightening the tension in every scene. I wanted to focus less on whether Ethan would kill Cameron or the other way around, and more on the kaleidoscope of thoughts playing across Daphne’s face as she processes what Ethan was telling her about her husband (what a great performance from Meghann Fahy). I didn’t end up caring much about the Di Grasso men and their “Achilles’ penises,” but I did worry about Lucia until the moment she and Mia walked down that street into the sunset. I hope they both make the most of Dominic’s guilt money.
Lastly, although Quentin’s con was telegraphed from the moment he showed up, heaping Tanya with lavish praise, no one could have predicted how it ultimately went down. Kudos to White for having the nerve to kill off one of the show’s most popular characters in a grandiose ending worthy of an Italian opera. Arrivederci Jennifer Coolidge; this series won’t be the same without you.
Gabrielle Sanchez
While first season of The White Lotus felt as though it was firing on all cylinders, with season two’s finale, Mike White showed we hadn’t seen anything yet. “Arrivederici” was a tour de force of sexual power plays, betrayal, and a lesson in how to avoid becoming the victim.
In the end, the men of the series proved to be nothing better than, well, men. However, the women of The White Lotus offered some truly wonderful and dynamic performances, culminating in Meghann Fahy’s final turn as Daphne. In one moment, she grapples with the betrayal of a newfound friend, and the next exacts a surefire way to not let it destroy her psyche. She’s truly a testament to heterosexual delusion and the essence of “live, laugh, love.” She’s great.
As ever, Jennifer Coolidge remains the crown jewel of the series. This season really allowed her as Tanya McQuiod to lean into some rich line deliveries and sensational physical comedy. (Tanya and Greg’s less-than-romantic ride through the Sicilian countryside on a Vespa remains a highlight of the season for me.) In the finale, we see her finally put the pieces together concerning her fabulous group of Palermo tour guides and her rotten husband Greg, although it unfortunately proves much too late. Her little jaunts up and down the boat in the final episode gave me the giggles, as did her breaking the news to Portia that Jack fucked his “uncle.” The scene of Tanya shooting aimlessly as she cries and stumbles around the boat will go down in HBO history, topped off with using Quentin’s last moments of life to ask him if Greg was having an affair. Right down to the end she was truly, madly, deeply her tragic self.
Obviously, Lucia and Mia came out on top at the end of this tumultuous week. Lucia exhibited a masterclass in scheming rich, pathetic men with the help of her adoring friend Allesio, who took on the role of playing her intimidating, aggressive “pimp.” She capitalized on Albie’s guilt and incessant need to swoop in like a knight in shining armor, as well as Dominic’s guilt over his rendezvous with her at the beginning of the trip to pull off a clean getaway with 50,000 Euros. Not to mention, Cameron finally coughed up the cash he owed her. All the while, Mia had a little fun herself, taking down her musical competition and winning over the affections of stoic Valentina. Not bad, girls.
51 Comments
Albee and his family got exactly what they deserved. that is all.
I ended up liking Albie a lot more than I thought I would. Just like Cameron he’s redeemed a bit by his ultimate ability to take a punch. He gets dumped for the fun caveman, and handles it gracefully. Then he gets scammed by the broken bird, and doesn’t seem too bitter about it either.
I did predict that Albie and Portia would sorta reconnect in the end, at the airport at the latest, and I thought that it would be a bit depressing, mostly motivated by bitterness and convenience after the disappointing endings of their holiday flirtations. And maybe one might still read it like that. But their interaction does seem a lot more at ease now, and you could also imagine that with all that experience behind them, they might now indeed make a decent match – or at least be a bit less likely to fall for a certain type of wrong person again, now that they got their fantasies about fun cavemen and pretty broken birds out of their system.
Albie didn’t give a fook that he manipulated his mom so he could fuck this girl for a few nights longer. that dude is a manipulative POS.
You forget, Albie already advocated for his Dad well before the transaction was even agreed to. Mike White had that covered in his storyline and was made crystal clear at the breakfast table scene. It was a sincere gesture.
I think he told his mom because he already knew his dad would follow through with the deal, because him and his dad operate so similarly.
He def manipulated his dad, not his mom. He already told his mom because he’s the peacemaker of the family and may genuinely believe Dom changed.
He’s embracing a certain mercurial nature, and that’s a bit dark, no argument here. Then again, it also might show he has finally stopped underestimating women and realized that he won’t have that much influence on his mom one way or the other; how much reason is there really to think that he would be the decisive factor in her choice? He’s past the age where people stay together for the kids….
I probably wasn’t too worried about mom in all of this, because when Dominic calls her, she seems more willing to talk to him again, but also… busy. She’s probably pulling a Daphne.
this is a nicer take than I have, so definitely gives me some pause to think. I just have met so many men that play the innocence card like Albie (not even the nice guy card), and sometimes it’s worse because the manipulation feels harder to point to. On some level they are innocent to the world and people, but on the other hand it’s because they never really have to learn.
I mean, you’re definitely right that all these people are a bit questionable and the lessons they learn often read as more than a little cynical. Negotiating a good bribe for the mediator role in his parents’ marriage definitely shows that oh-so-innocent Albie can actually be a rather smooth operator if need be.
My read may be overly optimistic, because I’m willing to buy that he really thinks Dom paying for the Lucia’s new lease on life is in a way just (regardless of whether Lucia then actually becomes his girlfriend, which might be why he seems somewhat at peace with the outcome) and that he really would have put in a good word for his dad with mom anyway – he clearly wanted his dad to suffer a bit for his trangressions, to reflect on the error of his ways and display appropriate contrition, but he probably still feels some loyalty to both parents and might want them to reconcile for his own sake. (Also, Albie never found out that Dominic hired the hookers, so for all he knows, he’s not at all lying when he reports Dominic’s good behavior. Dominic _was_ very miserable and did seem to miss his wife.)
Then he gets scammed by the broken bird, and doesn’t seem too bitter about it either.White is smart to use wealthy people as his props. If they get hurt or scammed you’re not worried how they’ll get out of that hole.
And they seemed aokay with it which is what redeemed them in my book.
Loved it. The loss of Tanya stings, but she’s going out on a high. Trotting her out for season three would’ve been diminishing returns (or maybe not, who knows). Gunning down a boatful of villainous geyyys is the spiritual sequel to The Last of Sheila I didn’t know I needed. Still on cloud nine. Were there a few shrug-inducing dead end storylines? Sure. But as a viewing experience, I had a blast. Ending the season with our two glorious Italian heroines was the cherry on top.
The sound design of that CLANG of her head hitting the boat railing was masterful. It didn’t overplay it for crass physical comedy, but it was also hard and loud enough to instantly say “ooof – that was fatal.”
“Come on, Tanya! You got this!”*CLANG*I love that she went out as a result of … her whole deal. It feels like a triumph, somehow. And in my own White Lotus Cinematic Universe the authorities tie it all back to terrible Greg.
I feel like we won’t get resolution to it, but White gave us a happy ending for the Italians (except Giuseppe), so I’m hoping that extends to the Italian authorities investigating.
Right! You think they’d take one look at the boat-y crime scene and go ok, this is deeply f*cked, a super-rich heiress shot the place up, we should probably look into where her fortune is going. That’s my preferred ending, anyway.
In addition to the mountain of evidence, they could also just ask Portia. She knows what happened. I’m very confused by all these people who seem to assume Greg has gotten away with everything.
I’m fully baffled by the “he got away with it” thinking. Wouldn’t anyone piece together the crime scene like “gee, it looks like she fired her way out of this room containing a bag with rope and duct tape (how fishy!), then somehow wound up in the water…” Even if it wasn’t immediately obvious what had transpired the amount of digging required is minimal. She flew to Italy with her assistant, let’s talk to her. She got a call from this number the day she died (uncle-f*ckers phone). And so on.
Anyway, in my brain, Greg goes down. That said, I’ve heard speculation that Greg may be enjoying the spoils in a future season, so who knows.
I feel like that can easily be handwaved away as the mafia keeping the investigation from going too far. Though I do question how much actual mafia involvement there was in that plot versus just Quintin putting on a front. I figure Greg’s karmic payback is coming in whatever illness he had in S1 coming back.
I’m hoping that extends to the Italian authorities investigating.
lol. Have you met Italy?
I’m hoping that extends to the Italian authorities investigating.
lol. Have you met Italy?They’ll probably deduce it was part of some satanic ritual.Worked with Amanda Knox. At first.
I was reminded of Natalie Wood’s death. Coincidence?
Season 1 was fantastic, somehow season 2 was even better. Going into the finale, I predicted that the Palermo gays and Greg would end up dead, I got that half right. I could have never predicted that gunfight though. What a wild ride, and I can’t wait for season 3 (which Mike White hints will take place in Southeast Asia).
Loved the season, only storyline that felt like it didn’t quite get resolved was Valentina. Obviously her night with Mia helped her “figure things out” a bit, but she was a complex character, and it felt like her resolution was just a little too clean-cut.
As a gay guy that had a crush on one of his straight friends in college, finally getting with a different guy that knows what he’s doing and actually wants to be with you “that way” helps you get over the crush near-instantaneously.
I hope the Cameron-Harper-Ethan-Daphne part of all this gets forgotten quickly. That whole storyline had me wishing more of them washed up on the beach (I know Daphne could not have as she was in the intro) I just despised the lot of them.
Agreed. There’s some social media pining to bring back Harper next season, but enough sneering is enough sneering. After all those episodes White just punted with a nonsensical table scene and toast. All the cheating, lying scheming after Ethan’s money – just gone, like WTF did we just watch?
well said
“Do what you have to do to not feel like the victim” is the thesis of this season.Cheating is fine as long as you both know that you’re both cheating – then no one is the fool. Sex is transactional – and like all transactions, the books should balance at the end of the day. The scheming prostitutes are the wisest about this, so end up with everything they wanted – but even their marks turned out ok: Albie got to cosplay as the rescuing white knight he imagines himself to be and Valentina had a real fun night and is genuinely happier after her “awakening” with Mia. Like in Season 1, nobody learned any moral lessons about how to be a better person. If anything, most of them leaned that dishonesty is the best policy. And that’s what I love about this show!
I wouldn’t say nobody. Dom realized what an awful dad and husband he always was and is now seemingly working on repairing relations with his wife. Albie realized that not every young single girl in dire straights is a broken bird that needs rescuing. Valentina is no longer the cynical boss from hell.
Mia also picked up on Lucia’s comment from the first episode and passed that advice physically to Valentina.
reading this and I just hear a minigun spinning up in the back of my head
I feel like someone waking up after a night of debauchery – head still reeling, a little bit sick, a little bit embarrassed (I was so obsessed with trying to guess the ending and mostly completely wrong), but also kinda amazed. What a ride!
The ending really had everything one might hope for in a White Lotus ending – senseless tragedy (Tanya dying in an accident after having successfully defended herself), reaffirmation of the status quo (all the initial couples leaving together, even Portia and Albie), enabled by not too small a dosis of cynicism (the corruption of Harper and Ethan to the ways of Daphne and Cameron), people learning all the wrong lessons (this time about the healing, marriage kitting effect of lying and cheating), and also moments of grace (Valentina reinstating Rocco, getting over fruitless pining, ready to explore her sexuality more fully; Lucia and Mia living it up in Sicily).
There’s once again a fair lack of any poetic justice (Quentin and his co-conspirators had it coming, but Greg might still get away with it; at any rate, we don’t get to see his come-uppance), but in a way, that feels right. Honest. Poetic justice can be a very dangerous idea. Too much poetic justice could have ruined the happy ending for Lucia and Mia, so I’m not missing it too much.
Of course all my own theories were extremly off, because I was too keen on seeing something bad happen to Cameron, which made me read into all kind of things (Hunting clues to guess the ending of TV-shows in line with my worldview is my Q-Anon). Him getting merely punched felt a bit anti-climactic. Acting like nothing happened at dinner does make him seem like a sociopath, but also, I guess, the guy can take a punch. He seemed so wonderfully serene floating in the water, after the other tourist had to stop Ethan from drowning him. Probably just revelling in his victory, having clearly gotten under Ethan’s skin. Or maybe just at peace with getting his just deserts. There are fairly awful people who are still capable of thinking, “Guess I had it coming”, and Cameron might be one of them.
I think I was also a bit too desperate to see Daphne as more in control than she ultimately turned out to be. Sure she succeeds in persuading both Harper and Ethan of the empowering effects of adultery, but since she apparently didn’t have much of an ulterior motive after all, she wasn’t exactly doing herself much of a favour with that, at least in Harper’s case. She seemed genuinely upset at the idea of Cameron and Harper. And that makes all her previous interactions with Harper seem more genuine too – she was really just trying to share her wisdom with another woman. In many ways, the ending vindicates her – the couple’s waning sex life is reinvigorated; the moor’s head, the symbol of tragedy resulting from deception, is shattered; these deceptions won’t end in death. You can cheat and get away with it.
Someone suggested above that Ethan and Harper won’t wear it as well as Cameron and Daphne – but I think those two are not wearing it too well either. Daphne may be the one least disturbed, most aware of the rules – but to me, she’s also the saddest of the four, the most resigned. These secrets she shared with Harper weren’t part of a scam after all, but a genuine attempt at bonding, revealing genuine cracks in the facade, with genuine pathos shining through. It’s clear to me that she has to work very hard to keep up the veneer. She did end up a bit of a victim in my eyes.
Daphne was Horny Grandpa’s pairing. They both had their own thing going and a (seeming) lifetime of gained knowledge. They sought connection on vacation and were disappointed. Harper’s supposed (I believe her) betrayal of Daphne was arguably the worst of the season because it was possibly the only organic relationship that happened, which makes Ethan’s insecurity that much damning.
I think Daphne was filled with a lot of wisdom, but I don’t think she was ever very kind to Harper (and Harper operated only out of insecurity not because she actually disliked Daphne). Plus the casual racism Daphne and Cameron showed towards Harper multiple times, bleh, Harper owed her nothing.
Rewatching, I wondered if Harper’s dislike of Daphne was greater than I first assumed. Just after her mysterious 15 minutes with Cameron in the hotel, Harper is on the beach with Cameron and Ethan. Talking with Cameron, she is in a great and friendly mood, as Ethan notes. Yet when Daphne comes back to the beach, Harper’s mood suddenly and notably sours, with her casting disdainful looks at Daphne and clearly appearing annoyed with Daphne’s presence. Also, just before Daphne leaves for her massage, Harper is snarky and condescending in saying that Daphne should do the massage because Daphne’s the one who has to go back to her kids. It really does seem like fucking over Daphne is part of what Harper is doing with Cameron— or at least Harper is willing to rationalize what she’s doing in part because she doesn’t care enough about Daphne to respect Daphne’s attempts at friendship. In keeping with the show’s ambiguity, you might even wonder if Harper is willing to risk getting pregnant with Cameron’s child in part because it would give Daphne a taste of her own medicine. The worst version of Harper (which I think would have to be a subconscious rather than a conscious motive) would see getting pregnant with Cameron’s child as: a) a way of punishing Ethan for his childish competitiveness with Cameron and for his sexual and romantic neglect of her, b) a way of punishing Daphne for forcing Cameron to raise another man’s child, c) a way of soothing Cameron for Daphne’s pregnancy with the trainer, similar to Daphne soothing Ethan on the island, and d) perhaps most of all a way for Harper to assuage her own deep insecurities about herself, since she might just as easily suffer from mimetic desire as anyone else, and might see having a child with Cameron as proof that she has won the favor of someone who comes from a world of WASP privilege that she has always rejected but that she has also always, at some level, envied. In addition, Harper has been jealous from the start of the false image of happiness and sexual intensity that Daphne and Cameron projected, and it might, at some level, give Harper satisfaction to be an active force in exposing the lie of that false image. More interestingly, when Daphne tries to convince Harper that cheating on your husband is a good way to keep from being a victim, Harper is simultaneously appalled and intrigued. The part of her that is intrigued is the part of her that is fed up with Ethan’s cold-fish attitude and that is attracted to Cameron (despite or because of the way he disgusts her). But the part of Harper that is appalled by Daphne’s advice also helps her justify hurting Daphne by betraying her. This all makes Harper sound horrible, but I’m just highlighting her worst and probably least conscious motives. I think she’s genuinely in conflict with herself, torn between her best motives (her completely justified need to shake Ethan out of his sexual complacency and her equally justified need to find sexual satisfaction and affirmation) her worst motives, which I feel she can’t consciously acknowledge because she truly doesn’t want to live a bad life or a life like Cameron and Daphne. At the end, Harper and Ethan both pull back from what they’ve done to betray their marriage and indeed find a way to use those betrayals to reaffirm their love for each other. But part of the brilliance of the show is that the betrayals will clearly have consequences for their future and can’t be fully contained. Most dramatically, both of their infidelities might have led to pregnancies — a pregnant Harper and a pregnant Daphne, assuming that the betrayals were actually consummated and that nobody used birth control. But the consequences don’t have to be so overt. It’s obvious that the short-term happiness Harper and Ethan achieve at the end of the season has been obtained at a cost that neither of them has fully reckoned with, and that might destroy their marriage on emotional terms later, if it leads, as it almost certainly will, to further cycles of jealousy and suspicion and betrayal.
About Harper wanting to be pregnant: this is a part of the series that most people haven’t really talked about yet. I think it’s because we’re introduced to the issue in a deliberately misleading way. Cameron and Daphne ask if Harper and Ethan want kids. Ethan says they’re trying and Harper adds, “Not very hard.” Because we hear this before we know the extent of Ethan’s porn addiction and his refusal to sleep with Harper, I think most of us take Harper’s response as her way of saying that Ethan is more interested in having kids than she is. In fact, however, everything we learn later suggests that Harper’s sexual frustration with Ethan is directly related to their joint desire to have kids. When Ethan says “We’re trying,” he has to be, given what we know about the relationship, expressing something that he and his lawyer wife have clearly agreed upon together. And there is a good chance that this agreement has helped create their sexual crisis. If Ethan, who appears to have madonna/whore issues anyway, has started seeing Harper as a mother figure, it might help explain his loss of sexual interest in her, and his turn towards porn. Harper’s greatest fear seems to be that they will have a baby born not out of passion and desire but out of the sense of marital duty that pervades both of their thinking. This is a key moment for her because she doesn’t want her turn towards motherhood to be the end of any passionate sexual relationship with Ethan. That such a relationship has existed in the past seems likely because she says “anymore” when saying that they aren’t attracted to each other. Also, I doubt she would feel such an intense sense of crisis if she didn’t feel she was losing a sexual passion that once existed: if they’ve never been passionate together, they’ve been married so many years (at least 7) that this issue would have been resolved long ago. In addition, Harper is at an age where having a baby on her own terms is something that she must resolve quickly. If she can’t have a child born out of the sexual passion that she now feels has lapsed from her marriage, she needs to act quickly to get divorced and find someone else. Ethan, in his passive-aggressive way, is letting time go by as he drifts along, not willing to face how his sexual attitude to Harper has changed. She can’t afford to do this, and won’t. She needs to resolve things, and does. She needs to wake Ethan out of his trance of seeing Harper as a sexless mother figure and force him to do what she wants — create a child with her that’s born out of the same passion they felt earlier in their marriage. As many viewers have suggested, Harper seems to have manipulated things (the phone message, the open side-door, the latched front door) to maximize Ethan’s suspicions. In part, of course, she’s doing this to get back at Ethan for his night with the hookers. But all the characters in White Lotus have and often conflicting motives, just as we all do in real life, and I think you can argue that another part of what she’s doing is forcing Ethan to make a choice. On some subconscious level, the message she’s sending is: “Hey, wake up and see me as a woman that you have to win over and fuck with all your heart, or I’m going to walk out that door and have a child with some other man.” I doubt she has any conscious or deliberate plan to sleep with Cameron, but it’s obvious that she feels a strong animal attraction to him, perhaps because he has exactly the passion for her that Ethan has lost. She’s not stupid and she knows that any sex with Ethan would be hate-sex, based not on love but on their mutual animosity. That’s why I think she consciously intended for nothing but a kiss to happen with Cameron. Her plan to rile Ethan up and rouse his passion for her didn’t require her to go all the way with Cameron, and there is a good chance she didn’t. But in the Schrodinger’s cat world of White Lotus, there is also the chance that things got out of hand once they were alone in the room together. There is also a chance that she subconsciously wanted them to get out of hand. After all, she’d seen Ethan going on his swim every day, and she must have known when she texted him that she was giving Cameron and her at least 15 minutes alone together. (The text message says it was sent 15 minutes ago. If it took 5 minutes for Harper and Cameron to come to the rooms, and then 5 minutes for Ethan to come himself after reading the message, that means Harper and Cameron still had at least 15 minutes alone together, or possibly longer if Harper waited to send the message till she was up in the rooms anyway.) So Harper knew that she would have at least 15 minutes alone in the room with Cameron, which is more than enough time for quick and angry hate sex. Again, I don’t think she really planned that out consciously but at some level she created the circumstances that allowed her to explore full-on sex with Cameron. And precisely because she hadn’t admitted to herself that sex with Cameron was possible, she might not have taken care to avoid getting pregnant. Nor would Cameron necessarily think this was a priority. The idea of putting his baby into Ethan’s wife would have a tremendous impulsive appeal for him — and Cameron is someone who acts on his impulses more than on carefully considered decisions. So it’s definitely possible that Harper went much further with Cameron than she consciously intended, because subconsciously the risk of having a child with Cameron excited her and fulfilled some of her darker desires more than she possibly realized. What’s clear with Harper, especially after she finds the condom, is that she has become desperate to have a child born out of passion and not out of marital duty, and her desperation causes her to betray many of her most strongly held beliefs about honesty and fidelity. The most rational and seemingly cold-blooded character in the series is the one who ends up facing Ethan with tears in her eyes and asking him what’s going to happen to their marriage, and this suggests not a distant and calculating Harper but a Harper who meant to be distant and calculating and ended up overshooting her mark, falling into the terrible chaos of lies and mistrust where Daphne and Cameron live. She had to know at the moment she asked this question that Ethan’s actions would either save their marriage or end it forever. And the reason she’s so filled with doubt is because she knows she went further with Cameron than she intended, and lost control of her plan.
One last complication, and then I’ll let the subject go. Harper’s attitude towards Cameron is almost wholly disapproving and contemptuous from the start of the series till the end. The only time she ever shows any sympathy for Cameron, or seems to see him in any sort of emotionally favorable light, is when Daphne tells the story of how upset Cameron was when their child was born and Daphne almost died. For Harper, this connects Cameron to the idea of pregnancy, and links pregnancy to romantic devotion in precisely the way that Ethan, with his madonna complex, can’t do. If there was a point where, deep down inside, Harper became capable of thinking of what having a child with Cameron would be like, it might have been during this story. At the same time, this story’s meaning dramatically changes when Daphne suggests to Harper that the baby wasn’t Cameron’s but the trainer’s. This might explain why Harper seems to feel no remorse towards Daphne when using her husband, either by kissing him or actually sleeping with him. Though at the rational level, everything about Cameron repels her, at the emotional level this image of his devotion to Daphne at the time of their child’s birth, and then the revelation that the child wasn’t even his, might soften up Harper’s feelings for him. This might have created the angle that allowed her to give in to him romantically (along with her jealousy over the hookers and the other more obvious causes) and might even have allowed her to feel subconsciously that it would be fair and beautiful to give Cameron the chance to get back at Daphne by having an illegitimate child with Harper. One of the biggest themes in White Lotus is the conflict between what we rationally desire and what we emotionally desire at the inner levels we’re afraid to face, and the series shows us that Harper’s surface hatred for Cameron masks other feelings that she can’t even see. This would also create a balance with what happened between Daphne and Ethan. Daphne clearly feels she’s helping heal Ethan’s pain when she takes him to the island, but it’s equally possible that emotionally Harper felt that sleeping with Cameron would help heal Cameron’s own pain. In this sense, the battle between Cameron and Ethan is mirrored in a less obvious battle between Daphne and Harper, and just as the husbands’ battle contains aspects of friendship and affection between the two men, so does the battle between the two women.
Yeah, Daphne not trying to scam anyone and genuinely seeking connection made Harper’s betrayal rather heart-breaking.
guessing game of who’s going to die in the finale of The White Lotus is one of the things that has made it such a buzzy hit these past two seasons, but for me that’s actually the least interesting part of the show
I don’t know. That last episode. The last several minutes. Just the tension of it. I think were I not wondering who and how are they going to die it would have lacked some of the dramatic tension.
This show is confirming that I have a bright, optimistic cast of mind, or at least not one attuned to Mike White’s dark, cynical storytelling (I haven’t seen much of his work). While watching, I never thought that Harper and Ethan had saved their marriage by emulating Cameron and Daphne’s cheating on each other. Since we never found out if Harper went all the way with Cameron, or what transpired in the cove between Ethan and Daphne, I thought Harper and Ethan, especially after the final dinner scene with the unperturbed other couple, had finally seen that these other two were in a weird, deceptive marriage. Which could have been them if they didn’t try to make their own work. I thought the last shot of the couples on on the airport chairs visually showed this—with the camera moving from Cameron and Daphne to Ethan and Harper sitting on the opposite side of the chairs. So the idea that both now will be serial philanders who do it to save their own marriage never occurred to me. I’d like to think that they saved their marriage after seeing how screwed up their “friends’s” marriage was.
even if Harper and Ethan enter in an open relationship, they actually know the real parts of each other. Daphne and Cameron have never really met. I think we can read Ethan and Harper either becoming more connected with the sexual chemistry or losing who each other are.
I have seen several comments toasting Ethan and Harper’s romantic rekindling, but I found their ending quite sad. Ethan only wanted his wife after Cameron showed superficial interest in her. They bought into Daphne’s delusional relationship advice and tossed candor out the window like a hot potato. I felt Daphne’s despair simmering just under the surface. She does not believe in doing what you need to feel less like a victim, but that is all she has, and she has to justify it. Ethan and Harper had communication issues, and maybe these trysts have helped open a floodgate, but I cannot help but feel like they lost themselves in Italy.
Jennifer Coolidge trying to casually sneak around that yacht had me in tears. Goodness gracious.
“In the end, the [women] of the series proved to be nothing better than, well, [women]. However, the [men] of The White Lotus offered some truly wonderful and dynamic performances, culminating in [mail actor]’s final turn as [Male part]. In one moment, [he] grapples with the betrayal of a newfound friend, and the next exacts a surefire way to not let it destroy [his] psyche. [He’s] truly a testament to heterosexual delusion and the essence of “live, laugh, love.” [He’s] great.”Fixed.
Tanya was the incandescent, whirling center of a bloodbath so remorseless that she herself could not survive it. Brava, diva!
Sexual intimacy between Harper and Ethan was the least of their issues. These are two numbingly boring people with no interests in the world around them or each other. They’re on a vacation and they express no excitement or even interest in seeing anything, trying out any new cuisine, or investigating any history in the area. They are terminal navel-gazers who aren’t even interested in their own navels. Though the expression is trite, I couldn’t help thinking constantly when seeing these two alone or together – “Get a life!”
I can definitely say that I didn’t have Tanya McQuoid going beast mode and “derpy death” on my The White Lotus bingo card.