Some 16 minutes into The Meaning of Dreams, the third episode of The White Lotus Season 3, Lochlan Ratliff, the painfully awkward, heartwarming teenager portrayed by Sam Nivola, turns to his father, Timothy (Jason Isaacs), with an iPad in his hands: "Dad look," he exclaims, aghast. "He didn't even run, he just stood there. That happened here, like the next beach over." Playing on the screen is a YouTube video that depicts a man's helpless final moments before being washed away by a tsunami that, based on the series' storyline, had previously hit the island where Lochlan, his older siblings Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and his mother, Victoria (Parker Posey), are now vacationing off the east coast of Thailand alongside dozens of equally affluent, appearance-obsessed, and often arrogant, characters. "Do you want to keep giving us nightmares?" the latter promptly talks back. "Not really," says a mortified Lochlan. "Then put that down, please."
It's an apt reminder that not even the most lavish of the world's best design hotels — including the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui where the latest instalment of The White Lotus was largely shot, can spare spendy holidayers from nature's fury, should they find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. A living example of how, when stripped of glitz and glam, we all look the same to Mother Earth.
