The White Lotus Season 3 Finale is Awful
Spoilers for The White Lotus Season 3
When you watch a dark comedy, you expect the story’s outcome might carry a bit of sting. But to say that the third season of The White Lotus has a bleak and pessimistic ending would be putting it very lightly. In fact, the finale of the show is representative of such a hopeless and negative worldview that it doesn’t really fit well with the seven episodes that came before it.
All episodes of The White Lotus definitely don’t fall short on the “dark” aspect. We’re following characters who are (at best) morally grey, and some of whom are actually despicable people (like Rick and Gary/Greg). But despite this, I never got an overall vibe from the first seven episodes that embodied the feeling of meanness or the truly negative outlook we got in that final episode.
The show focused more on watching the lives of the ultra-rich and cringing frequently at the circumstances characters found themselves in. Viewers were given a chance to laugh at the absurdity of a social class that the majority of us aren’t a part of. It wasn’t in a mean-spirited way; it’s more observationally funny. However, the finale of The White Lotus has enough meanness for an entire season.
I became familiar with the term grimdark as it relates to fantasy novels last year after reading The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. Basically, it’s a subgenre of fantasy novels, and two of the aspects of it are that we focus on morally ambiguous characters and that the ending of these types of novels is usually bleak, violent, and hopeless.
Some readers argue grimdark novels are more realistic, but I find that they can be so over-the-top negative that they’re actually less realistic than your average book. The White Lotus is basically, 100% a grimdark comedy TV show. I think some viewers will enjoy this sort of ludicrous “bad” ending for our characters, but I personally do not.
If you’re looking for a TV show where not a single character gets happy outcome to his or her story, look no further. (Serious spoilers ahead!)
Rick is unable to come to grips with his past and embrace a happy present with Chelesea – leading to him killing his father and then him and Chelesea being killed.
The security guard at the hotel is corrupted and turned into a killer by shooting Rick; despite the character development that made it seem like his kindhearted demeanor means he’s not fit to be a guard.
Belinda gives in to her darker side and takes money from Greg in return for silence. She also leaves her love interest for the season, ditching him in the same way Tanya ditched her.
The three women on a vacation together fail to come to grips with the fact that they are awful to one another and decide to remain friends simply for old time’s sake.
The family experiences no positive growth and now will return for a world that will be awful for all of them due to the father’s past misdeeds.
The hotel worker and his two friends who robbed the hotel get away with no consequences. Greg also goes unpunished for his crimes.
I don’t know who hurt series creator Mike White, but, wow, you can’t get more hopeless than that. Past seasons of the show weren’t without character deaths, but this was a bit too much in terms of just how mean and negative the show chose to go.
The White Lotus finale also, I believe, went for such an extreme ending just to be more discussed online. Whether you loved the finale or hated it (and felt like it didn’t even fit with the rest of the season tonally like I did), I don’t think many viewers will have lukewarm feelings about it. For any show, that’s what you want – people talking. I just wish Mike White had found another way to accomplish such a feat without upping the negative worldview meter to 11.
I clearly did not care for the finale of Season 3, but that’s pretty at odds with how I felt about the rest of the season. The White Lotus can be laugh-out-loud funny. It’s well-acted and beautifully shot. There’s a lot to like. For me though, the finale spoiled the experience. I have my doubts that I’ll be tuning in to watch future seasons of the show.
Episodes 1-7 Grade: 8/10
Finale (Episode 8) Grade: 2.5/10
Overall Season 3 Grade: 5.5/10