The White Lotus’s subversive game

Warning: extensive spoilers for series 2

The mystery of The White Lotus was there from its start. In the second series opener, Daphne, the slender, freckled trophy wife, tells new arrivals on the beach: “The hotel’s perfect . . . Italy’s just so romantic, oh, you’re going to die. They’re gonna have to drag you out of here.” Before she goes for one last swim right into a floating cadaver.

The weekly episode drop of this HBO series, created, directed and written by Mike White, has proved that event TV is here to stay in the age of streaming. The mystery of who died and whodunnit gave the show its momentum, along with the sumptuous Sicilian location and sharp dialogue. But what made it truly satisfying was its picking apart of the games people play in their relationships, in all their moral complexity.

The first series of The White Lotus was a cutting satire on the entitlement of the rich and the suffering of their attendants. There was the callousness of San Francisco-born billionaire heiress Tanya, played by a quivering Jennifer Coolidge, dashing the spa dreams of the resort’s beautician; and the demise of the resort manager Armond, who, under the pressure of whining customers, freefalls into a drink-drugs-and-sex meltdown.

This second series doesn’t let the rich off the hook for their bad behaviour entirely — Cameron, a financier who is seemingly involved in some kind of Madoff scheme, whines about a friend sacked for mistreating his assistant. But the focus is really on sex and relationships, and the issues the holidayers face are existential. The beach and the pool offer no escape. In fact, without the distractions of their jobs or kids, the tourists’ problems are amplified: they are forced to confront the ugly flaws of their marriages and parenting.

So the newly minted Ethan, fresh from the craziness of his tech company going public, jerks off to porn alone, making excuses to not have sex with his wife Harper (the brilliant Aubrey Plaza, her face morphing from eye-rolling acerbity to spiralling paranoia). Dominic, a big-shot Hollywood producer, is dealing with the marital fallout of his womanising, while his Gen-Z son Albie demands he confront his faults. Meanwhile Tanya, the spoilt heiress, finds her hopes for a romantic holiday with her husband Greg are dashed by his premature departure.

Even Portia, Tanya’s assistant, whose job seems only to involve some light boss-babysitting, experiences a crisis: “I just thought I’d come here and feel something. Is everything boring? I just feel like there must have been a time when the world had more.”

The show could simply skewer super-rich people’s problems, but it moves beyond that. White shows that everyone is playing a game. It may be an explicit hustle, as with the escorts Lucia and Mia, pretending to be attracted or even in love with their clients, or Quentin, a charismatic Tom Hollander, the “high-end gay” who may be plotting to kill Tanya for her money.

Or the game might be psychological, like the one played by Daphne and Cameron, whose mutual unfaithfulness keeps their relationship alive. Daphne shows that the game can also be one of self-deception — she chooses to see what she wants to see. At first, Harper’s problem is that she’s too straightforward — she seems incapable of playing the game and feels uncomfortable with her and her husband’s new wealth, saying they are “larping [live action role playing] as rich people”.

White, however, never plays anything too straight. Morality is not black-and-white. Game-playing is not necessarily bad — in fact, it can be invigorating. As Daphne explains to Ethan: “We never really know what goes on in people’s minds . . . You spend every second with somebody and there’s still this part that’s a mystery . . . You do what you have to do not to feel like a victim of life.”

It doesn’t matter how attentive you are to the game, it may be pure chance who wins. Quentin, master of the con, winds up dead just like the clueless Tanya. The bloodbath on the superyacht is a rare case of the rich and powerful losing a game which, as Quentin’s “nephew”/accomplice Jack warns Portia, is usually rigged in their favour. It is a heartening contrast to the last series. And as we watch Mia and Lucia’s valedictory walk at the finale’s close, White offers a glimmer of subversive hope — sometimes the unlikeliest people come out on top.

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