The theme song for The White Lotus is, or was, musical cilantro. Created by Cristobal Tapia de Veer for writer-director-creator Mike White’s anthology series’ first season, then tweaked in a Mediterranean direction for Season 2, it is, or was, chirpy and screechy and unlike anything else on television. To many people, it’s the banger theme music of the decade. To my ears, it was basically unlistenable. 

In this sense, the theme matched the show it accompanied. The White Lotus is, or was, a cheaply cathartic satire of the rich and useless, inviting you to pull up a chair and have your mind blown by the fact that wealthy, attractive people are often, get this, huge assholes. (Glad you were sitting down, aren’t you?) The beautiful resort-hotel settings — not to mention White’s obvious, infectious, seemingly out-of-character love of filming nature, especially water — distinguish it somewhat from your average anti-capitalist dramedy, but it’s still basically just Succession: Hawaii Nights.

When what to my wondering ears should appear but a whole new theme song! It’s less abrasive, and I suppose fans of the original, uh, “melody” will miss it, but it’s just as propulsive, and its ominous, bassy synth washes toward the end suggest both depth and menace. Based on this initial episode, the show may be following suit. It’s weird to say a filmmaker as accomplished and acclaimed as White has finally found his sea legs, but with this particular project it may well be the case. 

Like every season of the show, Season 3 is set at one of the many worldwide locations of the titular upscale hotel and spa chain. This time, our travels take us to Thailand, home of adorable monkeys, stunning Buddhist and Hindu statuary, and a whole (mostly) new gaggle of guests, just as rich and obnoxious as ever. 

Rick (Walton Goggins) is a sour, dour American, traveling with Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), his gorgeous and buck-toothed and much younger girlfriend. Neither of them so much as mentions a job. Rick doesn’t seem to like Chelsea at all; Chelsea doesn’t seem to be the least bit bothered by any of Rick’s many barbs, seeing it rather as her mission to calm him down and loosen him up. But when he finds out the hotel’s rich American owner (Scott Glenn) isn’t there, he becomes so disconsolate he can’t even eat. He’s not pleasant company.

Alone at the bar the night they arrive, a still largely unbothered Chelsea commiserates with a fellow gorgeous-and-much-younger-girlfriend-of-an-unpleasant-balding-American-man who sits down next to her (played by Charlotte Le Bon). Unfortunately, this woman’s boyfriend is none other than, dun dun dunnnnn, Greg (Jon Gries), the scumbag who seduced Jennifer Coolidge’s mega-rich character Tanya in Season 1 only to engineer her death in Season 2 so he could inherit her fortune. Compared to him, Rick doesn’t seem so bad…yet, anyway.

I wouldn’t get my hopes up about Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs), however. He’s a rich (but I repeat myself) Duke alumnus, married to a former UNC Chapel Hill Tarheel, Victoria (Parker Posey), which constitutes a mixed marriage in his world. Their “perfect” children include Saxton (Patrick Schwarzenegger), a callow hornball who went to Duke and works for his dad; Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), a religious studies major who goes to UNC and came up with the idea of the trip to Thailand so she could interview a nearby Buddhist monk for her senior thesis; and Lochlan (Sam Nivola), aka Lockie, a high school senior for whose allegiance and affection his two older siblings constantly jockey. 

In Saxton’s case, “affection” is maybe understating the case. He spends the whole episode making inappropriate remarks: He tells the family that Piper and Lochlan can’t share the same room because they have “full-grown genitals,” insisting Lochlan stay with him instead. He expounds upon the importance of pussy to a man’s happiness, in the process of (clumsily and unsuccessfully) hitting on half the female cast while down at the pool. He tells Lochlan that their sister is “hot” but she’s never “been laid,” which is his business for some reason, apparently. Finally, he tries to engage Lochlan in a conversation about what kind of porn he likes, then excuses himself to the bathroom to masturbate, stripping naked and making his selection on his tablet with the door wide open before closing it. I’m getting serious Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story vibe from these guys. (The fact that Nivola and especially Schwarzenegger resemble Monsters actors Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez helps a lot.)

Back to Tim, he fields a phone call from a pesky Wall Street Journal reporter, who plans to run a story on an old business associate and a fund the two of them set up with the government of Brunei. Tim gives the reporter the brush-off. Actually, from the hotel’s glamorous owner Sritala (Lek Patravadi) and its officious manager Fabian (Christian Freidel, whose face you may have blotted from your memory after watching his astonishing turn in The Zone of Interest) to the family’s designated “health mentor” Pam (a subtly very funny Morgana O’Reilly) and her request that they stow their devices for the week, Tim gives a lot of people the brush-off. But the call rattles him, most likely because he helped finance something horrendous. 

The third group is a trio of, not gonna hide my cards here, three beautiful fortysomething women: Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), a TV star; Kate (Leslie Bibb), who married into big Texas money; and Laurie (Carrie Coon), who works in “the corporate world.” These three childhood friends have reunited for what Kate terms a “victory tour” to celebrate their successes. What this means in practice is Jaclyn and Kate celebrating each other, humblebragging about their wealth and success and influence, lovebombing each other with compliments about their gorgeous, and ever so slightly surgically enhanced, faces and figures. Carrie takes all this in, getting drunker by the minute, then calls it an early night; back in her hotel room, she lets out one single agonizing sob of misery before stifling it — the kind of cry that comes out when you’re so deeply miserable even crying itself is too hard for a sustained period.

The employees this time around include Mook (Lalisa Manobal) and Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong), a “health mentor” and security guard respectively. The two locals have an easy, bantering friendship, and Gaitok gies Mook a lift to work when her motorbike won’t start, yet it’s clear (to us at least) that Gaitok has romantic feelings for her. When he calls her away from a conversation with the rich American owner’s menacing bodyguards, they give him the stinkeye. That said, it seems like he’s a pretty solid guy, having once saved someone from drowning while on the job.

Meanwhile, a familiar face returns: Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), the White Lotus Hawaii spa manager who got screwed over by Coolidge’s character in Season 1. But she’s not working at this White Lotus, not exactly: She’s staying there all expenses paid for three months, in order to learn this flagship location’s special health practices, developed by Sritala herself. Her college age son (Nicholas Duvernay) will be joining her soon. 

But we already know this: He’s the main character in the cold open set a week after everyone’s arrival, when some kind of gun battle breaks out and a dead body floats down the river right past him as he frantically tries to find and rescue his mom. Can’t have The White Lotus without spilling some of the red stuff, after all.

Personally, I already have a theory about the murder(s). Murder mysteries are the one genre where I let myself indulge in trying to figure out things beforehand; with shows that are mysterious, from Twin Peaks to Lost to Silo to Severance, I prefer to sit back, take it in, and let the mystery be, or else you’re just wasting time reacting to stuff that exists only in your own mind, not on the screen.

So! Let’s think about Rick for a moment. He’s a wealthy man, but obviously given to hard living; Tim and Victoria joke about his “cirrhosis and lung cancer.” He travels around the world with a girlfriend he barely seems to know, let alone like, often changing plans at the last minute. When he finds out the rich American owner of the hotel isn’t there, he’s furious, distracted, eyes always staring into the distance. But the episode makes a point of showing us that the rich American owner’s bodyguards are there, and it introduces a security guard as a main character. My guess? The owner shows up, Rick is an assassin hired to kill him, and a gun battle ensues. I’m looking forward to seeing how wrong I am about this!

But more importantly, all theories aside, this episode is just…good. The presence of internet boyfriend Walton Goggins elevates the material all by itself, and how could it not: Boyd Crowder! The Ghoul! Walton Goggins’s Goggle Glasses! The weird incestuous dynamic between the Ratliff siblings is brand new to the show, and like most prestige-TV incest it’s both incredibly fucked up and (let’s be honest here) weirdly engrossing. Aimee Lou Wood’s extremely, uh, English teeth are correctly cited as one of her best features; it reminds me of the Mad Men episode in which Megan Draper, one of the most stunning characters of the decade, pointed out (again, correctly) that she kind of had horse teeth, which only increased her attractiveness. Speaking of which, look folks, I’m a middle-aged man, and this show has Parker Posey and Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan and Carrie Coon in it. I’m only human!

Moreover, each batch of characters has their own unique relationship dynamic, which both shows us who they are and — this is important — is actually funny. The Duke/Tarheel thing between Tim and Victoria and their kids caught in the middle. The “you’re beautiful!” “no you’re beautiful! And Laurie, everything you do is so difficult!” thing with Jaclyn and Kate is a scream. Chelsea’s bulletproof cheeriness in the face of Rick’s withering unhappiness is good stuff too.

And to wrap us all the way back around to the music, it’s not just the theme that works, it’s all the Thai pop and rock that music supervisor Gabe Hilfer sprinkles across the soundtrack, including a fantastic Black Sabbath “Iron Man” swipe. This stuff really seasons the meat, so to speak, not unlike those beautiful shots of water droplets on lily pads and monkeys in the trees. Who knows? Maybe this year’s White Lotus vacation will wind up as tedious to me as the previous excursions. Or maybe, for Mike White, the third time’s the charm.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.