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.
