White Lotus Season 2 (spoilers)

[Gaston de Foix]

53 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

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I wasn’t sure if it was Greg in the photo, my first thought was that it was him. I tried to think what he looked like with hair.. him being in Napoleon Dynamite.. with a wig. 
 

Im almost certain this is a honey trap to get out of the pre nup, it’s all set up quite clearly now.

Plus on the other side yes I think the pimp ploy is going to rip off Albie and co.

Im not sure the theme of this season is Rich people preying on the poor, I think it is more to do with people being slaves to their own desires and those who are able to exploit it. 

 

Spoiler

If both the honeytrap and the pimp ploy are true, I will be quite disappointed.  One would be interesting.  Both would be story-telling-by-numbers.  I actually think the pimp is real, and will kill Lucia and Albie once Albie agrees to take her to LA. 

We are seeing Ethan enter an Othello like cycle of jealous rage and dissociation.  But as against that, Cameron openly made passes and flirted with Harper.  So by any measure Ethan has to be the likeliest killer.  

 

[Relic]

If the bodies from epi 1 turn out to be murder victims I'd be surprised. Just doesn't seem like that type of show. 

[Gaston de Foix]

Just now, Relic said:

If the bodies from epi 1 turn out to be murder victims I'd be surprised. Just doesn't seem like that type of show. 

What else could they be? Death by drowning accident?

[Relic]

1 minute ago, Gaston de Foix said:

What else could they be? Death by drowning accident?

I'd go with something in the realm of an accident, yes. And it probably won't be any of the rich folk.

 

As an aside, I think the story of this season can be seen in the credit sequence. The lust and violence is in the little details, while beauty, opulence, and decadence reign front and center. 

[Zorral]

10 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

What else could they be? Death by drowning accident?

That's what lots of watchers think.  As also said above, this isn't a murder mystery show, so accident/overdose/etc. is quite in the cards.  We viewers may be a bit more than a little influenced in our expectations that this is Sicily and Godfathers' ancestral lands.    So don't dare make predictions.

[RumHam]

They pretty much have to jettison either Tanya or the "someone died" framing device next season, no? It's gonna be pretty weird if on three separate occasions she visits one of these places and someone is killed.

[Datepalm]

8 hours ago, RumHam said:

They pretty much have to jettison either Tanya or the "someone died" framing device next season, no? It's gonna be pretty weird if on three separate occasions she visits one of these places and someone is killed.

I'd be fine with it. I don't mind a little midsomer style absurdity.

[Heartofice]

The fact that it's going to be multiple people dying suggests it's probably murder... or mass suicide.

[Relic]

59 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The fact that it's going to be multiple people dying suggests it's probably murder... or mass suicide.

the opposite, actually. multiple bodies washing up on a beach doesn't scream "murder" to me. A boating or jet ski accident seems more realistic. 

[Gaston de Foix]

3 hours ago, Relic said:

the opposite, actually. multiple bodies washing up on a beach doesn't scream "murder" to me. A boating or jet ski accident seems more realistic. 

Spoiler

But think through the logical implausibilities.  Unless all four of Cameron/Harper & Co. die in the accident why would the others not report their spouses missing?  And if all four do disappear, the White Lotus resort wouldn't notice that their jet skis hadn't returned?  Tanya & Portia don't seem to the sort to go boating/jet-skiing, nor Bert. 

On the other hand, perhaps the whole round robin of moving Salvatore/Rocco etc from the Beach Club is that Valentina leaves the Beach club unattended during this crucial time so that the four actually do have an accident and no one notices.  Plausible, I guess.  But all the sinister themes of murder, infidelity and the Moor (talk about Othello references!) would be complete misdirection then. 

 

[Heartofice]

I suspect whoever dies might have something to do with what was said about the statue:

"The story is a Moor came here a long time ago and seduced a local girl. But then she found out that he had a wife and children back home," Rocco explains to the four of them. "So, because he lied to her, she cut his head off."

That makes me think it might be Cameron or Ethan. It would be strange that it's Daphne who finds them, bit of a coincidence, but then it's her who is alone on the beach, seemingly not upset and had a nice holiday up till that point. 

[Relic]

All we know that there are multiple bodies, they are labeled "guests" of the hotel, and that Daphne finds one of them.

The only thoughts I have is that one of them might be Greg. Otherwise I don't even really care. That's not what this show is about, to me.

[Gaston de Foix]

2 hours ago, Relic said:

The only thoughts I have is that one of them might be Greg. Otherwise I don't even really care. That's not what this show is about, to me.

I'm curious, what is the show about to you? You said it's about "beauty, opulence, and decadence[.]" That's undeniable but also very general.  

[RumHam]

I keep seeing the guy who plays Cameron on my google news feed. He must be giving a shit ton of interviews which for some reason makes me suspect he's among the dead.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I'm curious, what is the show about to you? You said it's about "beauty, opulence, and decadence[.]" That's undeniable but also very general.  

The show's theme, both last time and this time too surely, is that rich people get in trouble and it's others who suffer for it and clean up the mess. The rich just move on, taking all their baggage with them, which would include Tanya's absolute to the max degree possible self-centeredness.  The poor suffer.  The rich do not change.

[Heartofice]

Just now, Zorral said:

The show's theme, both last time and this time too surely, is that rich people get in trouble and it's others who suffer for it and clean up the mess. The rich just move on, taking all their baggage with them, which would include Tanya's absolute to the max degree possible self-centeredness.  The poor suffer.  The rich do not change.

That theme really doesn’t seem to be the focus this season. It barely applies at all. 

[Relic]

4 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I'm curious, what is the show about to you? You said it's about "beauty, opulence, and decadence[.]" That's undeniable but also very general.  

This season? I think its about corruption. Corruption within, and without. I can probably give you a better reply tomorrow, but that's my initial attempt. 

[Zorral]

Or – “… the willful delusion of the wealthy — and how easily preyed upon people who evade reality can be.” 
Early in the second season of “The White Lotus” — Mike White’s HBO satire of the leisure class, currently set in a five-star Sicilian resort — there’s a sequence that offers an overt, shot-for-shot homage to a scene in “L’Avventura,” from 1960, the first film in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Trilogy of Decadence.” ….

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/magazine/the-white-lotus-monica-vitti.html

Quote

 

The scene “The White Lotus” recreates takes place outside, in the piazza, where Claudia is accosted by a horde of leering men. The aesthetics are disconcerting: Antonioni uses the town’s baroque architecture to pile men around and atop Claudia. She looks afraid, for a moment, but then has a sort of detachment from reality. Walking slowly through the crowd, she seems to give herself over to the experience, allowing herself to become a spectacle, subject to the men’s (and the audience’s) scrutinizing, consuming gaze.

Even before “The White Lotus” fully replicates this image, though, we see one character — a batty gazillionaire named Tanya McQuoid, played by Jennifer Coolidge — explicitly name-check Vitti.  ....

.... “L’Avventura” is not the only film referenced in “The White Lotus,” which is positively haunted by movies and the fantasies they engender. As Tanya casts herself in her superficial version of an Italian film, Bert Di Grasso — a grandfather whose family trip to Sicily has been upended by the women in the family’s refusing to come — is exalting the ethos of “The Godfather,” in which he sees men who are free to do as they like. After her ill-fated Vitti cosplay leaves her alone and betrayed, Tanya takes up with Quentin, part of a group of “high-end gays,” as she calls them, who recast her as a tragic heroine. Quentin tells her about his own lost love, but it sounds like the plot of “Brokeback Mountain,” and he takes her to the opera to see “Madama Butterfly,” which, in this context, can’t help but call to mind “M. Butterfly,” and a very specific form of romantic deception. As the line blurs between stories and lies, the vibe shifts closer to “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” If the first season of “The White Lotus” was about the casual destructiveness of wealth, this one seems to be about its willful delusion — and how easily preyed upon people who evade reality can be. ....

 

 

[Gaston de Foix]

22 hours ago, Zorral said:

Or – “… the willful delusion of the wealthy — and how easily preyed upon people who evade reality can be.” 
Early in the second season of “The White Lotus” — Mike White’s HBO satire of the leisure class, currently set in a five-star Sicilian resort — there’s a sequence that offers an overt, shot-for-shot homage to a scene in “L’Avventura,” from 1960, the first film in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Trilogy of Decadence.” ….

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/magazine/the-white-lotus-monica-vitti.html

 

Spoiler

Hmmm.  That would suggest that (a) Tanya honeytrap (b) Lucia fooling Albie may both be true. 

It also suggests Ethan killing Cameron in a jealous rage.  Of the two, Cameron is the one who acts with the impunity afforded by wealth.    

 

[Zorral]

If I'm remembering correctly Cameron is the only one of the primaries from whom we haven't had a scene from his point of view.  What does it meeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!?  Hmmmmmmm?