The second season of the HBO smash hit The White Lotus has come to an end, and as you process the twist, turns and multiple deaths that capped off the suspenseful season, creator, writer and director Mike White is sharing some insight into the various dysfunctional relationships, his thoughts behind THAT death, and what’s next for season 2. Beware of spoilers ahead.
The show’s sophomore season began with the discovery of multiple dead bodies, and the answer to the season-long mystery was finally revealed in the finale. Season 1 fan-favorite Jennifer Coolidge‘s character Tanya McQuoid met her demise after discovering her Palermo friends had some disturbingly twisted motives.
White explained in an HBO Max post-episode featurette, “In the end of the last season, Tanya is sitting with Greg in the last episode and he’s talking about his health issues and she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years, death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried,’ and I was thinking, it’d be so fun to bring Tanya back because she’s such a great character, but maybe that’s the journey for her, the journey to death.”
“Not that I really wanted to kill Tanya,” he said. “Because I love her as a character and obviously love Jennifer, but we’re going to Italy, she’s such a diva, a larger-than-life female archetype. It felt maybe we could devise our own operatic conclusion to her life and story.” And an immersive death, it was.
After arriving to The White Lotus hotel in Sicily, Tanya and her husband Greg seem to be experiencing a rough patch in their marriage. Tanya abruptly stops Greg during sex when she’s struck with a foreboding vision. “I was surrounded by men with very effeminate hairstyles,” she told him. “You were there too and you had shark eyes!” Greg also has a big issue with Tanya’s assistant Portia (played by Haley Lu Richardson) tagging along on their trip.
After Greg informs Tanya that he has to leave vacation early for work, the pair fight over their marital prenup that protects Tanya’s finances in the case of divorce. Before he leaves Sicily, Tanya listens in on Greg tell a mystery person on the phone that Tanya is still in the dark about some unknown secret.
Left alone with Portia, Tanya is wooed by a pack of fabulously chic gay men, led by Quentin (Tom Hollander). He whisks Tanya away to his villa in Palermo and attend a showing of the opera Madama Butterfly, where the female protagonist tragically dies at the end.
After the opera, Quentin tells Tanya of a cowboy lover he once had from Wyoming, and that he doesn’t live for love — he lives for beauty. He asks Tanya, “Would you die for beauty?” (Earlier in the season, Cameron played by Theo James explains that many of the owners of historic palazzos are cash poor and struggle to maintain their lavish properties.)
The penultimate episode comes to a close with Tanya discovering an old photo of Quentin and his cowboy lover, who has a remarkable resemblance to a younger version of Tanya’s husband Greg. As she boards Quentin’s yacht to return to the hotel, Tanya receives a call from Portia who tells her she has a “weird feeling something bad is going to happen.” Portia has become increasingly anxious with Jack, who seems to be intentionally keeping her from the villa.
Portia tells Tanya that Jack drunkenly revealed that Quentin is broke but is about to come into a lot of money. Tanya quickly realizes that while her prenup would protect her from divorce, Greg would get all her money if she were to die while still married to him — and he was the one to insist they visit Sicily. After uncovering Quentin’s plan to kill Tanya for her money, the heiress goes on the offensive.
Tanya accidentally drops her phone overboard and realizes they plan to send her to shore on a little motorboat with the mafia entangled Niccolò, who will likely kill her enroute. Attempting to play the waiting game, Tanya runs into a room with Niccolò’s duffle bag that contains rope, duct tape and a gun.
As Niccolò busts in the door, she shoots and kills all but one on board (Quentin, Niccolò, and Dider). After the last guest jumps overboard, Tanya attempts to hop off the yacht too into the boat sent to bring her to shore. She tries crawling over the railing to the motorboat in her dress and heels while nervously telling herself, “You’ve got his.” Instead, Tanya hits her head on the metal bar and falls into the Ionian Sea.
“I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic. It felt like she needed to give her best fight back and that she, in a way had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her,” explained White. “It just made me laugh to think like she would like take out this cabal of killers and after she successfully does that and she just dies this derpy death and that’s so Tanya.”
The White Lotus was renewed for a third season in November. White teased what the next installment might hold in the featurette. “The first season, we highlighted money and then the second season is sex and I think the third season, it would be maybe a kind of satirical and funny look at death in Eastern religion and spirituality— it feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus,” said White.
The morning after the highly anticipated finale, nominations for the 2023 Golden Globes were announced. The White Lotus was given a nod for best television limited series, while Coolidge, Aubrey Plaza and F. Murray Abraham were nominated for best performance by an actress in a supporting role in a limited series and best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a limited series.
This year, Coolidge snagged her very first Emmy Award for outstanding supporting actress in a limited series or movie thanks to her role as Tanya in the show’s first season.
We’ll forever miss Tanya, but hope Coolidge snags all the awards for her portrayal next year.
