"The White Lotus 3" drops all masks

Although each season of The White Lotus is a self-contained entity, the third season – arriving in Italy on February 17th on Sky and NOW – incorporates more than expected from what its creator Mike White has presented so far. The second season also brought back characters and motifs from the series that first appeared in the HBO catalog in 2021, but this time, the common thread between the unlikely and problematic guests of the luxury resort is thicker and more obvious. Just like a thematic leitmotif that picks up from the first season of the series, carried over into the 2022 season, and becomes more dominant with the return of the show three years later in Thailand. It’s the idea of men and women, with their instincts, intrinsically connected to their primal soul. A nature from which it is impossible to disentangle ourselves, one that constantly jumps out when we try to move in the daily jungle, but becomes even more overwhelming and urgent when we find ourselves in dangerous situations. Whether it’s a shooting, like the one that opens the third season of the series, or the fear that we are about to drop our mask – which is practically what happens when we go on vacation.

The connection to the primal and native part of us takes on a tangible form in The White Lotus 3, where the monkeys spoken about by Mark Mossbacher (played by Steve Zahn) in the first season are what greet us from the very beginning of the stay in Southeast Asia. Animals that are recurring, no longer just as metaphors, but as a physical presence echoing the concept of origin itself: humanity is merely a derivative of a primate that later transformed into the modern individual. However, this modern individual still hides a wild fire chained to their most archaic generative force, which they tap into when the comforts and conveniences of contemporary life give way to the need for survival, which is what levels us all – just as death does – and exposes us raw and unfiltered to life’s adversities.

Remembering the words of Zahn’s character from the first season, The White Lotus 3 is unafraid (which it has never been) to delve even deeper into the depravity and rot behind the glitter of the hotel chain. Places that are concentrated with hatred and falsehoods, a ticking time bomb ready to explode, now framed within an experience of rest, care, and wellness that guests undergo only to discover that there’s very little healthy about them. It could be the atmosphere, the excessively yellow and incredibly warm colors of Thailand – replaced by the calmness of Hawaii and the sun of Sicily in the previous seasons – or maybe it’s because the creator himself has called it the longest and most “crazy” arc ever conceived for the series, but there’s a sense of constant danger that was missing in the previous seasons. Or at least, it was more subtle.

A decision made for the “extravagant” version of Mike White’s vision that, due to the characters’ regression to a wild state – Thailand is also a land populated by monkeys, not by chance – will see the new The White Lotus confront a much more pronounced sense of death, which seems to affect both the people and the religiosity that is invoked, as well as the very concept of Western culture that White had already begun to dismantle season after season. Although the sense of redundancy might feel overwhelming, when we agree to partake in the vacation of The White Lotus, we are aware of the show’s narrative mechanism, which doesn’t change but evolves just as its characters devolve, driven by atavistic impulses. As usual, at the center of the narrative returns a dysfunctional family (with a surprisingly good and unbearable Patrick Schwarzenegger), there’s a quirky couple (how nice it is to see Aimee Lou Wood from Sex Education), a trio of friends gossiping behind each other’s backs (Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb, and Carrie Coon, wonderful), and a team that has to submit to their whims. Variations on the ticket you buy when you decide to board the ferry that will take you to The White Lotus – yes, once again, we arrive by boat. A journey of luxury, dives, and pettiness that won’t make us return home better than when we arrived.