So The White Lotus’s divisive third season went out with a bang. Then another one. And then a few dozen more. If the show’s first two years treated their end-of-season deaths as cosmic jokes, methods to wipe the grin off a delusional hotel manager’s face, or to have Jennifer Coolidge plunge into the depths of the ocean, this closer presented death as pure tragedy: no one in their right mind wants to see the wonderful Aimee Lou Wood, with her giant, hopeful eyes and toothy radiance, bleeding to death with a bullet hole in her chest. But I suppose it’s appropriate for a season that everyone – even those who, like The Independent’s Nick Hilton, praised it as yet another “exceptional” batch of episodes – can surely agree was The White Lotus at its most un-fun.
This was, after all, an often unpleasant eight episodes of television. At its best, it has brimmed with a sticky, slightly suffocating unease, its characters complex, strange and fascinatingly loathsome. At its worst, it has felt like being stuck in a traffic jam on the hottest day of the year. It remains unclear whether the show’s sole writer and director, Mike White, intended for this season to be quite so narratively repetitive, with his players cycling through the same conversations for episodes on end. Perhaps that was the (agonising) point? But there’s been enough suggestions in recent weeks of a fraught production – with confirmation of cast fallouts and creative clashes – that I’m convinced this season went a bit awry behind the scenes.
