Welcome back to the White Lotus resort, where the food is divine, the conversation asinine, and someone always goes home dead. The first season of HBO’s deliciously sneery social satire, which followed three sets of wealthy guests as they terrorised hotel staff simply by checking in, was the most chewed-over series of 2021. Was the Mike White comedy a sly send-up of the uber-wealthy, or a microscope trained on the very worst parts of us all?
That season opened with Jake Lacy’s newlywed Shane at the airport window, watching as the body of the resort manager he’s accidentally-on-purpose killed is loaded into the cargo hold. The second season keeps the same basic structure – a one-week holiday that ends in tragedy – with a few tweaks. The idyll of Maui is replaced by Sicily (sub aperol spritzes for mai tais, accordingly). And a new deep-pocketed cohort has just arrived.
In the new episode (airing on Sunday in the US and Monday in the UK), we meet the bickering couple Ethan and Harper Spiller, played by Will Sharpe and Aubrey Plaza, who are holidaying with their close frenemies, the ostentatiously affectionate Cameron and Daphne Babcock (Theo James and a pitch-perfect Meghann Fahy). It’s Daphne, enjoying her final dip in the crystal blue Ionian Sea, who first encounters a corpse as it floats to the surface beside her. The White Lotus is, once more, a comic farce in the shape of a murder mystery. So who do we think that ankle bobbing up and down belongs to? Let’s talk it out.
It’s easiest to start by ruling out whose ankle it surely isn’t. It’s not Daphne’s, of course, and while the ankle for some reason strikes me as male, I doubt it’s Cameron’s, either. We’d get a different kind of anguished shriek from Suzy Homemaker if she’d bumped into the leg of the man who fathered her children. Could it be Ethan’s, or Harper’s? Harper has so far revealed her disdain for prosecco, watching TV, whitefish, and people who don’t vote, such as the Babcocks. To me, she seems like the kind of gal who doesn’t get her hair wet.
It could be Ethan’s, but right off the bat he seems too mild to die. In fact, he’s much more likely to flip out and become a killer. To that end, The White Lotus is already offering up a menu of options for him should he find himself homicidal in paradise. His wife is a pill who doesn’t even let him order what he wants for dinner, and his old buddy Cameron, who’s already flashed Harper, called him “the original incel” in front of their wives. This is on day one of seven.
Still, the odds-on bet at this point in the series has got to be Bert, the octogenarian patriarch of the Di Grasso trio. Played by F Murray Abraham, Bert has already fallen down once on this trip to trace his ancestral roots through Sicily, so we can’t rule out an accidental drowning. He’s also a creepy old horndog who flirts voraciously and inappropriately with every woman he meets. It’s not difficult to imagine him making fast enemies. For example, his unhappily divorced son Dominic (Michael Imperioli) already seems to hate him. And Dominic’s son Albie (Adam DiMarco) already seems to hate his own dad. If that ankle turns out to belong to Di Grasso, I’d bet the killer’s a Di Grasso, too.
The only returning face from The White Lotus’s standout season one is Jennifer Coolidge, who won an Emmy playing the hilarious and pathetic half-billionaire Tanya McQuoid. Now Tanya is married to Greg (Jon Gries), the loser she met on Maui. She’s also brought her assistant Portia, played by Haley Lu Richardson, to Italy, though she’s immediately banished to her suite. In season one, it was the hotel manager, subject to the whims of his wealthy guests, who died. In season two, I’d wager it’s time to pick on the guests, so Portia is safe. I wouldn’t miss Greg, though, who food-shames his new wife and blanks her text messages. Frankly, I kind of hope it’s his ankle. I, personally, would choose to drown Greg.
Unless it’s not a guest! Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) is the hotel manager at The White Lotus Sicily, and she’s watching from the promenade as the cadaver gets bagged on the beach. That rules out a staff casualty, but not the locals. The aspiring musician Mia (Beatrice Grannò) and her bestie Lucia (Simona Tabasco) are both hanging around the hotel on check-in day. Lucia has been dabbling in sex work, and the wealthy clientele make for good customers; now Mia’s considering it, too. In a lesser series, or a procedural drama, there’s no way that ankle would belong to any person other than Lucia, but Mike White is more interesting than that. I don’t think he’d do something so obvious as kill Italy’s most adorable escort.
So where does that leave us? The smart money may be on Bert, who attributes his vitality to the fact that he jerks off every day. But guys like that – the kind so odious that even their own families wonder when they’ll depart – tend to live forever just to spite everyone around them. Which I guess means I’ve talked myself back into thinking it’s Bert’s son Dominic. His ex-wife hates him, but he still calls her for emotional support. He charges his son with caring for his possibly concussed elderly father so he can keep a date with a sex worker. He’s exactly the kind of guy who could really benefit from dying.
‘The White Lotus’ airs on HBO in the US and Sky Atlantic in the UK. It’s also available on Now
