Before The White Lotus season 3 episode 5 was released, showrunner Mike White had revealed that this season’s theme would focus on religion – but it’s only in this week’s episode that our guests are starting to have somewhat spiritual (if not rude) awakenings.
While there are no namastes here, episode 5’s ‘Full-Moon Party’ delivers the most lively and, at times, tense 60 minutes of the show’s latest season yet, with the titular party leaving many of the characters with actual hangovers to go alongside their existential ones following a ton of revelations – and I’m not just talking about those Ratliff brothers.
A lot of these revelations had been hinted at throughout the season so far, but episode 5 is arguably where the show’s latest installment really starts to up the ante. It’s also where I’ve found the underlying theme that ties The White Lotus’ third season together to be most explicit.
In HBO’s ‘Unpacking season 2: Episode 7’ video posted after The White Lotus season 2 finale was released, White divulged each season’s main underlying theme (confirming many fans’ theories about the anthology series tackling topics such as elitism and desire):
“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. “I think the third season would be maybe a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality. It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.”
Seeing as we’re over halfway through the latest season with only three more episodes to go, I’ve decided to pull on that thread to try and unravel some of the more overarching mysteries that are being played out in one of the best Max shows.
Spoilers follow for The White Lotus seasons 2 and 3.
Finding nirvana
The most obvious comment The White Lotus season 3 is making on Eastern spirituality is through the storyline of Piper Ratliff (played by Sarah Catherine Hook), who has persuaded her family to come on a holiday to Thailand under the pretense that she’s writing a thesis on Buddhism.
But it’s in episode 5 that Piper finally reveals to her parents her true intentions of wanting to move there to practice meditation, something that her mother, Victoria Ratliff (played by Parker Posey), responds to hilariously to by telling Piper she’s not from China and then proceeding to misname the country Taiwan.
I can’t help but feel that this whole exchange is calling out the ignorance of Victoria, as well as highlighting the shallowness of the elite wellbeing industry that uses spirituality more as a marketing ploy, rather than as a way of achieving inner peace, something Piper seems to be genuinely striving to do.
It’s a topic that spa manager Belinda Lindsey (played by returning cast member Natasha Rothwell) is also grappling with during her exchange program throughout the season, as she tries to learn new wellness techniques to take back to her job in Maui.
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Although, so far Belinda hasn’t had the most relaxing trip, especially when Tanya McQuoid’s (Jennifer Coolidge) widower Greg Hunt (Jon Gries) turns up. Belinda and Greg are, respectively, the best representations of good and bad in the show, making them essential for the social commentary that White is hinting at.
Rothwell somewhat confirms this in a TikTok video interview (see above) with Altitude magazine, where she says about the show’s theme of spirituality that “light necessitates dark and dark necessitates light”, going on to clarify that “to understand your dark side is to appreciate your light”.
Because of these clues, I see both Belinda and Greg likely playing a pivotal role in the season’s finale, with many fans theorizing that Greg is the antagonist that will be brought to justice for Tanya’s death at the end of season 2 – although there’s still the matter of the mysterious death we saw at the beginning of season 3.
It’s a character arc that makes sense to me, as it will wrap up their continued storylines, while also drilling home the show’s overall commentary on the oversaturated wellbeing industry.
Indeed, Rothwell said it best in an interview with The Wall Street Journal where she clarified that “the wellness industrial complex needs us to be sick in order to continue… so what Mike shows is some really sick individuals, spiritually seeking something to fix it. And the gag is: You gotta fix yourself”.
The whole idea of self-improvement is shown in a completely different light when episode 5 cuts to Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins), who’s left his girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) at the resort while he travels to Bangkok to meet an old friend and ultimately track down the husband of Sritala Hollinger (Lek Patravadi) who he believes killed his father.
His old mate ends up being Frank (Sam Rockwell), an expat that shares a story about how he came to be sober when he doesn’t join Rick in having a whiskey. Many theories online agree that Frank’s speech, in which he does not hold back in sharing his own sexual journey through gender and identity, is more of a metaphor for desire in general, which makes a lot of sense in the context of the show’s wider theme.
It’s one of the sharpest monologues of the entire show and is delivered impeccably, making the whole scene an unforgettable moment. But surprisingly, this isn’t what most audiences were talking about after watching episode 5.
Instead, it was the Ratliff brother’s after-party with Chelsea and her new friend Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon), who’s Greg’s new girlfriend, that had everyone wincing after Lochlan and Saxon locked lips.
Considering that Saxon had been sharing life advice with his younger brother only moments earlier, in the course of which he said that most people “just want to be used”, it seems fitting that he would end up being the one to be exploited for the sake of two women’s entertainment.
This all leads to a tense final scene that sees the brother’s dad Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) in his hotel room contemplating suicide over his financial predicament due to a shady business deal. It’s here we see the father at rock bottom and without anywhere were else to turn, he starts to pray to God asking what to do.
Perhaps that’s partly due to the fact that he no longer has access to his phone, given that he ended up agreeing to the resort’s digital detox program after he started getting hounded by reporters about his shady business dealings back home; but those wellbeing exercises are only truly effective if you commit to them for the right reasons, as one of the staff workers Pam (Morgana O’Reilly) says earlier in the season.
“Everybody who goes to the White Lotus is searching,” O’Reilly told The Wall Street Journal in an interview earlier this month. “If you have a lot of money, you have more access to different treatments and ideas. But, of course, if you’re not healing something deeper, nothing’s going to work.”
