The wildest White Lotus theories heading into the season-two finale
Is Quentin working with Greg? Is Cameron broke? What’s Lucia up to? Here are some of our favorite theories about the second season of The White Lotus
TV Features Saloni Gajjar
Just like last season, the discourse over The White Lotus is heating up as it heads into the season-two finale. Episode six left us with a lot to talk about, offering further proof of some fan theories while straying away from others. Creator Mike White doesn’t always like to go the obvious route, so we expect there will be some surprises before the end of our time in Sicily, but at least some of these theories have to be pretty close, right? For now, we’re not going to deal directly with the most pressing topic on everyone’s minds (who’s going to die? We’ll have a whole feature devoted to that on Thursday), but there’s still a lot to discuss. So let’s dive into some speculation.
Take note that the following will contain spoilers up to and including the sixth episode of The White Lotus season two. So bear that in mind as you proceed.
Quentin’s scheming to get his hands on Tanya’s money
Something seemed off about Quentin (Tom Hollander) since he first appeared and immediately took an interest in Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge). He gave her the dreamy Italian experience she’d been craving, not to mention the attention she wasn’t getting from her husband. It was too good to be true, right? Since then he’s been throwing up red flags all over the place. The first hint of what he was up to might not have come from Quentin at all, but from Cameron (Theo James). In a conversation over Aperol spritzes, he casually mentions that these European aristocrats have no money: “They have all these palazzos and they got no cash.”
All the signs so far are pointing in that direction. Quentin isn’t a guest at The White Lotus, he just showed up there with his party crew. He inherited the villa in Palermo from his father, and it requires a lot of upkeep. He’s not about to sell it and open it up to the public (ew), so that’s where Tanya, his mark, comes in. He lavishes her with praise and reassurance, takes her to the opera, and tells her he lives for beauty. Then he says he’d die for beauty and ominously asks her if she agrees. Quentin’s “nephew” Jack (Leo Woodall), who is definitely not his nephew, pretty much confirmed in his drunken stupor that some sort of plan was afoot. Jack’s role in all of this, besides being available for sex when Quentin calls, seems to be to keep Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) out of the way while his boss works on her boss.
Quentin is secretly working with Greg
So the theory that Quentin isn’t as rich as he pretends to be is a pretty solid one, but what is his plan exactly? One big clue came in the framed photo Tanya noticed at the end of the episode. It’s a young Quentin in a cowboy hat with another man who looks a lot like Greg (Jon Gries). That can’t be a coincidence. It made us think back to his story in episode five about falling for a straight cowboy in Wyoming. He tells Tanya he’d have done anything for him, “And after 30 years I still would.” Does “anything” include luring Greg’s rich wife into a honey trap (Stefano Gianino) in order to invalidate an infidelity clause in that frustrating prenup he’s mentioned more than once? Some sharp viewers spotted a red light in the background of the scene, and interpreted it as a camera recording her and Niccolo’s romantic liaison. Could this be Greg’s way to get out of the marriage with some or all of Tanya’s money, of which Quentin was promised a large share for orchestrating everything?
An even wilder theory floating around is that Greg doesn’t have any ill will toward Tanya at all. Could it be that his mysterious illness has come back and this is his way to give her the Italian fantasy he couldn’t before his imminent death? It’s an overly generous reading of the situation, to be sure, but you can’t help but root for Jennifer Coolidge, despite Tanya’s self-absorption and obliviousness. Plus, we need her to come back for season three, wherever it takes us.
And what of the gun Tanya found in Niccolo’s coke bag? As we mentioned, we’re saving our speculation about potential victims for the forthcoming feature, but it’s worth noting that the body Daphne (Meghann Fahy) discovered was floating in the water near the hotel in Taormina, on the opposite side of the island from Palermo. So unless they all head back to the hotel together before everything goes down, neither the murderer nor the victim may be among this crew. Besides, it’s almost too obvious, too telegraphed. Perhaps White is engaging in a bit of misdirection here.
Portia is in danger
What kind of a “deep hole” did Jack find himself in before Quentin rescued him? Could Portia be headed down the same path? After her night with Jack, as he gets drunker and rowdier and ultimately spills the beans on Quentin’s scheme, she’s in a vulnerable position. Will she come to her senses and get the heck out of that hotel room while Jack is passed out? Even if she goes straight to Tanya to warn her of what’s about to go down, she may be too late. We just hope it isn’t too late for her to get out of there, period.
Harper is pretending to cheat to get back at Ethan—or to get him back
Back at the resort, we can’t ignore the weirdness going on with our favorite awkward foursome. Whether or not Harper (Aubrey Plaza) believes Ethan (Will Sharpe) lied to her about his boys’ night with Cameron, that’s almost beside the point now. She’s more upset that he’s not attracted to her anymore. He wouldn’t even deny it when she brought it up in their room. So making it look like she and Cameron are up to something together could be a revenge power play, either to get even or just to get some of Will’s attention back. The trip to the bar, the detour to the room using the flimsy excuse of retrieving her hat, the latched door, and the open door adjoining their rooms (which she specifically said they wouldn’t be using when they first arrived), might all be a ploy to mess with him.
Of course, she could have actually done something with Cameron, but there’s some evidence against this theory. Firstly, Harper has hated him from day one. He is everything she stands against personally and professionally. If she was simply sex-starved, there are plenty of less complicated ways to take care of that. No, it had to be Cameron specifically. But why go through with the deed if you can get the desired results without doing anything? Then there’s the fact that if they really were going to cheat with each other, the middle of the day while Ethan is waiting for a drink and Daphne might return from her massage at any time hardly seems like an ideal opportunity. They’re both savvier than that. And finally, if they did engage in something illicit, why hide it from the audience? This isn’t the type of show to hold back when it comes to sexual encounters. All we see is what Ethan imagines happened. That could be the key to what’s in store in the finale.
Ethan is slowly boiling over. He’s resented Cameron since college, and nothing has changed. He hoped to impress him on this trip now that he has money and (in his mind) equal status, but Cameron treats him the same as always. He put Ethan in a compromised position, and now he might be sleeping with his wife. Ethan can’t push that dark fantasy away and it’s seeping into old wounds that are still there. Could these two be headed for an explosive confrontation?
Cameron is financially insolvent
During the course of the trip, Cameron has been putting everything on his credit card (even his clothes, which mysteriously got lost with his luggage and still haven’t shown up), or charging it to the room. When it’s time to pay Lucia and Mia, he can’t come up with the cash. Is it because he doesn’t have it? Maybe that’s the reason why they eat at the hotel every night instead of enjoying all the culinary delights Sicily has to offer. It could also be the entire reason for the trip in the first place, an effort to raise some cash for a last-ditch investment scheme, now that Ethan has money to spare.
Going back to one of the first conversations Cameron and Daphne had with Ethan and Harper, he says that he’s been dealing with “a bunch of bogus claims” lately at his job. Bogus or not, they could be financially draining. He’s very specific about how, even when they get thrown out in summary judgment, you still have to go through the “depos and internal investigations.” It’s feasible he even lost his job over such an investigation. In which case, it would make sense that their bank account is nearly tapped out.
Daphne has a kid with her trainer
After that weird interaction between Daphne and Harper, where she tells her that one of the ways she copes with Cameron’s cheating is by spending lots of time with her handsome, blond, blue-eyed trainer, she shows her a picture of her kids—and one of them is blond with blue eyes. Some viewers have interpreted this to mean that her trainer is actually the father, not Cameron. Another take on this scene could be that she’s telling Harper in a roundabout way that her kids are what get her through the hard times with Cam. Either way, it’s a bizarre exchange that had us all looking at Daphne in a new light.
Daphne is the mastermind behind all of this
One of the favorite theories of our esteemed colleague Saloni Gajjar is that this is all a plan concocted by Daphne, who is proving to be far craftier than we gave her credit for. Did she plan for everything to go down the way it did on this vacation? Did she take Harper away for the night because she knew Cameron couldn’t resist the opportunity to misbehave? And that it would lead to everything that happened after? Is it some kind of revenge plot? Is she the woman in the story of the teste di moro, a cautionary tale about the consequences of betraying a vengeful woman? We keep coming back to that Dateline conversation, in which Daphne talked about husbands murdering their wives on vacation with an excited glint in her eye. “It happens more than you think,” she says. Sounds pretty portentous to us.
Lucia is playing Albie so he’ll take her to L.A.
There’s been a lot of talk about how forthright Lucia (Simona Tabasco) has been with Albie (Adam DiMarco) in the last couple of episodes. When we first met her she mentioned setting up her clients online, and it seemed like she was in control of her own fate. It’s not until Albie’s in the picture that she starts talking about her pimp, and Alessio shows up to grab her in front of him. Is Lucia taking advantage of Albie’s good-guy nature (or at least his belief that he’s a good guy) to get him to take her back to Los Angeles with him? Like Tanya, his illusions make him a pretty good mark.
Fans have already noted that the first time we saw Alessio was way back in the first episode. He’s there in the street the first time we meet Lucia and Mia. Lucia even talks to him, and there’s no hint of a threat there. Some have even suggested that he’s actually her brother, and there’s evidence to support that. Before she leaves with the Di Grasso men on their trip to look for their relatives, she talks with a bellhop whom she says is the brother of a friend. Later, while they’re driving to the village, Alessio shows up in a car to intimidate them. Did she arrange it while they were waiting to leave?
Laura Dern will show up in the finale
Speaking of the Di Grassos, our final theory has to do with a potential guest appearance by Laura Dern in the finale. We heard her voice on the phone with Dominic (Michael Imperioli) in the premiere, at first weary and then very pissed off. He hasn’t had much of a story to himself in the last few episodes beyond directly confronting his father and avoiding a confrontation with his son, so he’s due. With an actor like Imperioli in the cast, it would be a shame to waste him. Will we see Dern, who previously worked White on Enlightened, come to Italy to dress down Dominic in person? At the beginning of the season, Imperioli even hinted at a future appearance in a post on Instagram. “Although (so far) she has only been heard on the phone and not seen,” he wrote, “her performance is a standout among many great ones in the White Lotus troupe.”
Whatever happens in the end, we expect it to be epic. Episode six ends with Tanya being seduced by her mysterious Italian “arm candy,” while an aria from Madame Butterfly (the opera Quentin took her to in the last episode) plays us out. The opera tells the story of a devoted young Japanese girl whose American husband abandons her, only to return years later with his new wife to collect the child she bore him after he left. In the famous aria, titled “Un bel dì, vedremo,” she sings about her fantasy of her husband returning to her one beautiful day. But that’s all it is, a fantasy. It’s the same for the characters on The White Lotus. The fantasies they buy into leave them vulnerable to disappointment at best and exploitation at worst. Those who enter into transactional relationships with their eyes wide open, on the other hand, tend to be the ones who come out on top in this world. If that holds true in the finale, consider it a thesis statement for the entire series.
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I’m no lawyer but I doubt Tanya committing an infidelity would magically mean Greg gets all the stuff that a prenup was preventing.
I hope everyone’s theory from the early episodes about Albie’s niceness and politeness being a front for him when he’s actually an abusive incel sociopath who’s going to go apeshit and kill everyone at the first sign of rejection by Portia because he was a bit clingy towards her and said something dumb about being attracted to “broken birds” works out!
This is a 61-word sentence.
I think it’s going to be less overt and sociopathic, but I do think Albie’s insistence on being “one of the good ones” is going to lead to a bad confrontation (I’m betting with Cameron).
I’m rooting for Albie now, because he gave up on Portia quickly enough after all, and handled it way more gracefully than I expected. But yeah, there are still many ways in which his broken-bird-fantasy could set him up for a bad end.
I’ve always assumed he’ll just find out his dad slept with Lucia too and have a confrontation with him.
Or with Lucia’s “pimp”…I could see him trying to be the white knight and killing Alessio
He was already rejected pretty hard, clearly isnt an incel or abusive so it doesnt look good. I think theres just a lot of degenerates who want to make any perceived threat to their promiscuity and debauchery look evil and themselves a victim of some oppression. You know the type with colored hair and special pronouns and “adhd”. They probably overlap pretty hard with daemon fans on house of the dragon.
I just want an aftercredits scene of Albie back stateside, buying more shirts from Dan Flashes
I desperately want a five minute scene of just Albie and Portia at a TJ Maxx in Burbank.
Take your dam star. Bravo.
I still can’t quite get to the theory that Harper is playing mind games with Ethan and sewing jealousy as a means to “get back at him” or “get him back” emotionally and sexually. Basically Ethan’s appeal cratered when he couldn’t be honest with Harper from the very beginning regarding Cameron, Lucia and Mia. He had lost his spine, confidence and mojo even before checking into the hotel. Not seeing much to salvage unless it’s Harper who does run interference against any sort of financial arrangement with Cameron. But their issues would still be on the table.
I think at the least her “what? I’m having fun” attitude over the last two episodes has been a reaction to Ethan. Whether she’s stubbornly trying to be less uptight on vacation, actively make him jealous, or just let him stew in his own shittiness; she is certainly messing with him. I thought at the beginning of this week’s episode she’d actively pursue Cameron, but by the end I was pretty sure Ethan was doing most of the heavy lifting in making himself jealous.
I think it’s less straight jealousy and more trying to make him realize he really does want her. Even if it takes him thinking someone else wants her.Just like Ethan accused Cameron of:
“You have a bad case of something called mimetic desire. If someone with higher status than you wants something, it means it’s more likely you’ll want it too.”
I don’t think she’s sowing jealousy so much as trying to throw her hangups to the wind in order to show him how unhappy they are.
She’s doing that because she doesn’t really have any other options for herself. She did try to be direct and confrontational with Ethan, but all she got was his constant lies and passive aggression. So she’s giving him a taste of his own passive agressive medicine and it’s working very effectively. Too well as it’s revealed the real reason why Ethan came and dragged Harper out to this: to continue the dick measuring contest they’ve been doing since college.
Several of these aren’t “theories” any longer. They’re active plotlines that the show has acknowledged.
I hope Albie dies trying to save a manipulative whore
I see Albie heading for a masculinity crisis where he finally breaks through his passive wimpiness that he thinks is what people want from men and heroically assaults Lucia’s pimp. Then his pride will be undermined seconds later when Lucia cries that her brother has died and flees to the hills as the politzia arrive
I was kinda hoping for/very afraid of the reveal that when the Di Grassos went to find their relatives, they discovered that Lucia was related.
Eh, strictly speaking, they probably are anyway. A century ago, Sicily’s population was around 30k, so not exactly a massive gene pool. If Lucia is also generations-deep Sicilian and from the same general region, the odds are good they have some kind of overlap.Maybe Game of Thrones has poisoned me, though, because I don’t think it matters. Their most recent relation would’ve been over a century back, before Bert’s mother emigrated. After that long, they’d share maybe 5% of their DNA, at most. Albie is at most a quarter Sicilian at all.
Sicily’s population a century ago was 4 million and was terribly overcrowded as the most populated region in Italy. It’s actually dropped since then due to emmigration to other parts of Italy and also here to the US. There are more Scilians in the diaspora than on the island.
Serves me right for trusting a Google search. Interesting!Still, though, even if they were somehow related as of 4 generations ago, it’s not like they’d produce a Hapsburg baby or anything.
I heard everyone is secretly a dog in a human costume.
Now, that is a WILD theory.
You win.
I hope Mike White didn’t “test fit” every one these mostly plausible or logical outcomes written above and in these comments- then write something patently ridiculous that no one could foresee, just for the hell of it.
Some of the suggestions in the comments would have been very good plotlines to have developed in more depth. The viewership is not without skills. The show is entertaining, but the plots are a mile wide and kind of thin. I think he could reign that in a bit and work the details and interrelationships more, so it doesn’t start drifting towards “Love Boat” with tits and dicks. His direction and casting, and the acting have been really good.
My craziest theories…
1. I agree with the above that Daphene is the mastermind BUT my TWIST I think she’s been planning to kill Cameron (who is face value rich no duplicity there- and she wants the money).
In my head, she left with Harper on purpose because she knew he would be “bad.” I also think she killed Lucia, as sort of a necessary evil… and in the final scene (first ep) she’s basking in her success, being rich now, AND killing her jerk partner while having set Harper and her husband up with enough evidence to assume Lucia killed C, or he killed her, or whatever else.
2. Wild theory number two is that Niccolo was sent to kill Tanya (or at least make her walk off a cliff) and he will fall semi in-love with her and become her new weird husband for Season Three: White Lotus: Japan.
I can buy the first one because I have always thought Daphne is acting super suspicious in the first episode flash-forward. She seems to be intentionally putting on a show for random strangers.
White Lotus: Japan, shot in Hawaii or Vancouver?
please be vancouver please be vancouver (checks casting notices)
My suspicion is that Daphne knows that Cameron is about to go to prison with his “sociopath” colleagues and has set up Ethan to take the fall for murdering Cam so that she can collect on life insurance & live happily ever after with her trainer/baby daddy.
I always thought that Daphne and Cameron are in on it together, but only to a degree. Daphne’s stunt with the Palazzzo definitely seemed like a calculated move to seperate Ethan and Harper, so that each could be worked on seperately. I thought the goal was to get them both in compromising situations, to render them vulnerable to blackmail, so that they would agree to an investment in Cameron’s newest scheme. The plan with Ethan was pretty straightforward – hookers and drugs – but Harper needs to be compromised as well, because she probably has veto power. The plan might be to drive her towards an affair with Cameron. Now, Harper is not terribly attracted to Cameron, but that doesn’ t have to be an obstacle. That’s where Daphne comes in. Note, the job is not to sell Cameron as attractive, necessarily. But I think she acts the scorned woman taking back her power by cheating on her husband because that’s the behavior she wants Harper to emulate. She doesn’t sell Cameron as a good lay so much as she sells cheating as empowering. Implying that the kids aren’t even his may be taking it a bit far, but it’s an important move to highlight the thrill of deception. Harper should cheat on Ethan, but she also needs to feel she has to keep it a secret, so that she can be blackmailed about it. So Daphne is presenting the true power move not just as sleeping around, but also as keeping the husband in utter dark about it. (Pretty sure, that part did not work on Harper at all).
Of course all of that truly only makes sense, if Daphne and Cameron are indeed pretty broke and fairly desperate.
But I also agree with you that Daphne might have it out for Cameron, and that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense if Cameron is indeed broke. While I think that Daphne is often only pretending the pretense (play-acting jealous and resentful, while actually being jealous and resentful), and the kids are really totally not Cameron’s, I’m not sure yet she would kill him out of resentment. I mean, if you hate guy, why not just get a divorce? The only potential drawback of divorce versus murder could be financial considerations.
But what if Cameron isn’t broke yet, but on the brink of going broke? (eg. after losing at court…). He might have good credit for now, but maybe Daphne knows that all the assets are over-valuated. Maybe she knows that the house of cards is going to crash down any moment now, and wants to get her pay-out before all the other creditors line up. Maybe killing Cameron is just plan B, in case the scam on Ethan and Harper doesn’t work out.
Eh, you are giving Cam and especially Daphne way too much credit. They just aren’t that smart enough to be the scheming, scammy type. Cam is just your typical frat, finance bro with his trophy wife that he cheats on with sidepieces and is overleveraged to the hilt deep down.
If anything, this is just a continuation of the dick measuring contest he and Ethan have had since college with Cam doing exactly what Ethan said as far as going after the girls Ethan would get, only that now it’s Harper, which is why Cam has been going after her since day one. It’s what he’s always done to Ethan. To show that he is and always will be the alpha dog in this race.
I guess I just don’t think the scam I outlined is all that complicated (at least Cam’s part of it). Shared transgression to rope people into questionable behavior is frat-bro 101, that’s argueable the raison d’etre of frats in the first place – the future elite pulling stupid stunts together, to guarantee they can rely on each others’ blind loyality in future dicy situations by generating enough kompromat to threaten mutually assured destruction in case anyone steps out of line. Cam doesn’t even have to think it through and plan it out loud, I’m sure it comes to him intuitively.
From personally knowing and working with these types of people, they act purely out of impulse and vanity. They don’t share transgression or think things through or anything like that; they just “do” knowing that because of their privilege, they’ll just get away with it. He doesn’t really need to scheme, especially to a “beta,” like Ethan, he just feels he can straight up take from him like he always has. Which is why he’s always targeted Harper from the get go and probably why he really planned this vacation. He probably saw and noticed via social media or something that Ethan has a hot wife now, and so just like back during college, he felt entitled to take her from him like he did all the girls Ethan got.
The only difference now is Ethan isn’t going to take it any more, especially since he now wants to be an alpha dog too, so that’s why I think he kills Cam and I think Daphne retaliates as sort of seen in the trailer.
I really think Cam is more after the money than after the wife. He needs to show Ethan his place, so that he can continue to bully him into serving his needs. It’s possible that he’s just after the ego-boost of once again besting Ethan, but I do think that a financial motive is mixed in. I don’t buy for a moment that Cameron is particularly interested in Harper per se, she’s just a means to an end. (Ethan’s bit about “mimetic desire” was all just projection – clearly it’s Ethan himself who only starts paying attention to Harper again once she’s courted by Cameron).
But as I said, I actually agree with you in that Cameron might not be plotting consciously; it all runs on instinct. Power games are these people’s second nature. They have internalized all these rules and can run that sort of scheme on autopilot.
Cam is particularly interested in Harper because a) she’s beautiful and another notch to add to his sexual conquests and bragging rights and b) she’s Ethan’s and taking that away from him boosts his ego and his dominance over him and maintains their status quo as him being the alpha male and Ethan the beta cuck in their relationship and in general his sense of privileged entitlement that he can just do whatever he wants to anyone and get away with it. That’s why Cam is sort of plotting in a sense, but it’s not an elaborate or deep scheme and/or scam. He just wants to shag Harper and laugh in Ethan’s face about it like he’s always has.That’s why Ethan’s bit was not a projection, but a revelation, especially to us in the audience, of what’s been really going on here between them all this time and it’s driving Ethan’s rage. That he’s tired of being the bullied and pushed around beta in this relationship and that he’s not gonna take it anymore.
The White Lotus series as a whole is all about demonstrating white privilege and that’s what we’re seeing in the Cam/Ethan relationship.
Exactly, the thing about Harper is nothing about her personally, but the fact she’s Ethan’s girlfriend. So Cam’s not interested in Harper particularly, he’s interested in any woman who happens to be associated with Ethan. I still think the mimetic desire thing applies just as much if not even more to Ethan himself than to Cameron.
I’m with you: these Cameron/Daphne theories give them a lot of credit. I think they’re broke and invited Ethan and Harper to ask them for money, but blackmail and murder aren’t on the agenda.
Agree with pretty much all the theories, but I’m not that worried about Portia. Sure, she’s absolutely in hot waters now, but I can’t see Jack going as far as killing her to stop her from warning Tanya. But maybe that’s just because I would hate that sort of plot development. I think it would have a whiff of “punishing Portia for choosing the sexy bady boy over the nice guy”, which would leave a pretty sour taste with me.
Also, I’m pretty sure that Tanya will get out of this fairly unscathed, so Portia’s intentions to warn her might have a high probability of success. Although the picture of Greg should give her enough of a clue to figure out that something is wrong even without Portia warning her. But I’m not sure she has been able to properly process that info in her drug haze.
There is however pretty heavy forshadowing of an assassination attempt hitting the wrong target – the Godfather car bomb. Portia’s even wearing the T-shirt with this scene on it last episode. Which is why I think there will be collateral damage, but it won’t be her, because that would be too straightforward. I also think there’s pretty heave forshadowing that something is going to go wrong with pills (eg. Mia almost killing the piano-player by getting the viagra-pills mixed up with something else). Maybe it’s Daphne pulling something with the pain-medication she might be taking for her massage-induced bad back. Or maybe the high value gays are lacing Tanya’s drugs to fake an overdose, and Jack stumbles upon the wrong stash.
Quentin directly discussing his infatuation with a Wyoming cowboy, if it indeed is Greg, and leaving the picture on the bureau in Tanya’s bedroom mitigates against any tightly constructed plot to swindle Tanya, particularly one coordinated through Greg, unless the messiness and carelessness was part of the thrill of rubbing obvious red flags in her oblivious face.
JHC – How long is this last episode going to have to be to work through all this stuff? It’s gonna need its own full season.
That’s my main worry. In order to resolve all this in one episode might require some serious bullshitting to fit it all in. That’s why I wish the writing up front was a little deeper and directional, instead of just spreading misdirections so wide for eight weeks that it leads to a nonsensical finale.
Valentina the hotel manager was quick to dismiss/try to brush-off the dead body (as not the hotel’s responsibility) in the first episode. Perhaps she is the murder suspect. If this is true, what does Mike White have against Hotel Managers ?! lol