The finale of season 3 of The White Lotus is Sunday, April 6, and there are many fan predictions for what may transpire. Season 3 of The White Lotus has sent fans through a whirlwind on a gorgeous and stressful Thai adventure. From Parker Posey‘s perfect North Carolina, old money accent to Jason Isaacs‘ junk slipping out of his White Lotus bathrobe, this season has been full of humorous and cringeworthy moments. This season also saw Patrick Schwarzenegger‘s debut as the preppy, pretentious prick of a character named Saxon, the oldest Ratliff brother, who somehow now seems like the victim everyone’s feeling sorry for as the season comes to a close.
This season has kept its audience on their toes and sparked some interesting conversations such as those surrounding the emptiness that wealthy people might experience when solely basing their worth off of how much they’re worth, and of course, the fun TikTok trend of Carolinian mothers recreating Posey’s accent that she so carefully curated for her character, Victoria Ratliff.
Set at the White Lotus resort in Thailand, this season follows a wealthy North Carolina family, the Ratliffs, a middle-aged trio of women who are life-long friends on a girls trip, two couples with a large age gap in their relationships, and a White Lotus employee visiting this location to learn the art of massage and meditation from her Thai colleagues.
With a similar format to seasons one and two, season 3 unfolds as the stories of these different White Lotus guests become intertwined. Two actors returned from season 2, both Natasha Rothwell, who plays Belinda, a spa manager from the White Lotus resort in Hawaii, and Jon Gries, who plays Greg Hunt and is suspiciously going by “Gary” this season, which further plays into the mystery of what may ensue. In the first episode of the current season, a snippet of the finale is revealed: a shootout at the White Lotus, but it is not apparent who is involved or harmed. Then the remainder of the first episode and this season so far have taken the audience back in time through the events leading up to this pinnacle shooting.
Throughout this season, the chaotic Ratliff family struggles; first to give up their cell phones as per resort policy, and to give in to the meditative and healing atmosphere of the White Lotus. Beyond their put-together haughty appearances, they also struggle in their own ways.
The daughter, Piper Ratliff, reveals her secret that they are not in Thailand for her to work on her thesis as she had told them, but actually so she can see the temple and meet the Buddhist monks she hopes to live abroad with and learn from for a year. The father, Timothy Ratliff, is wrapped up in fraud or some sort of financial turmoil back at home that surfaces, and he starts popping his wife’s Lorazepam pills. His wife, Victoria Ratliff, remains unbothered throughout the season, other than when she makes her judgmental comments on everyone else’s lifestyles. Their two sons, Lochlan and Saxon, explore the island and the two women they hope to get with and eventually befriend while venturing out into the party scene.
The three women on a girls’ trip experience the nightlife that Thailand has to offer and begin to let loose when the White Lotus employee, Valentin, shows them around and introduces them to his friends from Russia, which furthers some of the tensions between this lifelong group of friends.
As the season goes on, Lochlan, the younger Ratliff brother, has questionable desires towards his siblings, which begin to surface and leave Saxon feeling uncomfortable and isolated. Their father’s guilt and mental health worsen as he realizes how much trouble he’s in back home. He contemplates suicide and grapples with the idea of ending it all for his wife and son, too, to save them from embarrassment and a life removed from the luxuries they’re so accustomed to when he finds a gun sitting in the security office.
The gun was purchased by White Lotus security midway through the season after a burglary at the White Lotus, in which nobody was harmed, except for Gaitok, the loyal and kind security guard, who was hit by the robbers who took the jewelry from one of the shops. After the burglary, Gaitok was reprimanded and told to toughen up, but got to keep his security post which is great because his security role at The White Lotus allows him to be close to his crush, Mook.
The gorgeous and sweet resort employee, Mook, is played by BlackPink‘s Lalisa “Lisa” Manobol, and she has White Lotus fans swooning over her beautiful eyes and charming smile. Gaitok is smitten with her, but whether she’s playing hard to get or hasn’t decided how she feels in return is unclear throughout the season. Yet, she finds time to get away to chat with Gaitok, her favorite colleague, and even invites him to watch her dance one evening, as a part of the evening entertainment at the resort.
This very flirtatious behavior has led some fans to suspect that Mook may not be as innocent as she seems. Certain fans have indicated that Mook may have something to do with the burglary or the eventual shooting that the season is leading up to reveal. These fans argue that Mook is intentionally distracting Gaitok, as she is always going by the entrance gate to talk to him. These same arguments note that when Gaitok went to watch Mook dance, it was at that moment Timothy Ratliff stole the gun from the security office, linking her to two different instances.
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Mook and Gaitok’s relationship may seem a bit conspicuous, but Mook’s motives for being involved in a shootout remain unclear. There are many different likely suspects with varying motives, such as Greg “Gary” Hunt, the supposed ‘widower,’ who left his wife back in season 2, as fans are led to believe he may have killed her.
Timothy Ratliff, who took the gun and whose heightened emotions worsen each day, no longer has the gun as Gaitok was able to take it back while they weren’t at the resort in the most recent episode. Unless he somehow steals the gun again, it doesn’t seem like Timothy will be involved with the approaching shootout. Valentin, one of the other White Lotus employees, has now become extremely suspicious as the season closes because of his friends’ revealed involvement in the White Lotus burglary. Valentin doesn’t seem to have a motive that would evolve into this season finale fiasco, but perhaps his accomplices might have motives revealed in the final episode.
The only other potential suspect for a resort shootout was Rick, played by Walton Goggins. Rick is the middle-aged, miserable boyfriend of the young and fun free-spirit, Chelsea. He had met up with an old friend to obtain a gun during this season as he was seeking to avenge his father’s murder from many years ago when he was a child.
Upset about how his childhood played out due to the owners of the White Lotus and their dealings that led to the death of his father, Rick made it his mission to go to Bangkok and kill Jim Hollinger, the owner of the White Lotus. However, when he reached Jim, Rick realized that he was just a retired elderly man living peacefully in his home, and Rick couldn’t even harm him. Rick quickly fled with his friend and threw his gun in a trash bin in Bangkok, which now absolves him from being in the running for the potential shooter.
This upcoming episode will reveal what’s about to go down at the White Lotus that everyone’s been excitedly waiting for. With the most cringeworthy and bingeworthy moments out of any White Lotus season yet, season 3 has topped them all and might take the most victims.
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