Someone on the addictive HBO series is going home in a body bag. Let's break down the theories.
So Who Dies on 'The White Lotus'?
Every Sunday after we watch a new episode of The White Lotus on HBO Max, America asks itself three questions: Will class stratification make our social structure rickety enough to collapse, killing us all? Where are those fancy pajamas from? And which of these characters is going to die?
The six-episode miniseries, which concludes on August 15, follows rich guests and hotel staff through a week-long Hawaiian vacation from hell. Viewers know, thanks to an opening scene, that the week will end with one character in a body bag. The episodes are a piña colada you just can’t stop sipping even though you don't know if it's laced—every actor is perfectly cast, every scene deliciously tense. The tight shots, coupled with the muffled, eerie score, collaborate to make the show feel immersive, like a stranger's hot breath whispering in your ear.
We spend a week at the resort with mismatched newlyweds Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) and Shane (Jake Lacy) who are later joined by Kitty (Molly Shannon), Shane’s real estate tycoon mother. They arrive on the same boat as middle age girlboss Nicole Mossbacher (Connie Britton) and her husband Mark (Steve Zahn). The Mossbachers bring misunderstood teen Quinn (Fred Hechinger) and semi-sadistic college student Olivia (Sydney Sweeney). Olivia brings her friend Paula (Brittany O'Grady), the only guest we meet who isn’t white. Rounding out the group is Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) a lonely, teetering alcoholic who is in mourning for her mother.
On the working class side we have the high-strung general manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) as well as the extremely lovely spa manager Belinda (Natasha Rothwell). Twenty-something Dillon (Lukas Gage) reports to Armond, as does Lani (Jolene Purdy), a trainee who is secretly pregnant, and Kai (Kekoa Scott Kekumano), a busboy who hooks up with Paula.
Like a waiter pushing dessert, the show can’t stop winking at the idea of knocking off one of its characters—Rachel jokes about “stuffing ourselves with food and drowning in the ocean,” Quinn wakes up almost under water, Belinda searches for an intruder in the spa. Something is going to blow, because this is a TV show. But the story has a slyer message—when life is set up such that the majority of people break their backs to make things easy for a small group, there are going to be casualties.
The first episode gives a demonstration—Lani, a low-level trainee working at the hotel, is heavily pregnant. She continues to work as she goes into labor, afraid to lose her job. Even as she begins to deliver her baby in a back office at the hotel, Armond refuses to ask if any of the guests is a doctor. He's willing to risk his worker’s health for the sake of not bothering his guests.
It’s not an absurd scenario. Women do work through their pregnancies and labor. If you’re in a minimum wage job with no benefits, you may have no other choice. In the U.S., which has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country, Black and indigenous women are up to five times more likely to die from pregnancy. In Hawaii, a review by the state found that half of maternal mortality cases between 2015 and 2017 were preventable.
That’s the thing about extreme wealth divides. Guests at a luxury hotel tell themselves they have earned their money, they’re paying well, and they deserve to be taken care of. But that in our current system, there is no way to have people waiting on you without them being exploited.
So who dies?
It's unlikely that the dead White Lotus character is a local worker, since the body is being shipped back to the continental United States. On the other hand, killing one of the spoiled visitors might be too satisfying. The name of the show hints that the super rich will not be harmed. Lotus flowers bloom in gloomy water and take out vast amounts of space. They have survived for hundreds of millions of years. In many cultures, lotus flowers symbolize renewal. Here, they seem to say—exploitation by the super rich is so ancient, widespread, and unstoppable that it is hard to route out.
Let’s take a look.
Shane
Shane is the only person we know for sure does not die, since we see him in the opening scene. This is shame, because Shane is the character who it would be most fun to see plunge off a cliff or tangle in the propellers of a sea plane, or spirited away on the back of a giant turtle, Cornell hat askew.
It’s also unlikely that Kitty, Shane’s mom dies. In the opening scene, Shane looks disturbed and angry, but he doesn’t look like he is in profound grief. He's too close with his mom for this reaction to fit. Though Kitty keeps alluding to remembering “nothing” from the wedding, which seems like a hint. Is she being poisoned? Maybe!
Nicole
If Nicole dies, who will Zoom with China??? It's hard to imagine her being buried in her $75,000 bracelets, because she keeps her life so tightly under control.
Mark
He cheated on his wife, Nicole. Could she kill him? It’s hard to imagine her caring about him enough to kill him.
Rachel
Oh come on—Rachel doesn’t die! Yes, she's not with Shane in the first scene, but would this show really put us through six episodes just to arrive at such an obvious conclusion? Prediction: Rachel leaves Shane and sells a deeply personal essay titled, “Take It From Me: Don’t Marry A Man Who Is Rude to Waiters” for which she is paid $150.
Belinda
Belinda is a perfect angel, the best person on the show. She could die, because writers love to see audiences suffer. But more likely, they’re going to make us suffer by watching Tanya crush Belinda’s dreams of opening her own wellness center.
Tanya
Likewise, it’s hard to imagine Tanya dying, because she needs to stay alive to crush Belinda’s dreams, and because her character provides so much comic relief. At the same time, Tanya is both likable and pathetic, making her prime killed-by-writers material. No one except Belinda respects her or cares about her. She has been gripped by thoughts about death. She is hooking up with a bald sheriff. Going to mark Tanya as: Maybe.
Sheriff Greg, the drunk hotel guest who is most certainly not with the Black Lives Matter movement, is perhaps too minor to be killed. But he does seem too good to be true. Belinda is some kind of heiress—could he be after her fortune?
Armond
Oh, Armond. One way or another, it feels like this man is going to face consequences by the end of this show. Armond is an interesting foil to Shane and Mark—all three of them are grown white men who are clearly happy for other people to suffer so they can get their way. But only Armand, who is working class and gay, is likely to be held accountable.
Dillon
Like Belinda, Dillon is less likely to be killed, because he is already suffering enough. He’s trapped in an unequal power dynamic with his boss, Armond, who harasses him and crosses the line of consent. But maybe the show will kill him, just to prove that life is a constantly unfolding tragedy. By the way, do we all know that Mike White, the show's creator, also wrote School of Rock? Man has range!
The most likely contenders…
Quinn
Quinn is the most sympathetic major character, after Belinda—his only crime is masturbating and spending too much time on his phone. (Lock us all up, your honor!) Besides, his mom keeps insisting that as a straight, white man, he's a victim…
Olivia
Olivia is just so vile that it seems possible that the show might take her out.
Paula
Paula is not quite like the Mossbachers—she's not white, and probably not as extremely rich. By killing her, the show could satisfy its need to kill a guest, while maintaining its point that the truly moneyed and privileged will always protect themselves.
Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.
This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Condé Nast
