It’s been 25 years since Leonardo DiCaprio made Kate Winslet promise never to let go.
With those parting words in Titanic, after the passenger liner sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, DiCaprio’s Jack spawned a debate that would last to this day: why didn’t he just climb on the floating door with Rose?
For some reason, The White Lotus creator Mike White saw the agony this has caused fans over the years and thought: what a good idea. In the season two finale, Jennifer Coolidge’s beloved heiress Tanya survives a plot to kill her, dispatching an Italian mafioso, Tom Hollander’s Quentin and several of his “high-end gays” with a gun she steals on Quentin’s yacht. All she must do next is escape on a smaller motorboat that awaits her on the water.
There are myriad ways she could achieve this feat. Perhaps by climbing down the ladder at the back of the boat. Gently lowering herself down from the railings. Jumping into the water and climbing aboard. Using a phone, belonging to one of the men she killed, to call for help. However, she does none of those things. Instead, she unceremoniously flips off the side of the yacht, pranging herself on the boat below and crashing into the Ionian Sea, where she quickly drowns.
For years, fans have questioned why Jack couldn’t have just climbed onto the door with Rose. Now, they will ask why Tanya didn’t do LITERALLY anything but launch herself headfirst at her escape vehicle.
Of course, there are some provisos to be made. Part of the reason audiences have come to love Tanya is because she is pure chaos; this is not a character who audiences would immediately credit with being entirely rational. And she has just escaped a murder attempt and quaffed a lot of vino bianco, so may not be thinking straight. Yet, while we know that Tanya is not the sharpest tool in the shed, she was curious enough to uncover the conspiracy to murder her, and skilful enough to eliminate her attackers. Having cleared almost every hurdle, she fell at the smallest one of all.
Unlike those who still scratch their heads over Titanic , perhaps The White Lotus fans can take solace in one unassailable fact: it was quite a funny way to go. “It just made me laugh to think that she would take out this cabal of killers and that after she successfully does that, she just dies this derpy death,” White said after the finale. “That’s just so Tanya.”
