Season two of TheWhiteLotus is another beguiling trip to a booby-trapped paradise. Read our full review:
) are on vacation with Ethan’s finance-bro college friend Cameron and his perky wife Daphne . And of course there’s Tanya, miserable and needy as ever, who’s dragged her latest assistant, Portia , along with her.
It’s a vibrant set of plates to set spinning, which White does with his usual mix of acerbic bite and melancholy. Though, things do feel a little less pointed this season. The characters spend most of their time nattering on about relationships, about trust and jealousy and infidelity and desire. All big topics, but ones that have been amply covered throughout, well, all of human civilization.
Binding all of these folks together are two local girls, Lucia and Mia . Lucia is a seasoned sex worker, hoping to land a rich and regular client at the hotel while Mia seems newer to the game, more hesitant until she gets her footing. Their presence at the hotel affects all of the other characters in increasingly intriguing ways—maybe sex is just the access point, or the vehicle, into what the show is really getting at.
If that’s the case, I’ll forgive White some of the season’s repetitiveness, its many reiterated conversations and its hoary tropes. This season may just be a slower cook than we had in Hawaii, a gentler build toward a big eruption. We know that something grim is coming right from the jump: the season opens, just as the first did, with the jolting announcement of a death. Or, in this case, several deaths. By episode five, I still have no idea who’s been killed or has otherwise perished, and I like that White doesn’t really spend any time dropping bread crumbs for us to hunt after. This show isn’t a whodunnit; it’s a dark social comedy that uses death and destruction as punctuation.