Gunfire is echoing around the meditation huts; bodies are floating in the reflecting ponds. Welcome back to The White Lotus, where every booking will soon have to come with a complementary body bag.
The third season of Mike White’s savagely funny, lavishly executed anthology — set across the various outposts of a luxury hotel brand — exchanges the old-world Sicilian decadence of the previous series for a new age Thai resort, but it begins, just as before, with a flash-forward glimpse of paradise being lost. The murder mystery element is still secondary to the emotional violence, however: back-stabbing, barbed comments and ruptured relationships that no amount of “karmic realignment therapy” can heal.
All this awaits the guests who arrive for a week of digital detoxing — or poolside boozing. Doing their share of the latter is a trio of forty-something women, who are determinedly not on a “midlife crisis trip”. What initially seems like a chance for old friends to catch up — paid for by TV star Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) — quickly turns into an opportunity to put each other down in subtle ways. “Everything you do is so hard,” divorcee Laurie (Carrie Coon) is told. She, in turn, later mocks Jaclyn’s “waxy” appearance with Kate (Leslie Bibb), whose new life as Trump-voting Texas housewife also becomes fodder for late-night gossiping.
While the three friends compete for the attention of a yoga instructor, bright-eyed Mancunian Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) struggles to get her own much older boyfriend Rick (Walton Goggins) to take notice of her. Perhaps the least relaxed man ever to wear a Hawaiian shirt, he is irritable and evasive, except during grudgingly attended therapy sessions with an on-site guru.
Across the breakfast terrace, Victoria Ratliff (Parker Posey filling the Jennifer Coolidge-shaped void) takes a more pharmaceutical approach. She has been dragged to this strange land by her Buddhism-practising daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), who’s eager to see the world beyond the country club. But that life may not be waiting for them when they get back. Unbeknown to the rest of the family — which includes obnoxious gym bro Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and his impressionable little brother Loch (Sam Nivola) — upstanding patriarch Tim (Jason Isaacs) is wanted by the FBI for financial misdeeds and may be heading straight from The White Lotus to white-collar prison.
If writer-director White revels in puncturing the pride and illusions of the privileged, then he also makes sure his skewer cuts through fully fleshed-out characters. Each arrives at the hotel with personal baggage that is unpacked over a series that interlaces several storylines, but also runs a thread back to season one, with the return of Natasha Rothwell’s masseuse Belinda (in Thailand on an exchange from the Hawaii branch). Each also plays their part in this season’s broader story. Where class and sex previously dominated, the show now grapples with spirituality and self-discovery — while also satirising how fetishised concepts such as “enlightenment” are commercialised for westerners visiting Asia.
The White Lotus now has a certain reputation to uphold and, like a seasoned hotelier, White ensures that every expectation is met. Those accustomed to its style, subtlety and commitment to delivering moments of intense discomfort will not be disappointed.
★★★★☆
On Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK from February 17 at 9pm, with new episodes weekly. On HBO and Max in the US
