The White Lotus came to HBO almost through the back door in the middle of summer 2021when we were still dragging the consequences of the pandemic. One of these miniseries called to have a single season to alternate between beach or pool, while enjoying a mojito. It didn’t take long for it to become one of the most acclaimed titles of that year, confirming that phrase that there are no small series for the summer months. After its second season, it can be said that it has become one of the great successes of the platform, in times marked by uncertainty due to merger with Discovery and the changes in the leadership of the company, where even self-produced titles are disappearing from its catalogue.
When they were delivered Emmy Last September, we all already knew that the second season of The White Lotus would be released in a few weeks, but nobody cared that its first installment swept away as best miniseries. Miniseries but the continuation is not coming now? The academics put the clip on their nose and voted, while the spectators celebrated the well-deserved award. With The White Lotus it is confirmed that if a good story sweeps audiences even though it is intended for a single installment, there will already be ways to continue it. Step with Big Little Lieswith true detectiveit seems that it is going to be repeated with Mare of Easttown and, of course, it has happened with The White Lotus. Sometimes it succeeds, other times it doesn’t. And when it is done well and not for the mere fact of stretching the gum, it is always appreciated.
The creation of Mike White not only has it swept again in its second installment, the last episode of which aired this Monday, but the timer has already started to count the days remaining to the premiere of the thirdwhat is highly confirmed. There is no better example of the confidence that HBO has in this series than the fact that it chose it to replace the very same Monday series dragon housethe prequel to Game of Thrones. Finished the sequel to The White Lotus, it is worth wondering which was better if the first or the second. I have my doubts, but I have spent the last few weeks humming in Italian and devouring the new episodes as they were released. Unlike the previous examples, this sequel has lived up to the first and has nothing to envy.
Change of scenery
To justify the continuations, The White Lotus was approached as an anthology series in which each season would tell us a stand-alone story set in luxury resorts with the same name in different cities around the world. The first installment took us to the white hawaii beaches, while in the second we have jumped into the waters of the Mediterranean and more specifically to the Italian island of Sicily. It is time to let yourself be dazzled by the magnificence of the Sicilian Renaissance mansions. As in the first installment, we find ourselves with unfortunate rich people in a paradisiacal environment, with a plot that is cooking slowly but surely, so that all the ingredients provide a sufficient degree of tension at the right time.
From the first minute of the first episode, we know someone is going to die. This was another one of those golden rules established in the first season. The fun is in trying to find out who is going to be the victim. A revelation that will not arrive until the last minutes of the final episode. As if we were in a mix between a novel of Christie Agatha and an episode of holidays at sea, we have a new range of candidates with enough numbers to be killed incarnated by a cast of luxury actors. Experience combined with other more unknown interpreters but who know how to provide a sufficient charge of fresh air. We warn that they are coming spoilers hereinafter.
From the first moment, as the future victim for this new installment, we were able to rule out the hotel manager, in this case the manager. She appears declaring before the Police as soon as she finds her body. Rather, corpses. The maxim of any sequel is to give the same but with more than your predecessor. A murray barlett it happens to him in the hard tasks of dealing with some disgustingly rich clients the Italian Sabrina Impacciatore. The two characters, in addition to their position, have in common that they feel attracted to people of the same sex. But, the similarities between those responsible for the resort between one season and another end here.
The link between the two installments of the series is the character played by Jennifer Coolidge which she reprises in the role of Tanya. The actress lives an unexpected return to the first line after her Emmy for the first season, her role in Vigilante (another hit by Ryan Murphy on Netflix) and their participation in this new installment of White Lotus. Coolidge has known how to leave setting a very high bar. If someone thought that she was going to be the one to host us to introduce us to the new characters of the third season, she can forget about it because in the end the victim is her. I warned that there were spoilers, right? With the precedent that has been set in this second installment, all those characters that repeat in the third have enough numbers to be the corpse with which the first episode opens. But as we have already seen in the case of the hotel manager, this does not have to be a fixed rule either.
In the end Tanya met a tragic death devoured in the depths of the sea, despite the desperate final moments in which she fought for her life. A heroic escape that ends with a stupid fall. We could not believe that with such a splash she was going to be the deceased, until we realized that the victim could not be anyone else but her. In her own way, Tania starred in her own version of madame butterflythat opera that managed to bring tears to his eyes in an Italian theater. It was inevitable that if you go to film in Sicily, the mafia will end up showing up somewhere.
The conspiracy to end Tania’s life seems a huge loose end which could be resolved in future episodes. By the way, doesn’t it seem a little botched the investigation of everything that happened on the yacht? The plot of Tania’s death leads us to conclude that some of the performers who have appeared on this Sicilian journey will have to repeat themselves at the new resort, although it is not that the different groups that have made up the cast have interacted much with each other. . Only the characters of the two prostitutes (Simona Tabasco Y Beatrice Granno) are the ones that have had the most relationship with the different groups of guests of the luxurious facilities, but we can consider them discarded for future deliveries. Will Portia return?Haley Lu Richardson) Tania’s young assistant, perhaps, and that you see one of the few people who knows the truth?, Greg (Jon Gries) the widower, Tania’s intellectual murderer and rich heir? We already knew that there was little love in that couple, but we did not imagine that it would get as far as it has.
the other secondaries
The second of the groups in this second season is made up of a millennial grandfather, father and son of an Italian-American family who travel to Sicily to find their roots. Here we find another of the heavyweights of the cast, F. Murray Abraham, who continues to offer us great performances, now on the small screen. either in Homelands like in Mythical Quest. It was hard for me to recognize Michael Imperioli, in a role far removed from the one he threw to the starry in the sopranoshere father of a family and Hollywood producer with problems of sex addiction. It was inevitable that, on his part, there would also be allusions to the mafia. Their tangential role in Tania’s plot makes it more than likely that we can also rule them out.
The third group is made up of two married couples who decide to spend a few days on vacation at the resort. Of these two couples, aubrey square I discovered it this summer in Parks & Recreations (a gem rescued by HBO this summer). Somehow he continues to play the same character, but with a certain maturity behind him. His interpretation has been another of the assets of these new episodes. Her husband Ethan (Will Sharpe) has just been born with a great fortune after the sale of his company and he is going to celebrate it with this trip with Cameron, one of his best friends from the University. Cam, who always enjoyed taking what he was after from Ethan, is played by Theo Jameswhich repeats this year in another HBO series after the sadly canceled The weather man’s womanwhere he developed his role as a gallant after being an action hero in the saga Divergent. The tensions due to suspicions of infidelity are served here. By the way, Cam’s wife (played by meghann fahy) also obtained the safe-conduct to survival, as she is the one who makes the macabre discovery with which the season begins.
Mike White has already revealed that he is thinking of a country in Asia for future episodes and that the theme would be death and oriental spirituality. Each installment has been focused on a specific theme. In the first it was class struggle and in the second the sex and power Those two married couples who have shared a trip comment at the end of the last episode that the following year they would repeat their trip to the maldives. Is it a clue to the new location?