Review of The White Lotus Season 3

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

I’m writing this blog post in early August 2025, even though, due to my publishing schedule, this is going to come out in probably November. Editorial calendars on my end are very backed up, which means that a solid chunk of my blog posts are going to be released much later than expected unless it’s timely. I also found a job soon after writing this, which is a good sign for me!

Anyways: I was watching a lot of television when I was unemployed and really catching up on the books I was reading. I was in the financial situation where I could sit back for a bit and wait to see what happens. I did end up needing to desperately find a job for health insurance in the end, but I did enjoy the brief period of rest I was able to get before needing to work.

I watched season two of The White Lotus back when I was working as a professional film critic, but I avoided watching season three for the longest time. I was very curious about it because it had Carrie Coon and Lisa from BLACKPINK in it, although I was quite skeptical of the fact that Lisa was in this one. I have heard quite a bit about Jennie’s performance in her show.

But when my sister and I decided to split an HBO Max subscription just so she could watch The White Lotus, it seemed like the right time to sit down and finally watch season three. I ended up watching it throughout the course of a week to try and not go insane, especially when I started struggling with the show.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to spoil my thoughts too soon.

In Thailand, chaos and mystery surrounds the vacationers and staff at the White Lotus hotel.

As usual with The White Lotus, each season has a rotating cast and a different location in a White Lotus hotel. This season takes place on a resort in Thailand, which has its own emphasis on wellness. As we see from several specific characters breaking this rule, phones are expected to be given away during the duration of the stay and there are activities with yoga and meditation.

We open up with the inciting incident that actually occurs in the last episode. Zion, the son of a spa manager at the White Lotus, is meeting with the meditation person at the hotel (Amrita). While he sits down with her, gunshots go off and people start screaming and fleeing. Zion throws himself into the water, where he then collides with a dead body.

Then the show goes back to the beginning of what’s about to happen a week prior. We meet the guests: there’s Rick and Chelsea, who are an odd couple. Rick doesn’t seem to want to do anything with Chelsea half the time, who is literally much younger than him, despite her seeming to want to get to know him more. He also wants to meet the hotel owner’s husband, which is a bit weird at first.

Tim Ratliff then rolls up with his family. There’s his wife Victoria and kids Piper, Saxon, and Lochlan. They’re here because Piper wants to work on her school thesis on a specific Buddhist monk nearby, despite her family seeming like very much out of touch white American WASPs. Victoria especially is an airhead, while Saxon is a bit sex-obsessed and comes across as that frat guy everyone outside of the frat/sorority scene hates.

Later on we’ll see there’s a lot of trouble rocking this family, especially when Timothy’s way of doing business comes to threaten their existence. Beyond the family, there’s also a famous actress, Jaclyn, who’s come to the resort with her longtime friends Kate and Laurie. These three are going to enter their own series of arguments and bickering that they’re going to need to sort through in these eight episodes.

With the realm of the star, we mainly get to see Belinda’s story, as she has a bit of a romantic tryst of her own, as well as the Thai security guard Maitok. Maiktok and Mook, the girl from his village he likes and also works with, are some of the key Thai representation in this series. We don’t get much of that, though, as The White Lotus is also very much about the out-of-touch wealthy and the messes they create.

And that’s what this season largely focuses on. Each of the wealthy individuals who’ve come to this resort has their own baggage they need to sort through, no matter how large it is and how it impacts the people surrounding them. That’s what has always been interesting about this series, although I’d argue this location adds a layer of colonialism that particularly interests me with the Thailand setting.

Overall Thoughts

I think for me this season started off really strong, but then it began losing me around the halfway point. I remember I didn’t have this problem when I was watching season two of The White Lotus, and maybe it’s the attention span in me slowly dwindling as social media consumes our lives, but I found that I just didn’t connect with this cast.

I did like the spa manager and was interested in her story, but she’s not the main focus. I felt really sorry for Chelsea throughout the course of the series particularly, but, at the same time, she was complicit in her own suffering because of the way she didn’t just up and leave Rick behind. She loved him, that’s for sure, but that girl certainly had a lot of strength.

Anyways, I thought this season was interesting, but not particularly compelling. People really like this show because of how it critiques class and wealth, especially when it comes to rich people’s behaviors, but we’ve seen that already in shows like Squid Game. I can see how people love this season though, even if I personally did not care for it as much.

Taste is subjective at the end of the day, and it’s fine if I didn’t like it as much and someone else sees it as their favorite season. Neither of us are wrong! So go watch it if you haven’t already and are interested in seeing it.

Follow me below on Instagram, Letterboxd, and Goodreads for more.