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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Jennifer Coolidge on Fighting ‘Evil Gays’ and Seasickness in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 2 Finale

By Ethan Shanfeld

Ethan Shanfeld

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SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for Season 2 of “ The White Lotus ,” now streaming on HBO Max.

Rest in peace, Tanya McQuoid.

While we mourn the crown jewel of “The White Lotus” — who in the Season 2 finale takes out a few “high-end gays,” falls off a yacht, knocks her head on a dinghy and drowns to death in the Ionian Sea — the internet is ablaze with Jennifer Coolidge memes . (Yes, she is aware of them.)

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While Tanya fended off “evil gays” in the Season 2 finale, Coolidge herself battled seasickness. “I told Mike I didn’t want to be on a boat ever again after ‘White Lotus’ Season 1, and of course there were two yachts I had to be on,” she says. “I was so nauseous.”

In an interview following the end of the second season, Coolidge — who in September won an Emmy for playing Tanya in Season 1 — sat down with Variety to discuss how her own “obliviousness” inspired the character, becoming an instant meme and what “The White Lotus” has meant for her and her career.

When did you first find out you would be the big death at the end of this season, and what was your reaction when Mike told you?

I wasn’t happy about it! But Mike White’s a genius — I knew my ending would be good. When he told me I was going to die, he didn’t have the ending yet, he hadn’t completely orchestrated it out. I was kind of bummed, but Mike knows how to tell a story better than anyone I know, so I knew I just had to trust it. You can’t talk Mike White out of anything, so I’ll just have to go on some different adventures this year and maybe go visit Mike when they’re filming [Season 3].

Tanya dies by falling over the side of the yacht and hitting her head on the dinghy. Did she not see the ladder?

Are you speaking as you, Jennifer, or as the character Tanya?

I’m saying Mike stole that from me, Jennifer Coolidge, and made it a Tanya thing — her obliviousness.

How did you shoot that scene?

It was late at night on a rocky boat. I told Mike I didn’t want to be on a boat ever again after “White Lotus” Season 1, and of course there were two yachts I had to be on. I was so nauseous. I’m not good on these boats. It was many hours on that boat not feeling well and having to kill people and run around. There was a lot of running around on that boat.

Why do you think it took Tanya so long to put the pieces together and plan an escape, even though she had already seen the photo and had told Portia about Quentin and Jack? Did she refuse to believe it, or was she frozen in fear?

Mike was writing these scenes as very dreamlike: “Did I really see that? Is that really real, or is that my imagination?” Tanya’s a very damaged person, and a lot of times she isn’t nice, but she would never take someone’s life or anything. That kind of person who has no problem taking another person’s life — it’s very hard for a naïve, innocent person to conceive that idea in their head. You hear people on a jury say, “The reason why I voted that he was innocent is I just don’t think anyone could take the life of their own child or kill their wife.” Like, oh my God! They do it every day! Somewhere in the world, someone is doing that. It’s that sort of inability to believe something until you’re in way too deep, because the possibility of it is too hard for people to admit to themselves that there’s that type of evil in the world. No one wants to believe that.

In Tanya’s last moments, she asks Quentin if Greg is having an affair. What does that say about her?

There’s so many things in that line. One, that’s so important to women. And you have to remember, this is a dramedy. There’s a lot of comedy in this show. Even with all the bodies strewn around on the floor, that’s a question that Tanya wants answered, despite this horrific scene she’s standing in. When I read it, I thought it was brilliant. And two, she really wants to know. People want to know if she really got all that was going on. She talks to Portia about putting the pieces together, but that deep denial is just beyond reason.

How does it feel to be a gay icon who ends up murdering a bunch of “high-end gays” who plotted to kill her?

Are you aware that the “These gays, they’re trying to murder me” has already become a meme?

I have had some people send me that this morning, yes.

Did you anticipate that when you read the line?

No. That was one of the last scenes I filmed for the show, and I was seasick and stuff. There were a lot of logical things I should have come up with. There’s so many things people are sending me. [When filming], you’re not thinking memes down the line for some reason. Maybe other people on the show were, but I wasn’t savvy enough to spot them.

Do you have a favorite line you improvised?

There’s one line that I told Mike about that he put in the script. I had just bought this big house in New Orleans, and my father was secretly upset because he thought I was in over my head. And my aunt pulled me aside and said, “Sometimes… old buildings are more important than people.” And I told Mike White that, and he put it in the script in a different way. [Tanya tells Quentin on the boat, “There aren’t enough people out there that are worried about old buildings.”] It’s very clever the way he weaves all these things in.

One of my favorite lines, which Mike came up with, is “These are some high-end gays.” I liked when Tanya was excited about something, because she was so depressed for most of Season 1 and the beginning of 2. There’s another brilliant line about how when you meet other rich people, they don’t fear that you’re going to take their money, so they let you in. That’s a true fact! I improvised a lot of things, some made it in and some didn’t. But 99.9% of my favorite lines were Mike White.

How does it feel to say goodbye to Tanya McQuoid, and what has “The White Lotus” meant to you and your career?

It was sort of the beginning of good times for me, coming out of COVID and making “White Lotus” Season 1. To be given this gift to act and do this very cool story. I know Mike White’s a genius and all that, but I never had the thought that “White Lotus” was going to be a huge deal. I remember thinking, “This is good,” but there’s a lot of good stuff on television that never gets any recognition. I didn’t have any expectations, but it turned into this massive thing.

And staying on “White Lotus” Season 2 — it was a life-changing thing. The offers! Whether I can take these projects or not, it doesn’t matter. I never thought I had a shot in hell at doing anything dramatic. Of course “White Lotus” has comedy in there, but before that, the only dramatic role I had was something a long time ago with Nicolas Cage called “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” and I don’t really know how many people saw that. “White Lotus” has opened a world of opportunities, and Mike White will be my friend forever, of course.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

For more coverage of “The White Lotus,” read our interviews with Will Sharpe (Ethan) , Adam DiMarco (Albie) , Haley Lu Richardson (Portia) . Read a recap of the season finale here , and its series-high ratings here !

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The White Lotus’s explosive season finale, explained

Who died (and who survived) at The White Lotus.

by Alex Abad-Santos

This article contains spoilers for the season finale of the second season of The White Lotus .

For the last week , White Lotus fans have been losing sleep in stressful anticipation of the series’s season finale and the answer to the show’s ultimate question: Which White Lotus hotel guests are gonna die?

And in Sunday’s finale, we got our answer.

Image reads “spoilers below,” with a triangular sign bearing an exclamation point.

Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) met her watery demise in the season finale, as did practically a full yacht’s worth of conspiring gay men.

As episode six hinted at, new friend Quentin (Tom Hollander) and Tanya’s husband Greg (Jon Gries) had a relationship — Tanya picked up (a poorly photoshopped) photo of the two in Quentin’s bedroom. We never find out what exactly that relationship is, but Tanya — after a frantic call from the subtly abducted Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) — believes that Quentin and his crew were in cahoots with Greg to kill her and cash in an inheritance.

Offshore on Quentin’s yacht, Niccolò (Stefano Gianino), Tanya’s mafioso escort from her cocaine-filled night, arrives to bring her back to shore — just the two of them and a sizable black “cocaine bag” in a tiny boat. Tanya is convinced Niccolò and the gays are going to kill her (“These gays are trying to kill me,” she whisper-hisses, perfectly). In a desperate move, she grabs the bag, finds the tape, rope, and gun inside, and locks herself in a stateroom. When the gays come knocking, she blindly shoots her way out, still whimpering, and manages to mortally wound if not outright kill everyone on the yacht. (No, I am not making this up.) Tanya Wick just has to make it to the attached dinghy, but instead of taking the stairs, she decides to jump — whacking her head on the side of the boat and drowning.

Tanya went out doing what she loved most, obviously luring in people with her copious amounts of money and then thwarting them last minute. (The murky status of Greg’s inheritance notwithstanding.)

In a cheerier conclusion than the first season, the rest of the guests got relatively happy endings.

How everyone else fared at the White Lotus Sicily

Fatally miserable couple Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper Spiller (Aubrey Plaza) recovered their missing intimacy, accepting a little bit of mystery in one another. Knowing that his college roommate at the very least kissed his wife, Ethan tackles Cameron (Theo James) in the ocean and punches him in the face. Ethan reveals the possible indiscretion to Cam’s uncannily zen wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy), who gives Ethan basically the same ambiguously erotic pep talk she gave Harper: Don’t be a victim; get yours. Unlike Harper, Daphne takes Ethan on a walk to a private island. After that, and a surprisingly not-weird dinner with the full foursome, Ethan rekindles his attraction to Harper and the two finally have sex.

The Di Grasso men left the island as they came — all terrible with women in their own unique ways. Dominic (Michael Imperioli) has a sliver of hope his wife will talk to him again, thanks to his son’s semi-extortionist blessing; Bert (F. Murray Abraham) still gets sexually excited from a hug. At the airport, Albie (Adam DiMarco) reconnects with Portia, each having been pretty well and thoroughly scammed by the sex workers they unwittingly ditched each other for. The two exchange numbers, so they can go on to hurt each other another day.

Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) got to achieve their dreams this season: scamming men and singing at the hotel’s piano bar.

And speaking of sex workers, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) got a real happily ever after. Lucia played Albie and his dad for 50,000 euro. Alessio, the man supposedly stalking her, wasn’t a pimp or a disgruntled mob boss but just a doorman at a neighboring hotel. And as a result of accidentally drugging the resident pianist, Mia convinces hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) to fire him. Good for them!

Men get played. Women get rich. Yachts became death traps. What a surprisingly jaunty ending for our White Lotus guests (save for Tanya) and oddly hopeful cap to the second season of this beloved HBO show.

The season is a well-executed murder mystery

The biggest shift this season was how The White Lotus transitioned from feeling like a show about unaware and unchecked privilege with a little murder mystery hanging over it, to murder mystery with a bit of unaware and unchecked privilege on the side. Fans were more determined than ever to decode every potential clue . The change in vibe began in the very first episode.

We meet Daphne who, at first blush feels familiar to anyone who’s seen The White Lotus season one. She’s got perfect hair, a perfect swimsuit, perfect teeth. Big, clean, gorgeous teeth. In White Lotus code, this means she’s probably a horrific monster. Daphne chats up the girls next to her, initiating a conversation about how lucky they are to be in Sicily.

“Italy’s just so romantic,” Daphne tells the women, before getting into the Ionian Sea one last time. “Oh, you’re gonna die. They’re gonna have to drag you out of here,” she says.

As Daphne takes the plunge, the water suddenly doesn’t seem as blue or clear as it did in the wide shot. And then it happens: A pair of floating legs (and Tanya’s corpse that they’re attached to) thump into Daphne, and send her screaming for shore. Onshore, we learn that a number of bodies have been discovered, but no final body count given (beach club supervisor Rocco tells manager Valentina that there’s a “few”). All we know is that the unalive people were guests of the hotel.

That’s where the real show starts.

In season one, the possibility remained that the body bag we saw in the very first episode had been the result of natural causes. But since we saw that end with snotty guest Shane (Jake Lacy) stabbing hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett), and started this new season with a whole pile of bodies, it seemed all but assured that foul play would be afoot at the White Lotus Sicily. Were these deaths an accident? Were they on purpose? Murder? Manslaughter? And more importantly: Who died? And who killed them?

White’s sneaky move was to let the subtle, even pedestrian betrayals in relationships feel like clues to a murder mystery. A thousand motives flit across the screen, all possible in the characters’ fragile relationships. Over an innocuous dinner or drinks at the beach, the tension between these characters seems like it might boil over — and occasionally does.

Suddenly, it wasn’t so difficult to see a scenario in which Ethan, frustrated with Harper, would kill his old buddy Cam. It wasn’t impossible to imagine Albie killing Lucia after finding out his father also slept with her, or Jack (Leo Woodall) tossing Portia into the sea because she found out Quentin wasn’t his uncle.

The first season took a big swing , giving us White’s ideas about how American greed and pleasure are interconnected and how Hawaii and Hawaiians became the mainland’s victims. The White Lotus ’s second season doesn’t even attempt to tell a similar story. Instead, it’s skewering gender by way of masculinity, sex, and desire. It’s a more sensational, more sordid, more sinister, and more streamlined story. It’s a less ambitious season, maybe, but a more successful one.

Daphne Sullivan won The White Lotus

The White Lotus didn’t invent miserable rich Americans, nor did it create our morbid curiosity with them. Watching the wealthy writhe in emotional displeasure is a long tradition, from The Great Gatsby to the Real Housewives . There’s something comforting in knowing there are limits to financial security, and witnessing people who could afford anything still be unfulfilled in ways that they’ll never be able to solve. There’s something about the rich on vacation that feels like it could go full Hunger Games .

Yet, despite the endless reasons to hate so many of the main guests — Ethan is so terminally insecure, Harper is a horny grump, Cameron’s a slimeball, Tanya is an emotional vampire, Portia has no backbone, and the Di Grassos have never met a woman they couldn’t impose themselves on — there’s one I would die for: Daphne Sullivan.

Obviously, a lot of my affection for the character comes from Meghann Fahy’s brilliant performance. And just as much can be explained by the ancient proverb : “girl does sociopathic shit, her gays [say] work.”

But it’s also what Daphne represents.

When we first meet her on the beach chatting up the two women on vacation, there’s a sense that she’s kind of a rich dumb-dumb. That’s the common thread among White Lotus guests. Look how they can’t even understand what’s happening around them.

Adding to that impression is that we also meet eternally mordant Harper, who’s crabby the minute she gets to Sicily. Harper does not want to be there. She hates being on vacation with people she hates.

This irritability makes Harper seem like the show’s protagonist. It allows her to point out how out of touch the people around her are, the implicit position of viewers at home. When Harper tells Cameron and Daphne that she’s an employment lawyer, Cameron quickly spouts on about how most harassment lawsuits are fake. When Cameron and Daphne tell her they don’t read or watch the news, she’s shocked at their incuriosity about the world. If Harper, who the show paints as smarter than the rest of the cohort, thinks Daphne and Cameron are idiots, then they must be idiots, right?

But as the show progresses, Daphne shows herself to be much smarter than she appears — and maybe wiser than Harper herself.

In episode 5, Harper, by way of a condom wrapper and emotional warfare, finds out that Cameron and Ethan did MDMA and that Cameron cheated on Daphne with a sex worker. When she tells Daphne as much as she can without spelling out all the details, Daphne doesn’t even flinch.

Instead of shock, Daphne tells Harper about her trainer Lawrence. They spend an enormous amount of time together. Lawrence makes her laugh. Lawrence keeps her fit. Lawrence doesn’t let her get lonely. She describes him to Harper as blond and blue-eyed, and offers to show her a pic. Instead, she hands over a photo of her blond and blue-eyed children. “Oops,” she says, with the smallest point, and we know she’s never made a mistake at all, but that Cameron has in underestimating her.

“I spend more time with him than Cameron sometimes because he’s so busy at work,” Daphne tells Harper, before her face sharpens into a smile that’s all edges. “The point is, maybe you should get a trainer.”

It’s in this moment that Harper realizes Daphne isn’t oblivious to her life but, rather, fully aware of every moment of it. Like her shopping sprees, infidelity to the point of paternity fraud is one of the ways Daphne has carved out happiness in what could be an utterly punishing life. She’s the trophy wife to Cameron’s wheeling, dealing, cheating asshole finance bro, but Daphne plays the game, too. She just happens to be smart enough to never be left footing the bill. She knows being unvalued will get her further.

Though it looks like they might, Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Cameron (Theo James) did not kiss.

Daphne puts her slightly mercenary wisdom to practice in the final episode, after Ethan tells her something happened with Harper and Cam. Taking just a beat to let the hurt wash over her, she’s quickly ready to metabolize. While we don’t know for certain what happens when Daphne takes Ethan on a walk to La Isola Bella, it seems to lead to a reset in the natural balance of the group, which had gone perilously lopsided for Ethan since he had reason to be suspicious of his wife. Does Daphne really want Ethan? (No, I don’t think so.) Do they actually hook up? (Yes, I think so.) What matters is that neither of them is a victim anymore.

Daphne’s worldview serves both halves of the Spiller couple well, eventually. Each had felt victimized by the other: Harper by Ethan’s expectations and lack of sexual interest, Ethan by Harper’s moods and frustration, both by the other’s lies. Daphne helps put the couple on equal footing by encouraging each one to take their power back. Honesty is overrated; an appreciation for mystery in yourself and the person you love is a much sexier solution.

“You don’t have to know everything to love someone,” she tells Ethan.

She should know; it’s an answer that has paid off her time and again. It’s also worth noting that Ethan and Harper being on good terms with each other is a good thing for Daphne. If Ethan doesn’t see Cameron as a threat, especially if you read his “walk” with Daphne as more than a stroll, he might be open to Cameron investing his money and obliquely funding Daphne’s lavish life.

Upward mobility isn’t usually rewarded in The White Lotus, as we saw with Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) from season one, and Quentin and his cohort this year. Striving for something more never works out when you play against the ultra-wealthy. But here, all along, Daphne defied the odds and found a way. Just don’t tell anyone about her trainer.

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'The White Lotus' Season 2 Finale: How It Ended and Who Died

Sunday's season 2 finale of The White Lotus tied up some other loose ends and revealed who on the hit HBO series will not live to see another resort

Glenn Garner is a form writer-reporter who worked heavily with PEOPLE's Movies and TV verticals. He left PEOPLE in 2023.

This post contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of The White Lotus.

As a beloved character learned on Sunday's White Lotus season 2 finale, a weeklong getaway to Sicily is truly a trip to die for .

Fans of the HBO series were devastated to learn the fate of Jennifer Coolidge 's Tanya after two seasons. Despite a boatload of social media theories, the climactic yacht massacre and Tanya's easily avoidable, accidental death as laid out by creator Mike White still managed to surprise.

The finale rejoined Tanya after Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his "high-end gays" threw the shipping heiress — whom they'd now dubbed "the new diva of Palermo" — a party at his palazzo in Palermo and hooked her up with Italian stallion/mafia scion Niccolò ( Stefano Gianino ).

For more on The White Lotus , listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.

Elsewhere, her assistant Portia ( Haley Lu Richardson ) woke up in a hotel with Quentin's supposed — but hopefully not! — nephew Jack ( Leo Woodall ). After his drunken hints at Quentin's financial issues, Portia was immediately suspicious of Jack when she couldn't fine her phone.

Before leaving the palazzo, Quentin caught Tanya looking at the photo she found the night before, seemingly featuring him and her shady husband Greg ( Jon Gries ) as young men. Although she swore it looked just like Greg, Quentin made up a story about some guy named Steve. Skeptical but unable to uncover the truth just yet, Tanya headed to Quentin's boat with his friends to head back to Taormina.

Later over lunch, Portia confronted Jack once again over her missing phone, but he continued to deny stealing it. He then immediately left his own phone at the table, and Portia took the opportunity to call her boss.

Tanya was surprisingly able to get a signal on the yacht, giving Portia the opportunity fill Tanya in on Jack's revelation Quentin was on the brink of losing his family villa but was expecting a hefty sum of money to come his way soon. At this, Tanya also broke the news to Portia that she'd seen Jack having sex with his "uncle" Quentin. They both agreed they had a bad feeling about everything.

Tanya then told Portia about the photo of Quentin and Greg, suddenly realizing that their prenuptial agreement prevents her husband from getting any money if they divorce. But if she died, he would get it all. Meanwhile, she recalled, it had been Greg's idea to visit Sicily in the first place. Tanya told Portia to get back to the White Lotus so they could "get the f--- out of here."

After the yacht dropped anchor back in Taormina, Tanya looked for a way off the boat and back to safety, but Quentin insisted she stay for dinner, telling her she could catch a boat ride back to land with Niccolò after their last supper together.

En route to the resort, Portia abruptly confronted Jack about having sex with Quentin. He finally caved, telling her to "just leave it alone" and saying he was just doing his job by driving her back to Taormina as his "uncle" had asked.

Hours later, Jack dropped off Portia in Catania, closer to the airport. He urged her to forget about Tanya and fly back home to the U.S. on her flight the next day. "These people are powerful," he told her. "You don't want to f--- with them." Before he sped off, he tossed Portia's phone on the roadside next to her.

RELATED VIDEO: Stars at The White Lotus Season 2 Premiere

Back on the yacht, Tanya saw Niccolò fishing around in a mysterious bag during dinner and was antsier than ever not to hop into the dinghy of death with him. After another drink, she grabbed the bag and locked herself in a bedroom, discovering that it contained a serial killer kit: rope, duct tape and the gun he'd shown her the night before at the coked-up party in Quentin's villa.

Once the banging on the door began from outside cabin, Tanya panicked. She grabbed the gun and, when the door burst open, shot the gun. After killing Niccolò, she continued firing wildly, fatally shooting everyone aboard except one partygoer and the captain.

As Quentin lay bleeding on the ground, she asked whether Greg was cheating on her, but he couldn't answer, only muster one final, bloody sputter.

After her rampage, Tanya tried to jump into the boat to head to land, but she slipped on her chunky platform heels and hit her head on the dinghy's railing on the way down. Knocked unconscious, she drowned.

Her body was then revealed as the one that Daphne ( Meghann Fahy ) discovered in the first episode. Just off shore, the coast guard discovered the other bodies on the yacht.

Things came to a head for Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) as he accused her of having sex with Cameron ( Theo James ). She ultimately admitted to kissing him, but Ethan was convinced she was lying.

After storming across the beach and punching Cameron in an oceanic bro fight, Ethan took solace in a few words of wisdom from Daphne. She gave him a knowing look, and they headed off to Isola Bella where they may or may not have complicated the love quadrangle even further.

Despite an awkward last dinner, all was right with the young couples, with Ethan and Harper even getting in some vacation sex during their final night.

After a blissful night with Mia ( Beatrice Grannò ), White Lotus manager Valentina ( Sabrina Impacciatore ) let the aspiring singer take over permanently for Giuseppe (Federico Scribiani).

Although she appeared heartbroken to learn that Mia didn't want to pursue a relationship, they agreed to keep things casual and convenient — and Mia even offered her and fellow sex worker Lucia's ( Simona Tabasco ) services as Valentina's wingwomen to meet local lesbians.

Albie ( Adam DiMarco ) proposed Lucia move with him to Los Angeles and even convinced his dad Dominic ( Michael Imperioli ) to give him €50,000 as "karmic payment" so he could help her be free of her supposed pimp. To no one's surprise, Lucia cut and ran with the money, taking one last glance at Albie before she left him sleeping alone on his final morning.

But all wasn't lost — Albie ran into Portia at the airport. When he told her about the unidentified drowning victim and the yacht full of corpses, Portia got the drift of what had happened with Tanya. She commiserated vaguely with Albie about both getting played, and they swapped numbers. Kids!

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Who died at ‘the white lotus’ finale answers season-long mystery.

Spoilers ahead for the second season of the hit HBO resort saga, including comments from creator Mike White on the tragic ending (and thoughts for season three).

By Jackie Strause

Jackie Strause

Managing Editor, East Coast

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

The final episode of The White Lotus delivered on its premiere setup — revealing whose dead body has mysteriously washed ashore at the resort chain’s location in Sicily, Italy.

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‘The White Lotus’ Creator Mike White Explains That Shocking Season 2 Finale Death

The showrunner also says lingering questions from Season 2 may be answered in Season 3

Note: the following contains spoilers for “The White Lotus” Season 2 finale.

“The White Lotus” Season 2 finale made good on the show’s promise to reveal exactly whose bodies were floating in the ocean in the season opener, but few were prepared to discover that Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya was one of the victims. According to creator and showrunner Mike White, the seed for Tanya’s death was actually planted in the Season 1 finale of the HBO series.

In the final episode of Season 2, Tanya finally realizes that Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his friends are not who they appear to be. Quentin clearly is old friends with Greg (Jon Gries), and when his yacht arrives back in Taormina, Quentin makes some excuse as to why Tanya can’t get off the boat just yet. Instead, they’re waiting for Niccolo (Stefano Gianino) to show up and personally escort Tanya back under cover of night.

When Tanya goes through Niccolo’s bag and discovers rope, duct tape and a gun, she confirms they’re trying to kill her so Greg can inherit all of her money. She, hilariously, takes all but one of them out with the gun, but when trying to jump down from the yacht into the smaller boat to go ashore, she hits her head and drowns.

In a behind-the-scenes video from HBO that aired after the episode, White said the entirety of Tanya’s Season 2 arc was crafted around her eventual death.

“In the end of last season, Tanya is sitting with Greg in the last episode and he’s talking about his health issues and she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years. Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.’ And I was thinking it’d be so fun to bring Tanya back because she’s such a great character, but maybe that’s the journey for her is like a journey to death.”

“And not that I really wanted to kill Tanya because I love her as a character and I obviously love Jennifer,” White continued. “But I just felt like you know we’re going to Italy, she’s such a diva, larger-than-life female archetype, it just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story.”

the-white-lotus-season-2-finale-jennifer-coolidge-tanya

It was important to White, however, that Tanya not die at the hands of someone else.

“I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic,” he said. “It felt like she needed to give her best fight back, and that she in a way had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her. So it just made me laugh to think she would take out [this] cabal of killers and that after she successfully does that, she just dies this derpy death. It just felt like that’s so Tanya.”

“The White Lotus” Season 3 has already been ordered by HBO, and given that this is an anthology series the plan is to have a new location and new characters. However, in the post-finale video White alluded to a continuation or some kind of closure to Greg’s murder plot in Season 3.

“I think as far as what happens to Greg and the conspiracy of Tanya’s death, it’s possible that I think Portia is scared enough to just leave it alone but the fact that all of those guys die on the boat feels like there’s gotta be somebody who’s gonna track it back down to Greg. But maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens.”

Just as Coolidge was the only character to reprise her role from Season 1 in Season 2, could we see Haley Lu Richardson’s Portia return as she tries to dig deeper into what happened to Tanya? Or Greg? It would fit with the theme White teased as central to Season 3.

“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex, and I think the third season would be maybe a kind of satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality, and it feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus,” White said in the video.

Stay tuned, folks. This particular story may have come to a close, but there’s more “White Lotus” to come.

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

Our breakdown of the finale and those shocking deaths.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mia becomes the permanent lounge singer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Portia was definitely kidnapped.

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

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

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

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

Tanya doesn't make it off the yacht alive.

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

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

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

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

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

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Den of Geek

The White Lotus Season 2 Ending Explained: Who Died And What Happened to Everyone Else

Here's who lives, who dies, and who leaves Italy changed forever in The White Lotus season 2 finale.

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Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus Season 2 finale

The following contains major spoilers for The White Lotus season 2 .

Vacation is officially over. Another drama-filled sojourn at The White Lotus has come to an end, filled with suspicion, betrayal, and a variety of rich people behaving badly. Since the series’ anthology format means the season 2 finale is our last outing with this particular group of characters, the show does its best to tie up its (many!) loose ends and show us how their collective time in Italy has changed their lives—for good or ill.

Here’s a rundown of what happened in the supersized The White Lotus season 2 finale from who makes it out of Sicily to the secrets several major characters will be taking home with them.

Who Dies in The White Lotus Season 2?

Although the first episode of The White Lotus season 2 straight up tells us that four people die over the course of this run of episodes, only one of them actually turns out to be a major character.

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The body that Daphne (Meghann Fahy) discovers in the water during the season’s opening moments belongs to fan favorite Tanya McQuoid-Hunt (Jennifer Coolidge), who manages to survive a murder plot and gun down the cabal of gay men who appear to be planning to kill her only to fall from their yacht to her death as she tries to reach the dinghy that would carry her back to shore. The rest of the season’s deaths—sorry everyone who was predicting one of the Di Grasso men was a goner—are basically the gays who were part of the plan to kill Tanya, including Quentin (Tom Hollander), Didier (Bruno Gouery), and her hook-up from last week Niccolo (Stefano Gianino). Hugo (Paolo Camilli) escapes by diving into the water and swimming to shore.

Your mileage will likely vary about The White Lotus’s decision to bring back Tanya (its only returning season 1 character) to not only kill her off but to silo her in a plot that had so little to do with the rest of the action back at the resort. (I’m still so mad that Tanya essentially never interacted with the Sullivan/Spillar quartet.) But Coolidge gets several of the season’s best lines—prepare yourself for the inevitable memes!—and ultimately goes out as the result of a freak stupid accident rather than getting murdered by a man.

Was Quentin Plotting to Kill Tanya?

Yes, although the specifics of his plan are never fully spelled out. (To be fair, they probably don’t really need to be.) We know that Quentin is broke and needs money, although he’s told his “nephew” Jack (Leo Woodall) that he’s expecting to come into some any day now. He apparently has a lengthy history with Tanya’s husband Greg (Jon Gries), whose prenuptial agreement means he won’t get any money if the pair divorce, but who stands to inherit it all if she dies.

With some help from Portia (Haley Lu Richardson)—who’s having her own problems trying to figure out the reasons for Jack’s (Leo Woodall) extremely suss behavior after he steals her phone and refuses to take her back to the group—Tanya figures out that Greg and Quentin have been plotting to stage her murder. Greg has conveniently left Italy. Jack’s been assigned to keep Portia far from her boss, and mobster adjacent hottie Niccolo has been tapped to kill Tanya en route back to Taormina. But before he can do so, Tanya steals Niccolo’s black bag and barricades herself in a bedroom. Inside it, she finds rope, duct tape, and a gun, confirming the murder plot and arming Tanya for her Final Girl-style kill spree.

After shooting him in the back, Tanya tries to get Quentin to reveal if Greg is cheating on her—a questionable choice of interrogation tacks given, well, literally everything else it appears her husband has been plotting and the extent of whose involvement we still don’t know—but he says nothing before he dies.

Did Harper and Cameron Have Sex?

No. At least, not according to Harper (Aubrey Plaza). She tells her husband Ethan (Will Sharpe) that yes, Cameron (Theo James) came on to her and, yes, she accepted his suggestion that they go upstairs together. But she insists that all they did was a kiss, and though it doesn’t appear that Ethan fully believes her, she sticks to her story, despite the fact that there are some gaps of unaccounted time she never fully explains.

How About Daphne and Ethan? Did They Hook Up?

What exactly happened between Ethan and Cameron’s wife Daphne in the season 2 finale is also left for viewers to decide. After his fistfight with his supposed long time best friend, Ethan fills Daphne in on his suspicions about the idea that something is going on between their spouses. Despite a brief look of devastation (which, to be fair, trying to bang your BFF’s wife is pretty low, even for her repeatedly philandering husband), Daphne’s surprisingly calm about the whole situation.

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“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” she tells Ethan, reminding him that you can never really know anyone, even sometimes yourself, and that you just have to find a way not to feel like a victim in your own life. By way of changing the subject, she gestures to a beautiful nearby inlet called Isola Bella and says she wanted to make sure she saw it before they left. She invites Ethan to come with her. The two say nothing on their walk across the beach, but the pair’s extended intense eye contact and the dramatic music underscoring their stroll certainly imply that something major is about to happen. (And whatever does happen seems to play a key role in giving Ethan his sexual mojo back with his wife. Maybe Daphne’s right—some secrets are a little bit sexy.)

Portia Escapes Jack

Though The White Lotus finale confirms that Jack is a key player in Quentin’s plot to kill Tanya, we never quite find out the extent of his “assignment” with Portia. Yes, he was clearly supposed to keep her busy and out of the way—he steals her phone, brazenly lies about it, and repeatedly delays their return to Taormina—but he also seemed to genuinely like her, which makes his decision to let her go feel extra murky. Was he supposed to kill her on the way back to the resort? Would she also have been marked for death by Niccolo once she got there? We’ll never know.

Instead, while Jack refuses to confirm any of Portia’s suspicions he at least sets her free, dropping her off near the airport in Catania and advising her to skip looking for her (now-dead) boss and just get on her flight out of Siciliy as soon as possible. He warns her that she doesn’t want to mess with these powerful people and drops her missing phone out the window as he drives away. How precisely Portia is meant to leave Italy when her passport and all her luggage is presumably either back at the White Lotus or in Quentin’s villa I’m not sure, but at least she lives to buy more indescribable Gen Z fashion another day.

Lucia and Mia Embrace New and Brighter Futures

The most iconic duo of The White Lotus season 2, however, is hands down Sicilian sex workers Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò). After a first season that saw locals and service workers repeatedly forced to suffer at the hands of the White Lotus’s uber-rich guests, it’s wildly satisfying to see the non-elites notch some significant wins this time around. After all, Lucia’s plans to scam the Di Grassos weren’t exactly well-hidden, and Mia’s been forthright about her true desire to be a musician since the season premiere. And by end of the finale, both women have gotten almost everything they could have possibly wanted, and both their lives are on new and improved trajectories.

Lucia not only finally manages to get paid by Cameron (at the last possible moment!), she also tricks Albie (Adam DiMarco) into giving her 50,000 Euros. Ostensibly, this money is meant to help her get away from the abusive and dangerous pimp that seemingly chased her and the Di Grasso family through the countryside in the season’s penultimate episode, but that shadowy figure never actually existed and there was never any real threat to Lucia’s life or safety. (It turns out that the supposed pimp was actually just a friend.) Albie, surprisingly, seems to take being conned and abandoned in stride, probably because it’s never entirely clear how likely he actually thought the plan for Lucia to visit him in Los Angeles truly was. (The real lesson here is that his family is rich enough that losing 50 large is little more than embarrassing vacation memory, so everyone wins!)

As for Mia, she is officially given the piano gig at the White Lotus thanks to her new bond with hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciator). While it’s not directly stated that her job prospects improved thanks to their hook-up, it’s hard not to assume that their newfound friends with benefits played some role. But, Mia at least seems to genuinely like Valentina and promises that she and Lucia will take her out to clubs and help her meet women.

Portia and Albie Reconnect at the Airport

Much like season 1, The White Lotus’s second installment ends with everyone back at the airport, ready to head home. Both the Sullivans and the Spillars look content at their gate despite their possible partner swapping, and all three Di Grasso men prove the apparent strength of their collective gene pool by blatantly oogling a hot girl together. (Siiiigh.)

While waiting to board their flights, Albie runs into Portia again. The pair reconnect over their separate disastrous vacation romances—he admits that Lucia conned him and Portia says that Jack was deranged and confirms her trip to Palermo with him wasn’t exactly great. Albie also reports that several dead bodies turned up at the resort though he admits he doesn’t know who any of them were. (Portia’s expression, at least, says she knows she’s not waiting for Tanya anymore.) But despite their various personal setbacks, the two swap numbers, implying that even a dead boss and a lost 50,000 euros can’t stop young love.

Lacy Baugher

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The White Lotus Season 2 Finale: Here’s Who Dies

Spoilers for the season finale of The White Lotus to follow.

After seven weeks of speculation, theme song dance parties, and close examination of one suspiciously placed photograph of cowboys, The White Lotus has revealed who dies at the end of what was supposed to be a relaxing week’s vacation.

The body count began on Quentin’s yacht, where Tanya ( Jennifer Coolidge ) sussed out what viewers had suspected: those gays, as she told the boat captain, were trying to kill her. Niccolo‘s black bag turned out to be exactly as suspicious as Tanya believed it to be, and she pulled out the gun to tearfully shoot Quentin ( Tom Hollander ) and his friends (and still made time to demand, unsuccessfully, that Quentin tell her if Greg was having an affair).

But it turned out to be Tanya who was the body floating in the water all along. Attempting to make her escape overboard on the dinghy parked next to the yacht, she instead hit her head on the railing, drowning and presumably allowing her absent husband Greg ( Jon Giries ) to get away with taking her money after all. But at least she stopped some would-be murderers in the process.

In the “Unpacking Episode 7” segment following the episode, series creator Mike White admits he didn’t want to kill Tanya but “she’s such a diva, larger-than-life female archetype, it just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story.” And he suggested that Greg’s part of the story might not be done— “it feels like there’s got to be somebody who’s going to track it down to Greg. But maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens.”

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The season ends, just as the first one did, with all the major players in the airport and on their way home. The rich and privileged are, once again, escaping with all their privileges intact, and the spirit of Tanya lives on in Portia ( Haley Lu Richardson ), who escaped whatever role was intended for her in the murder plot and wears a very Tanya-worthy head scarf for her flight home. Reuniting with Albie at the airport, embarking on what might not be the best relationship for either of them, feels like its own tribute to Tanya, too.

White has been frank that the dead body conspicuously placed at the beginning of each White Lotus season is a tool for luring in audiences. “When that first season became such a water cooler show [that] people were talking about, I was like, had I only known if I'd put a dead body at the beginning of Enlightened , maybe people would've watched Enlightened ," he told NPR . "You realize these kinds of hooks do actually get viewers."

But the magic of The White Lotus is that the wild theories about bloody endings (Cameron and Ethan jet ski accident? Harper murder rampage?) don’t get in the way of the character drama that’s actually at the heart of the show. In a season devoted to examining the interplay of sex and power, virtually every character has been putting themselves in dangerous situations in the name of love, lust, jealousy, or some combination of all of the above. But even though The White Lotus isn’t about death, it was about Jennifer Coolidge—and with a third season officially coming , it’s time to start reimagining exactly what that might look like.

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Explaining the "Derpy" Death in The White Lotus Season 2 Finale

[Redacted] has checked out of The White Lotus for the last time.

jennifer coolidge as tanya sits on bench with suitcases around her

Major spoilers ahead.

The Season 2 finale of The White Lotus saw the demise of a fan-favorite character—but not before she got her hands dirty, too.

Yes, the body we see floating in the Ionian Sea in Episode 1 is indeed that of one air-headed heiress, Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge). In Episode 7, "Arrivederci," Tanya and her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), put together the puzzle pieces of an assassination plot orchestrated by her husband, Greg (Jon Gries). Under the terms of their prenup, Greg would receive zilch in the case of divorcing Tanya; but, if she dies, it's suggested that Greg would be her beneficiary. The flock of charming gay European men, marshaled by Quentin (Tom Hollander), turn out to be in cahoots with Greg and the Italian mafia to kill Tanya.

It's why Greg insisted that they holiday in Sicily, and it's also why he left the vacation early in order to give himself an alibi. And Quentin's Episode 5 confession of falling in love with a heterosexual cowboy who he would "have done anything for" is seemingly confirmed to actually be Greg, due to Tanya's discovery of a photograph of the two as young men donning cowboy hats in Quentin's palazzo in the last episode.

Portia—who is being held hostage by Jack (Leo Woodall), Quentin's not-so-nephew/lover—is helpless to shepherd Tanya to safety. Meanwhile, the heiress is stranded in the middle of the ocean, having embarked for one last ride back to Taormina via Quentin's yacht.

When the handsome, mafia-involved man, Niccoló (Stefano Gianino), who Quentin set her up with the night before, suddenly arrives via dinghy and armed with a mysterious black bag, Tanya's panic sets in. She begs the old, non-English-speaking captain to drive her to shore to no avail; she attempts to call for help but accidentally drops her phone in the ocean; she prolongs dinner by asking for another glass of white wine.

Finally, her conspirators can stand no more procrastination and implore her to "return" to the hotel by going on a moonlit boat ride alone with Niccoló. Instead, she excuses herself to use the bathroom and, along the way, steals Niccoló's black bag, the contents of which finally confirm her worst fears: rope, duct tape, a gun. In a performance that will surely earn Coolidge another Emmy nod, Tanya quietly sobs to herself as she takes the gun, closes her eyes, and begins to shoot. She kills nearly all of her captors on board, save for one lucky Frenchman who dives off the boat screaming and swimming to shore.

Apprehensively approaching Quentin as he bloodily gasped his last breaths, Tanya can't help herself. "Is Greg having an affair?" she desperately asks him.

With a gaggle of corpses behind her, Tanya now set her sights on escaping the yacht ride from hell. Seizing on the dinghy that Niccoló arrived in, she ignores the staircase right next to her and, extraordinarily, decides to instead jump from the second yacht's second level (while still wearing heels!). "You've got this," she tragically, pathetically cries to herself right before she leaps overboard, hits her head on the side of the dinghy, and sinks into the abyss.

Creator Mike White explains Tanya's ending in a post-credits interview. "I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic," he says. "It felt like she needed to give her best fight back and that she, in a way, had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her. So it just made me laugh to think she would like take out all of these cabal of killers, and that after she successfully does that, then she just dies this derpy death. And I just felt like, that's just so Tanya."

As for Portia, Jack unceremoniously drops her off blocks away from an airport, warning her to "get the fuck out of Sicily" and to not challenge the "powerful" people in charge of getting rid of Tanya. Portia heeds his advice.

While waiting to board her flight, Portia bumps into Albie DiGrasso (Adam DiMarco), the Stanford grad she blew off earlier in the season. Through him, she learns of Tanya's fate: "Did you hear one of the guests drowned at the hotel?" "Do you know who?" "No, it was crazy. They found a bunch of dead bodies on a yacht, too."

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

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

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Lucia and Mia dressed in colorful outfits and smiling out in the streets

Lucia and Mia really turned things around for themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

Jennifer Coolidge as Tanya sitting on a bench in a fancy room

Poor rich Tanya.

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

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

Aubrey Plaza and Will Sharpe as Harper and Ethan, sitting in each other's arms in an airport with an erupting volcano in the background

Harper and Ethan have fully accepted one another.

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

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

Daphne wearing a pink playshirt leading Ethan down a beach path toward an island

The mysterious leading the mysterious.

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

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Editor's note: The below contains major spoilers for The White Lotus Season 2.

As we all take a collective sigh now that the end of The White Lotus Season 2 is officially here, we're also taking a little time to reflect on those that made it out of Sicily alive — as well as say "arrivederci" to those who weren't as fortunate and saw their Italian dream end with an untimely death.

Lived: Ethan and Harper Spiller

There was a time early on the finale when it looked like Ethan's ( Will Sharpe ) jealousy might get the better of him and spell an untimely end for his wife, Harper ( Aubrey Plaza ) who he was positive had cheated on him with Cameron Sullivan ( Theo James ). He was nearing a breaking point and suffering from tortuous hallucinations of the two in the throes of passionate amore. She denies it, but he's never quite sold by her story that the two just shared a kiss. Ethan later had his own brush with death after Cameron got the upper hand on him as the two scuffled out in the Ionian Sea. Fortunately a bystander was there to separate the two, or Ethan might have ended up on the wrong side of this list.

Died: Quentin

It was the end of the line for the smooth-talking, cocktail-sipping British ex-pat from England ( Tom Hollander ) in the finale. Whatever his game was with Tanya McQuoid-Hunt ( Jennifer Coolidge ) and her assistant Portia ( Haley Lu Richardson ), the jig was up when a terrified and out-of her-mind Tanya emerged from a cabin below deck with the pistol that she found in Nicolo's murder bag. The boozy charmer from Palermo was caught up in the hail of gunfire before we could find out if he was really in cahoots with Tanya's husband Greg ( Jon Gries ) to abduct and kill Tanya so he could "decorate his house" as she put it. He appeared to be in complete control of the situation — until he wasn't. No more opera visits and Palazzo soirées for the mercurial man from Palermo.

Related : The Best Characters From 'The White Lotus' Season 2

Lived: Cameron and Daphne Sullivan

Superficial tech entrepreneur Cameron ( Theo James) and his wife Daphne ( Meghann Fahy ) made it off the island safely. Though it appeared that Cameron's advances and indiscretion with Harper might have cost him his life in his brawl with Ethan, he survived. Despite a consensus among the viewing audience that he was the most deserving of death, Cameron lives on to no doubt continue to cheat on his wife Daphne whenever he gets the chance. Meanwhile, Daphne remains content with compartmentalizing her pain and embarrassment as long as she gets to have a little tryst of her own here and there as well.

Died: Niccolo

Tanya's mafioso companion and full monty enthusiast, Niccolo ( Stefano Gianino ), came aboard Quentin's yacht equipped with a murder bag that was intended for her, but ironically and perhaps karmically, it proved to be the source of his own demise. After grabbing the bag and taking the steel-plated pistol from within it, Tanya shot Niccolo several times with it as he tried to force his way into the cabin where she was having her meltdown. Although we never really got to know the rakish Italian ringer very well, it's probably safe to say that it was a good riddance. Live by the sword, die by the word, right?

Lived: The Di Grasso Men

Bert ( F. Murray Abraham) , Dominic ( Michael Imperioli ), and Albie DiGrasso ( Adam DiMarco ) all made their way to the plane bound for the United States together safely. While none of them ever really appeared to be in much trouble as far as coming close to death, things could have gone a lot differently if they had not paid Lucia and her accomplices that played them like a fiddle to the tune of 50,000 Euros. A tough life lesson learned by the innocent, but self-righteous Albie. Hopefully, he continues to support his father in making amends with his mother.

Died: Tanya McQuoid-Hunt

Alas, it is with great sorrow that we bid goodbye to fan favorite and the only holdover from Season 1 (we're not counting that scumbag, Greg): Tanya. All she wanted was to have an Italian dream vacation and be like Monica Vitti. What she got was swindled by Quentin (and possibly her own husband) in what was truly the most tragic story arc of Season 2.

Tanya's drowning answered the question we had been asking all season of who was found floating in the Ionian Sea at the beginning of Episode 1. We got to enjoy her quirks, her romantic romps, and her wide-eyed naïveté before her luck finally ran out, and she plummeted to her death trying to escape Quentin's yacht. We will miss her, but it was a good run for two consecutive seasons on the show.

Lived: Portia and Jack

It was quite the journey for Portia during her week at The White Lotus. After arriving as a frazzled and frustrated assistant to Tanya, she had romances with both Albie and Jack ( Leo Woodall ) that would ultimately expand her horizons and allow her to take stock of her own existence. And though Jack proved too good to be true, she came away from her adventures with a new appreciation for life and a possible relationship with Albie as the two reconnected at the airport on the way home. Speaking of Jack, the wayward "nephew" to Quentin showed that in the end, there was some goodness in an otherwise wounded and lost young man as he let Portia leave Sicily instead of doing something far worse to her.

Lived: Lucia and Mia

The two con artists ( Simona Tabasco and Beatrice Granno ) came up big in the end after playing almost all the male White Lotus tourists like a fiddle. In fact, Mia came out of it with a new job as her sexual dalliance with resort manager Valentina ( Sabrina Impacciatore ) helped her land the gig as the piano-playing muse at The White Lotus. While they started out as what appeared to be two ambitious escorts, they proved to be the ones holding all the cards by the end of the season. Speaking of Mia's new gig behind the piano, Giuseppe also lived — but wasn't too happy about being fired and replaced by a young girl who got the better of him and stole his job.

The first two seasons of The White Lotus are now available to stream on HBO Max.

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The White Lotus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

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

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

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

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

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

A group of rich people on a veranda overlooking the ocean

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

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

The rest of them not so much.

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

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

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

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

A woman and a man have a serious talk on the beach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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White Lotus Fans Are Convinced That Greg Was on the Boat

You might want to sit down for this take on the finale.

preview for White Lotus Season 2 - Official Trailer (Sky)

On Sunday night, HBO released the explosive finale of The White Lotus . By now you probably heard that Tanya McQuoid, the ditzy heiress played by Jennifer Coolidge, didn’t survive. In a devastating (... but also kind of funny) series of events, Tanya is seemingly set up by her husband Greg. His suspected lover, Quentin, kidnaps Tanya and traps her on a yacht. Before the credits roll, she manages to kill her captors—but accidentally kills herself while trying to escape.

Despite the absurdity of it all, it seemed like a fairly cut and dry scene. Tanya finds a gun and uses it to defend herself. Then, in an adrenaline-fueled exit, she jumps off the yacht, knocks herself out on a pole, and drowns. While some viewers, like myself, processed her untimely demise, others were busy asking questions—like, where the hell was Greg during all of this? Was he hiding somewhere on the yacht?!

Well, Reddit user Large-Outside-9511 seems to think so. While watching the show, they spotted Greg’s name pop up on screen, which means he could have been one of the many voices yelling at Tanya before she began shooting. Check it out:

The closed captioning said Greg yells, “Tanya,” while she is locked in the room on the yacht. Then we heard people running upstairs and a door slamming at one point. Hugo was hiding behind the couch and the other two were shot. The captain was on the top of the boat so he was one of the footsteps. I’m thinking Greg was on the boat waiting for Tanya to be taken back to the hotel so he could stay the night on the boat and celebrate with Quentin while his wife floats away to her demise.

From there, the user suspect Greg ditched the boat and swam his sorry ass to safety.

He would have had enough time to escape to shore before the morning when Tanya’s body was discovered...Absolutely furious Greg won in this situation. I’m thinking next season he will be at the next White Lotus looking for his next con but gets caught.

As wild as it sounds, I'm on board with this is a theory. First of all, the Reddit fan was right— Greg’s name does appear in the closed captions. It’s quick, sure, but maybe we have a clue for Season Three. Speaking of, if the next chapter of The White Lotus is anything like this one, we can expect one returning character. In Season Two, it was Tanya, but now that she’s dead, Greg could be the throughline for round three. After all, Greg's story is the only one without a neat little bow—and even if he did manage to escape, he has quite the mess to clean up.

Not to mention: series creator Mike White teased that Season Three will tackle death and eastern religion. What if Greg travels to a new location to "grieve” Tanya's demise. In that case, I would be thrilled to see what karma has in store at the next White Lotus resort.

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5 White Lotus Filming Locations You Can Visit in Sicily

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

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Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) and Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) chat with White Lotus concierge Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore).

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

Courtesy of HBO

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

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

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

A heated encounter among three character at San Domenico Palace in "The White Lotus."

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

Photo by Fabio Lovino/HBO

1. San Domenico Palace

Location: Taormina

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

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

Dominic (Michael Imperioli) walks on Cefalù Beach, a "White Lotus" filming location.

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

2. Cefalù Beach

Location: Cefalù

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

Quentin (Tom Hollander) and some of his crew dine at Villa Elena in "The White Lotus."

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

Photo courtesy of Fabio Lovino/HBO

3. Villa Elena

Location: Camastra

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

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

Dominic and Bert outside of the Castello degli Schiavi.

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

4. Castello degli Schiavi

Location : Fiumefreddo

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

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

Harper and Daphne in Villa Tasca on "The White Lotus."

Villa Tasca is available to rent on Airbnb.

5. Villa Tasca

Location: Palermo

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

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

The spring regatta is one of many festivals to enjoy in the paradise that is the British Virgin Islands.

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‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Has Jake Lacy Longing To Return To The Series: “I Love It. I Would Love To Go Back.”

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Dear writer/director/producer/actor/ Survivor star Mike White, I’m here on behalf of Jake Lacy, the man who played “entitled baby” Shane Patton in The White Lotus Season 1.

Since your Emmy-winning series premiered in July 2021, a critically-acclaimed Season 2 aired, with a third season — set in Thailand — in the works. Numerous accolades, Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes ratings, and star-studded casts prove that you’re killing it all on your own, without any advice from me. But should you ever find yourself in need of another character callback like Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid (RIP), I urge you to consider bringing Mr. Lacy back for many reasons — one of which is simply that he’s dying to return.

“I love it. I would love to go back,” Lacy told Decider in conversation at the Television Critics Association’s Winter 2024 Tour . Lacy was in attendance to promote his upcoming limited series Apples Never Fall on Peacock, but following a panel with showrunner Melanie Marnich and stars Annette Bening and Alison Brie, he took a moment to update Decider on his White Lotus FOMO.

“It would be like if you went to the greatest sleepover camp ever and then they were like, ‘We’re gonna keep the camp open, but you don’t get to go anymore.’ And you’re like, ‘WHAT?’ Someone else is sleeping in my bunk?!’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, and they’re having the time of their lives,'” Lacy explained.

When Decider spoke to the 39-year-old actor over Zoom in November 2022 , Lacy admittedly hadn’t watched The White Lotus Season 2 yet, but he had a good excuse. “It was due to come out and I told my wife, ‘I’m gonna watch it on a flight,’ and she’s like, ‘DON’T! We’ll watch it together!’ And I was like, ‘Alright, alright, alright,'” he explained. “Then I got home and she was like, ‘We should probably let a couple build up cause once we see one we’re gonna want to see more,’ and I was like, ‘How long am I gonna wait to watch this?!'”

More than a year later, Lacy still hasn’t caught up on the HBO drama, and as punishment, the big Season 2 death was spoiled for him. “I know our dear dear friend Jen Coolidge goes down,” Lacy chuckled. “I do know that she’s probably not coming back for Season 3.”

When Decider suggested that Coolidge could return if White decides Tanya has a twin, Lacy suggested, “We could do a prequel, you know?” ( The creator has said a prequel is a possibility , so there’s hope that a de-aged Shane could return to the series!)

“I have no ill will toward the second season, or the third, which I’m thrilled for,” Lacy clarified. “But there is something in me that’s jealous. I want to go back. I want to be there. I loved making it.”

Lacy’s White Lotus character Shane, a pretentious, polo-wearing prick who let a minor hotel suite mixup torpedo his honeymoon, gave the actor yet another opportunity to challenge himself on-screen and stray from his Nice Guy roots . For that, and for Mike White, Lacy is eternally grateful.

“I’ll do anything for Mike,” Lacy told Decider in our 2022 Zoom call. “Mike could just say, ‘Could you pick up my groceries? Instacart will be here.’ And I’d be like, ‘I’m on it man. Love you. Got it. For sure.'”

“I will forever be indebted to a number of people in this business, but certainly Mike White and the casting team who put us all together. Because I had done other projects along the way where I was not like, kind of a basic, nice boyfriend. But those projects never really hit, or people didn’t watch for whatever reason,” he continued. “I totally get why I’m held — if I’m lucky enough to say that — as like a good dude. But with White Lotus , Mike created this character that really thinks he’s a good dude and actually is an entitled baby. It is outrageous. It was such a gift.”

As for The White Lotus Season 3, Variety reported that Natasha Rothwell — who played Belinda in Season 1 — will return alongside other confirmed stars including Parker Posey, Leslie Bibb, Dom Hetrakul, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Tayme Thapthimthong, Lalisa Manobal, and Carrie Coon.

Though The White Lotus Season 2 star Meghann Fahy said her character Daphne won’t appear in Season 3, she did hint at a possible return in the future , which could include Lacy.

In an interview with Deadline earlier this year, Fahy shared White’s idea for an episode that focuses on Daphne, her husband Cameron Sullivan (Theo James), and the Pattons, played by Lacy and Alexandra Daddario. “He did once say that he’d like to do an episode with Theo, me and the couple from the first season — Alex and Jake,” she revealed. “The four of us on a boat. Just one episode of that.”

While Lacy may be out of luck for a Season 3 return, we’re still hopeful that Shane will live to be insufferable at another White Lotus resort one day.

Mike White, sir, if you’re still with us, please consider make Jake Lacy’s dream come true.

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IMAGES

‘The White Lotus’ season 2: Everything we know so far
White Lotus Season 2 Footage Welcomes New Guests to Sicily
Where was The White Lotus season 2 filmed? Real-life hotel explored
The White Lotus Season 2 Cast and Character Guide
The White Lotus Season 2’s Big Death Was Worse Than We Expected
HBO Releases First Footage From The White Lotus Season 2

COMMENTS

White Lotus Season 2 Ending: How Mike White Fooled Us
The White Lotus Season 2 Was About Love as Delusion. In the End, It Fooled Viewers Too ... Which would've made it tough for Quentin to get Tanya alone on a yacht with a bag containing half the ...
'White Lotus' Ending: Jennifer Coolidge on Tanya's Death, Gay Memes
Rest in peace, Tanya McQuoid. While we mourn the crown jewel of "The White Lotus" — who in the Season 2 finale takes out a few "high-end gays," falls off a yacht, knocks her head on a ...
The White Lotus's explosive season finale, explained
And in Sunday's finale, we got our answer. Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) met her watery demise in the season finale, as did practically a full yacht's worth of conspiring gay men. As episode six ...
'The White Lotus' Season 2 Finale: How It Ended and Who Died
RELATED VIDEO: Stars at The White Lotus Season 2 Premiere Back on the yacht, Tanya saw Niccolò fishing around in a mysterious bag during dinner and was antsier than ever not to hop into the ...
'The White Lotus' Finale: Season 2 Ending Answers Who Died
December 11, 2022 7:57pm. Daphne (Meghann Fahy) swims upon a dead body in the premiere of 'The White Lotus' season 2 Courtesy of HBO. [This story contains major spoilers to the season two finale ...
The White Lotus Season 2 Finale Death Explained by Mike White
According to creator and showrunner Mike White, the seed for Tanya's death was actually planted in the Season 1 finale of the HBO series. In the final episode of Season 2, Tanya finally realizes ...
'The White Lotus' Season 2 Ending, Explained
By Quinci LeGardye. published 12 December 2022. in News. The second season of the HBO drama The White Lotus has ended, the surviving characters have boarded their planes, and the viewers are left ...
The White Lotus Season 2 Ending Explained: Who Died And What Happened
Here's who lives, who dies, and who leaves Italy changed forever in The White Lotus season 2 finale. The following contains major spoilers for The White Lotus season 2. Vacation is officially over ...
'The White Lotus' Season 2 finale recap: Who died? Who cheated?
The Season 2 finale of "The White Lotus" answered some questions, but raised a whole lot more. ... yacht while trying to escape what she believed was a murder-for-hire plot and left a trio of dead ...
The White Lotus season 2 ending explained: Who dies in Sicily?
Sabrina Impacciatore as Valentina in The White Lotus season 2. HBO. In a tragic but darkly comical turn of events, the body's identity that washes up on the Sicilian coast is Tanya McQuoid-Hunt ...
The White Lotus Season 2 Finale: Here's Who Dies
December 11, 2022. Spoilers for the season finale of The White Lotus to follow. After seven weeks of speculation, theme song dance parties, and close examination of one suspiciously placed ...
'The White Lotus' Season 2 Finale Ending Explained: Who Died?
A killer ending. The White Lotus season 2 finale offered plenty of answers to some of the fans' biggest questions. After growing suspicious of Quentin (Tom Hollander), Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge ...
The White Lotus Season 2 Finale Ending Explained: Who Dies?
Major spoilers ahead. The Season 2 finale of The White Lotus saw the demise of a fan-favorite character—but not before she got her hands dirty, too. Yes, the body we see floating in the Ionian ...
'The White Lotus' Season 2 Ending Explained: We All Got Played
Finally, in a nice 180-degree flip, season 2 sees no deaths and an optimistic outcome for the staff of the White Lotus, Sicily. Unlike season 1, this time it's the underprivileged who take ...
Who Lives and Who Dies in 'The White Lotus' Season 2 Finale?
Lived: Cameron and Daphne Sullivan. Superficial tech entrepreneur Cameron (Theo James) and his wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy) made it off the island safely. Though it appeared that Cameron's advances ...
'The White Lotus' Season 2 finale: Biggest shocks, missteps
The season that launched a thousand theories concluded Sunday night with "Arriverderci," as "White Lotus" creator Mike White and company bade farewell to Sicily in a super-sized 77-minute ...
White Lotus Fans Are Convinced That Greg Was on the Boat
The closed captioning said Greg yells, "Tanya," while she is locked in the room on the yacht. Then we heard people running upstairs and a door slamming at one point. Hugo was hiding behind the ...
The White Lotus season 2
The second season of The White Lotus, an American satirical comedy-drama anthology television series created, written, and directed by Mike White, premiered on HBO on October 30, 2022. The season was greenlit in on August 10, 2021, filmed in Sicily in early 2022, and features an ensemble cast of F. Murray Abraham, Jennifer Coolidge, [a] Adam DiMarco, Meghann Fahy, Beatrice Grannò, Jon Gries ...
5 Locations From White Lotus Season 2 You Can Visit IRL
This season, San Domenico Palace stood in to be the Italian White Lotus. 1. San Domenico Palace. Location: Taormina. The hotel that served as this season's sumptuous White Lotus digs was actually the San Domenico Palace, a Four Seasons Hotel (the first season was also filmed at a Four Seasons, the Resort Maui at Wailea).
Where was The White Lotus season 2 filmed? All filming ...
The White Lotus season 2 is mostly set in Sicily, but some indoor scenes, like hotel room scenes, were shot in a studio near Rome. In this way, the production could control certain environments ...
'The White Lotus' Season 3 Has Jake Lacy Longing To ...
Though The White Lotus Season 2 star Meghann Fahy said her character Daphne won't appear in Season 3, she did hint at a possible return in the future, which could include Lacy.