The White Lotus - Season 2

“The White Lotus still struggles to write well-rounded characters of color, but improves on its first season in almost every other regard.”

Title: The White Lotus
Episodes Reviewed: Season 2
Creator: Mike White 👨🏼🇺🇸
Director: Mike White 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writer: Mike White 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Symphony Barnes 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 5/5

The White Lotus broke out of the gate in 2021 with a first season that picked up an impressive 10 Emmy awards across writing, directing, acting, and production categories. This second season should be no different, triumphing on a technical level that has the potential to garner even more hardware.

A social satire with a murder mystery running through each season, viewers follow the twisty stories of guests and employees who occupy fictional The White Lotus resorts. The first took place in Maui and dealt with privilege, race, and colonialism. This year, we find a new ensemble in Sicily dealing with lust, power, relationships, and gender.

What could’ve ended up as another “eat the rich” narrative quickly unravels as juicy plots entangle complex characters. Delicious performances heighten the writing, with standouts including Jennifer Coolidge as the ditzy heiress Tanya and Aubrey Plaza as newly-moneyed employment lawyer Harper. Add to this a memorable theme song, compelling score, and great cinematography, and you really have a winning season.

Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

The women of The White Lotus shine brightly, each navigating a man’s world in unique ways. For example, resort manager Valentina’s (Sabrina Impacciatore) strict nature allows her to stand up for herself when she needs to, like when she’s harassed at a cafe. As a lawyer in a male-dominated field, Plaza’s Harper defies the odds with her career choice. And a town local with little to her name, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) uses street smarts to take advantage of people’s carnal weaknesses.

It’s Lucia and her friend Mia (Beatrice Grannò) who feel especially refreshing. They avoid harmful stereotypes of sex workers, neither objectified nor clumsily turned into “sex workers with a heart of gold.” In a key creative decision, Lucia goes through with deceiving the smitten Albie (Adam DiMarco) into giving her a lot of money, because she's watching out for herself and not a naive woman who falls in love with one of her clients like most who fall into this trope. Mia gets her dream job of becoming a singer through her own wiles and sexuality. Best of all, the two share a delightful friendship. They obviously enjoy each other’s company, laughing and shopping and living it up at The White Lotus resort, even as they continue to look out for each other in their perilous line of work.

It’s wonderful to see these women triumph. While Season 1 saw characters suffering their own losses, such as Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) who was misled by Tanya and Alexandra Daddario’s Rachel standing by her entitled and toxic husband, Season 2 gives women satisfying story arcs. Lucia and Mia’s well-crafted plans pay off; Tanya defends herself; her personal assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), escapes from her lover-turned-kidnapper; and Harper reinvigorates her marriage. Contrast these victories against the outcomes for the men. Most, like Albie, are forced to learn hard lessons. Not all of them even make it to the end of the season.

Race: 3/5

Given that 76% of millionaires in the United States were white in 2021, it’s no surprise that The White Lotus’ affluent guests reflect this. However, the first season justly received criticism for its failure to comment on their privilege. Meanwhile, its Native Hawaiian and Black characters were largely sidelined.

Some of this was intentional on the part of the show’s creator and solo director-writer, Mike White. He tells Vulture:

I want to get into some of the stuff about Hawaii and the colonial, imperial parts of it that exist to this day. I feel like I tried to weave that in. When you start trying to tell that story, though, it’s like, Is this really my story to tell? … I think your reaction is the right reaction, which is, I have conflicted feelings about it. That’s what it hopefully is designed to do. I’m okay with people having that reaction, and I’m okay with the criticism because I think it’s a valid criticism.

Rather than approaching that criticism head on, however, Season 2 takes the safer route by avoiding conversations about race altogether. This isn’t to say it whitewashes the entire cast; Plaza, whose mother is Puerto Rican, and the actor who plays her onscreen husband, Will Sharpe (whose mother is Japanese) enjoy main roles as Harper and Ethan—an improvement from the supporting and guest roles that actors of color held in Season 1. Better yet, their ethnicities aren’t erased. In the first episode, Harper quips that she and Ethan are the “diverse friends” of the white couple they’re vacationing with, Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Cameron (Theo James). In the next episode, Ethan mentions that half of Harper’s family lives in Puerto Rico.

Still, this is where any discussions of race stop, and it’s by design. “I didn’t know that I had the gumption to wade into those waters again, knowing I was going to get sniper fire from every direction,” White says in an interview with TheWrap. “Maybe the classic sexual politics, the naughty subversive stuff we’re getting into, will take the edge off a little bit from that.”

I do wish that White’s discomfort around writing characters of color didn’t prevent him from trying. Given Season 3’s likely setting somewhere in Asia, I certainly hope we’ll see some growth in this area.

LGBTQ: 4.5/5

As an openly bisexual man, it’s no shock that White handles queer narratives in The White Lotus with a level of adroitness. Previously, viewers met one gay character, Maui’s resort manager named Armond (Murray Bartlett). In Season 2, the series expands on queer representation.

Quentin (Tom Hollander) is a gay English expat traveling with an ensemble of gay friends and his “nephew” Jack (Leo Woodall). They live lavishly, with villa- and yacht-bound antics that play out in gripping ways. On the face of it, these characters could come off as clichéd effete villains—a trope that Hollywood has hashed out through queer-coded baddies, time and time again. Their presentation in The White Lotus has even pinged a few viewers’ radars. But rather than succumb to lazy stereotypes, White reclaims them as his characters follow in the footsteps of other modern gay villains whose sexualities humanize, rather than dehumanize, them. Bernardo Sim puts it well for Out Magazine, “The endgame of The White Lotus is a perfect example of how characters can be villainous and gay – not villains because they’re gay, but villains who also happen to be gay.”

Besides Quentin and co., viewers follow Valentina, who we come to find out is a lesbian. She makes for a great addition to the cast, and comes as part of the year’s wave of characters that helped make lesbians the majority LGBTQ group on TV for the first time since GLAAD began keeping track over 15 years ago.

Valentina has wonderful nuance and Impacciatore brings her to life in outstanding fashion. Most of the sexual liaisons that take place in The White Lotus’ second season scream of lust and selfish hedonism, but the relationship that Valentina shares with Mia stands out as unusually sweet, even innocent. Yes, it remains a transactional exchange, as Valentina is in charge of hiring for the job that Mia wants. But a genuine friendship blossoms between them; after their night together, Mia offers to take Valentina out to find a “real lesbian for a lover” and encourages the older woman on her journey of self-discovery.

Valentina defies norms in a few other ways: Played by Impacciatore who is in her 50s, the character tells a queer Gen X story. Newer shows tend to focus on LGBTQ characters in their 30s or younger, so it’s important to showcase the community’s age diversity. It’s also refreshing to see a lesbian character in the context of Italy, where same-sex marriage remains illegal. Impacciatore tells Entertainment Weekly, “As an Italian actress, I felt so proud that I could use this role to stand for the queer community.” Finally, Valentina gets a happy ending, more free and excited for where life will take her at the end of the series than how she began it. Her trajectory makes for a wonderful antidote to the “bury your gays” trope that the season could easily have slipped into, given the ignominious ends met by Quentin and his band of “evil gays.”

Bonus for Age: +0.25

F. Murray Abraham plays a man on vacation with his son and grandson. But he’s not the innocent or revered grandfather figure we usually see on screen; he openly hits on young women, has arguments with his middle-aged son and twenty-something-year-old grandson that reveal their differing generational attitudes towards women, and mentions past infidelities as if they’re perfectly normal for men to partake in. This complicated character subverts our expectations of how men in their 80s should be portrayed on TV.

Mediaversity Grade: A- 4.44/5

The White Lotus improves over its first season, not just technically but on gender and LGBTQ inclusiveness, too. It still struggles to write well-rounded characters of color, but knowing that Season 3 focuses on “death and Eastern religion and spirituality,” I’m really hoping that White diversifies his creative team enough to properly explore the nuances of race in this upcoming season.

Like The White Lotus - Season 2? Try these other murder mystery series.

Grade: ALiJanuary 1, 2023Great for: Technical, Great for: Gender