Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for The White Lotus Season 3 Episode 3.
Compared to the first two seasons of The White Lotus, this third one in Thailand is much more connected to the natural world, with its leafy landscapes and tranquil lakes. Knowing the series, this calls for a season chock-full of natural symbolism, and it all kicks off in Episode 3. After the show’s haunting title sequence, the screen opens up with an intriguing shot of Victoria (Parker Posey) standing in front of a beachfront house and staring onto the sandy shore where Lochlan (Sam Nivola) is lounging with a couple of staff members. Abruptly, the dark, calm sea gathers itself into a tsunami, looming over Victoria before her eyes snap open, and she wakes up from her nightmare. As Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) pointedly points out during breakfast in the morning, dreams often symbolize something about the unconscious mind. But as per usual, her family scoffs at her spiritual remarks and Victoria simply scolds Lochlan for watching tsunami videos.
‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Complicates Fake Friendships

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On the other side of the breakfast hall, Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon) are enjoying a presentation by Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius) about energy healing sessions. As he walks away, the group swoons over the handsome staff member and eggs on Laurie, the only single one, to have a vacation fling with Valentin. These humorous interplays continue into a yoga session, where Jaclyn and Laurie giggle as the former makes crude gestures. Laurie does end up having that peculiar energy session and while nothing unduly comes from it, it is a charged and intimate scene.
However, the easy atmosphere is disrupted later in the episode, as it is now Kate’s turn to be on the receiving end of her fake friends. The White Lotus Season 3 premiere and second episode saw Laurie and Jaclyn respectively get talked about by their long-time friends, but this time they have a couple of late-night drinks together while Kate looks on from a distant balcony, distressed yet not surprised. It is clearly about their conversation during dinner which revealed a difference in political views, where Laurie and Jaclyn were aghast about Kate’s newfound pastime of attending a Texan church and how she voted during the election.
Belinda Recognizes Greg in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Episode 3

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Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) continues her education in wellness therapies all while brewing a tentative romance with Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) that we saw budding in The White Lotus Season 3 Episode 2. During a dinner together, she reminisces about the events of Season 1, where the turmoil around Armond’s (Murray Bartlett) death led to an episode of depression for her, exacerbated by Tanya’s (Jennifer Coolidge) inability to commit to her promises. While musing about Tanya, a memory is shaken loose in her mind as she recalls the reason Tanya was whisked away was because she met Greg (Jon Gries). Galvanized by this realization, she approaches Greg at dinner, but he refutes her claims, insisting he is Gary and that she is mistaken. Despite walking away, her eyes are still drawn to him, suggesting she doesn’t believe him. But she has bigger problems to worry about, as when she goes into her room later that night, there is evidence that someone else has been in it.
Other hotel staff members are also facing drama, with Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) recovering from his head injury after the armed robbery in the previous episode. When he receives a commendation from Sritala (Patravadi Mejudhon), he is emboldened enough to recommend himself for a job as her personal bodyguard, which she kindly smiles at and says she will think about. This encounter leads to him boasting about it to his crush, Mook (Lalisa Manobal), who congratulates him, but also leads to Sritala’s current bodyguards confronting him. They browbeat him and call him a coward, even hinting that Fabian (Christian Friedel), the head staff member who also has dreams of singing professionally, wanted to get Gaitok fired after his incompetency let the robbers through. This doesn’t bode well, since by the end of the episode, Fabian requests a meeting with Gaitok.

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‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Episode 3 Features a Snake Show Gone Wrong

Image via Warner Bros

The White Lotus Season 3 Episode 3 returns the uber-jerk Rick (Walton Goggins) back to us after his brief stint of being caring in the previous episode. During breakfast, he makes leeway in his pursuit of Sritala’s husband by introducing himself as an interested producer and getting her business card; this storyline is also accompanied by a phone call to Frank, where Rick alludes to meeting him in Bangkok. His moment of victory is disrupted by Chelsea’s (Aimee Lou Wood) insistence on going to another meditation session with Amrita (Shalini Peiris), where he talks about how perhaps his murdered father is the reason for his grief that underlies his angry demeanor.
When talking about his feelings is too overwhelming, he interrupts Chelsea and Chloe’s (Charlotte Le Bon) gossiping session about Gary’s ex-wife killing herself and leaving behind a floating leg by declaring he needs to go buy weed. As Chelsea inevitably chases after him, Saxon Ratcliff (Peter Schwarzenegger) swoops in and claims the empty seat next to Chloe, prepared to exude his ultra-manly charms. After Rick succeeds at procuring a joint and a dizzying high, he decides the best way to prove that he is still fun to Chelsea is to go to an alleyway-entranced snake show. He laments how the snakes are living in captivity and, throughout the demonstration, keeps staring at the other audience members, completely dissociating — he’s just generally high as a kite. The climax comes when he goes on an emotionally charged rampage of letting all the snakes loose, eventually leading to Chelsea being bitten by a cobra.
After Chelsea recovers from her snakebite in the hospital and accuses him of being deranged, they slap on smiles (a feeble attempt from Rick) and have dinner with Chloe and Greg again. During the usual tense conversation, Chelsea mentions that they’ve been invited to Greg’s yacht the next day, an invitation that was apparently also extended to the Ratcliff family. While Rick obviously complains about this, Greg notices the stares between Chloe and Saxon from separate tables, though he does not mention it.
The Ratcliff Family Goes Offline in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3

The Ratcliff family faces a strange turn of events during this White Lotus episode, but before that, we witness Piper finally gathering the courage to enter the Buddhist temple and talk to a monk. Unfortunately, she is unable to get a meeting until later in the week on Friday, but nevertheless, she is happy with her progress on her thesis. Meanwhile, Lochlan is subjected to a corrective posture session where his healer identifies his overly defensive mannerisms that suggest he is protecting his “feminine” side — they haven’t yet gotten to the bottom of that.
The Ratcliff patriarch, Timothy (Jason Isaacs), continues to get battered by bad news, as another phone call reveals that the FBI has a warrant for a raid on his office. When Saxon keeps getting phone calls from work, in a desperate attempt at hiding the truth from his family, Tim decides to agree with the no-electronics experience. Everyone balks at this out-of-character choice, with Piper covertly pleased, but they all drop their phones and laptops into the staff member’s bag. Despite this, Tim is still swimming in stress and relents when Victoria insists he take one of her pills. His initial strong reluctance may have seemed strange at first, but the end of the episode reveals him secretly taking another pill after waking up from the daze of the previous one — do we sense addiction issues on the horizon?
New episodes of The White Lotus Season 3 premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.

The White Lotus

Natural symbolism takes the lead in The White Lotus Season 3 Episode 3, with a tsunami of dark humor and biting character studies.

Release Date

2021 – 2024

Network

HBO

Showrunner

Mike White

Directors

Mike White

Pros & Cons

The White Lotus sprinkles in some of its chaotic black humor that we have been anticipating in this episode.
Walton Goggins strikes the perfect balance between douchey and tortured.

Storylines sometimes drag out their pacing a bit too much than necessary.