As The White Lotus Season 3 ramps up towards its season finale, many fans are wondering which character will meet their bitter end this season.
The show is heavily focused on the depravity of the resort’s guests, making it easy to forget The White Lotus is technically a murder mystery. As viewers come to understand these characters — the trio on a girls trip (Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon); the American family who are all experiencing existential crises of their own (Parker Posey, Jason Isaacs, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sarah Catherine Hook, Sam Nivola); or the spa manager (Natasha Rothwell) finally getting her groove back, to name some — it becomes increasingly more difficult to pinpoint who would make an easy target for series creator Mike White to off.
Season 3 also made the interesting choice of zeroing in on Rothwell’s character, Belinda, in the premiere. Viewers now know the young man who was searching for his mother after he heard gunshots in the premiere episode is Belinda’s son, Zion. But many White Lotus fans are not so convinced that Belinda will be the one to die this season.
It might be worth looking back at who dies in White Lotus Season 1 and Season 2 to understand who will be suffering the same fate in Season 3. We did some digging, and here’s what we’ve found.
Season 1, which took place at The White Lotus in Maui, ended with resort manager Armand (Murray Bartlett) dying at the hand of his most difficult guest, Shane (Jake Lacy). The pair have a rivalry the entire season as Shane demands more and more from Armand, driving him to break into Shane’s room just to defecate in his suitcase. Shane, who was vigilantly armed with a knife after hearing of a robbery nearby, accidentally stabs him after mistaking him for an intruder. And so marked the end of The White Lotus’ messy manager.
His time on The White Lotus was short-lived but memorable; Bartlett’s performance earned him his first Emmy Award and preceded his role in smash-hit The Last of Us.
Cue the violins. Jennifer Coolidge captured hearts everywhere with her iconic turn as the eccentric and messy Tanya McQuoid. But that was not enough to save her from The White Lotus curse.
In Season 2, Tanya is traveling through Sicily with her assistant, Portia, and her husband, Greg. Greg is clearly unhappy with their relationship but Tanya becomes increasingly suspicious of his behavior, especially after she begins traveling with a group of men whom she believes her husband hired to kill her. Tanya’s paranoia drives her to kill everyone on a yacht in an epic season finale. But her success is short-lived: She dies after she slips and falls off the boat, hitting her head on the way down.
The fan theories are already brewing. After Sunday’s episode showed Walton Goggins’ Rick Hatchett going for revenge in Bangkok and Isaacs’ Timothy Ratliff on the verge of suicide, fans on The White Lotus subreddit have been sharing some valuable predictions as to who will die in Season 3.
“I’m locking it in now… I think Lachlan / possibly multiple people in the Ratliff family will be the main death for Season 3, possibly even everyone except Piper,” one fan theorized. Others disagreed because “the wealthy always come out on top” in The White Lotus.
Some pointed out that Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) has already had “two brushes with death.”
“Maybe the rule of threes will apply? I think it might be too obvious but I think she’ll be involved somehow,” they wrote, while another speculated, “Greg will definitely die, although I think THE death of the season will be Rick.”
Another pervasive theory is that Gaitok, the security guard, “will accidentally shoot someone while trying to play the hero and save the day.”
One thing is true about The White Lotus cast: It is never who you would expect. New episodes of The White Lotus Season 3 premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.
If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 988.