Critic v. Critic: ‘The White Lotus’ Season Three

April 13, 2025 admin Celebrity Gossip 0

“The White Lotus” kept audiences captivated all season long.

Again.

The Max drama’s third season became the spring’s must-see series. Just try reading a pop culture site without seeing endless stories tied to the series.

Was it any good, though?

HiT editor Christian Toto wished he had those eight-plus hours back. Washington Examiner film critic Harry Khachatrian found show creator Mike White’s vision exhilarating.

Story spoilers ahead…

Toto: The third season of “The White Lotus” grabbed the zeitgeist and wouldn’t let go. This critic loved the first two seasons and couldn’t resist a third trip to “paradise.” Except something was missing from the jump, and the show’s previous highs never reappeared.

Yes, the new vacationers were a morally warped bunch once more, from a drug-addled matriarch (Parker Posey) to a trio of vain, 40-something chums (Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon and Michelle Monaghan).

Week after week it felt like nothing happened. Whole scenes came and went without purpose. The characters’ personalities were quickly established (Patrick Schwarzenegger’s Saxon was a jerk from the jump, Walton Goggins’ grim visage became part of the Thailand scenery), but creator Mike White’s penchant for psychological insights went missing.

The last two episodes saw some puzzle pieces fall into place, finally, but the writing still felt diminished compared to previous installments. The finale disappointed, too, delivering silly plot twists, nonsensical action and stupefying decisions from the troubled business tycoon Timothy Ratliff played by Jason Isaacs (let’s leave his meandering accent aside for now).

Season three proved a colossal disappointment.

Khachatrian: I have to wonder if we were watching the same show, given that Mike White’s psychological insights were at their sharpest this season. You’re right that Saxon begins as a Temu knockoff of Patrick Bateman—his vapid confidence, gym-sculpted identity and hollow pursuit of status are all textbook finance-bro tropes. But calling his arc thin overlooks how subtly White dismantles that persona over the course of the season.

What begins as a caricature gradually unravels into something more tragic: a man so emotionally bankrupt that, by the finale, even he recognizes the emptiness of the life he’s built.

While it’s easy to dismiss this as “nothing happening,” that’s exactly the point. “The White Lotus” has never been driven by plot—it’s about watching people collapse in slow motion. Saxon’s arc, like Timothy’s, isn’t a story of big events but of gradual psychological unraveling.

That late scene where Saxon watches Chelsea run into the arms of another man and—despite all his bravado—can barely hold back tears? That’s not just strong acting (and Schwarzenegger deserves credit, especially amid a star-studded cast). It’s White delivering one of his clearest critiques of modern spiritual hollowness. It is a rare sight to see such socially conservative motifs in pop-TV, let alone on HBO.

As for Isaacs’ “stupefying” businessman, I’d argue Timothy Ratliff’s arc is one of the most compelling character studies in the series so far. He arrives as a finance mogul on the verge of implosion and spends most of the season numbed out on his wife’s Lorazepam, contemplating whether to take his family down with him.

Some might find his storyline slow, but to me, it’s precisely that pacing—the muted despair, the absence of melodrama—that makes his eventual realization so affecting. White could’ve gone for a flashy climax. Instead, he gave us something harder: a man reckoning with the fact that his wealth is gone, his image is shattered, and yet, the people he loves are still beside him.

His salvation lies not in reclaiming control, but in surrendering to something more enduring—family.

So yes, if you’re looking for shocking plot twists or big-ticket deaths, Season Three might feel subdued. But if you sit with it—really sit with it—it offers something much richer: a slow, funny, painful, and unexpectedly redemptive study of people desperately trying to convince themselves they’re happy, even as their carefully curated lives quietly fall apart.

Toto: The Timothy Ratliff arc proved the most maddening. Episode after episode featured him cartoonishly putting off his fate, all the while his clueless family couldn’t piece together the obvious hints of his troubles. He saw how vapid his family was and considered killing them before having second thoughts.

He also thought it was noble to leave his younger son alone, watching his immediate family members get poisoned to death. Then, he leaves the deadly blender blend out so the plot could conveniently steer the son to take a gulp himself.

RELATED: THE SPIRITUALITY BEHIND ‘THE WHITE LOTUS’

He could have been angry at himself for instilling such vapid values into his clan. Instead, he never grew an inch. Saxon’s metamorphosis proved wildly unconvincing. And having him tote around a “book” in the final moments as if it were a totem of some kind, is the laziest writing tic possible. And that incest moment? It’s TV’s version of clickbait.

Meaningless. Hollow. Fake.

A good story doesn’t draw out these so-called arcs for weeks on end. Efficiency matters as well as insight into human nature. The 40-something gals proved it. A few moments of emotional clarity emerged, like the “oops, I voted for Trump” moment.

But waiting episode after episode for that while being numbed by their bland conversation and arrogance? Pass.

I cringed while Goggins’ Rick tried to trick the aging matriarch into thinking his friend was a film producer – without actually preparing him for the ruse. Rick is many things, but he’s not dumb.

White’s recent comments defending Season 3 reveal an arrogance that clearly infected his show.

Khachatrian: I won’t defend every beat of the plot. But for the sake of argument, consider that Timothy’s are the actions of a Lorazepam-numbed brain that only just decided against murdering its entire family; clairvoyance is not abundant in such circumstances.

Moreover, “The White Lotus” has never promised narrative realism. White’s world is a heightened one—satirical, symbolic, often surreal. His characters don’t operate with perfect logic because they’re not meant to.

That’s why Timothy’s arc doesn’t end in grand redemption or spectacular downfall. He doesn’t scream at his family for their vanity, nor apologize for having raised them in his image. He just sees, in one numbed-out moment, that his fortune is gone and his family is still there—and maybe that’s enough.

It’s not clean or cathartic. But that anticlimax is the point. Real people often don’t grow—they settle.

As for Saxon: again, I think his defining moment came when he teared up at the sight of Chelsea leaping into Rick’s arms. White’s ability to humanize him in that instant—after a season spent painting him as a hedgefund-built caricature—was, for me, one of the season’s quietest highlights.

Regarding the so-called “incest moment”—sure, it’s shocking. But shock has always been a feature of this show, not a bug. Season One’s infamous hotel manager scene? Season Two’s uncle affair? It’s clear White has been pushing the envelope each season.

Part of the magic of The White Lotus lies in that tension: the awful characters, the terrible things they do, and how far the audience is willing to keep watching without looking away.

Maybe it’s not efficient storytelling—but it’s unmistakably human. Messy, slow, unresolved—just like real people.

Harry Khachatrian is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog, holds an MBA from the University of Toronto, and, in his free time, writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.

The post Critic v. Critic: ‘The White Lotus’ Season Three appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

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