The White Lotus Season 3 finale is this weekend and one character will not make it out of the show alive. It’s anybody’s guess, really, and the predictions seem to be all over the place.
Written and directed by Mike White, each season of the hit HBO series that streams on Max takes place in a different location of The White Lotus luxury global resort chain. Season 1 was set in Hawaii, while Season 2 took place in Sicily and Season 3 unfolds in Thailand.
While the location is different each season, the core narraitive in the series remains the same. One of the visitors or workers at The White Lotus is found dead at the start of each season, and throughout the eight episodes the mystery of which character died and who is the perpetrator slowly unravels. At one point or another during each season, it appears that everyone is suspect.
In Season 1, it was The White Lotus Maui’s manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) who is stabbed to death — albeit unintentionally — at the hands of resort guest Shane (Jake Lacy). Jennifer Coolidge, who originated the role of heiress Tanya McQuoid in Season 1, returned for Season 2, only to die by tripping and hitting her head on a boat and drowning. Even more sad, Tanya’s death came after she thwart her husband Greg Hunt’s (Jon Gries) plans for assassins to take her out.
Greg, of course, has returned for Season 3 and has found refuge from authorities on a lush Thai estate with his new and much younger girlfriend, Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon). Greg isn’t the only one capable of murder or becoming the victim in Season 3, however.
There are the five members of the Ratliff family — Timothy (Jason Isaacs) and Victoria (Parker Posey) and their grown children Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lochlan (Sam Nivola) — who could bite the dust, as well as a trio of longtime supposed best friends, Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon).
Also at risk are another May-December couple Rick (Walton Goggins) and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), as well as resort workers Mook (Lalisa Manobal), Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) — a White Lotus staffer from Season 1 who is in Thailand on a temporary transfer.
Even though the resort’s owner, Sritala Hollinger (Patravadi Mejudhon) and two other staffers — Valentin (Arnas Fedaravičius) and Fabian (Christian Friedel) — are not featured on The White Lotus Season 3 poster (pictured above), they appear during the season often enough and need to be considered as potential victims.
Since Sam Rockwell is a guest star as Rick’s troubled buddy Frank in Season 3, it seems like his death is unlikely since generally the victim and killer are members of the core cast. Frank is a loose cannon, though, as is another guest star, Scott Glenn — who plays Sritala’s uber-connected husband, Jim Hollinger.
After Jim is confronted and upended in his chair by Rick for killing his father when he was a child, it’s reasonable to think that he will stop nothing to protect his assets — including taking another life.
Of course, the key motiviation for every season of The White Lotus is compel viewers to come up with their own theories as to who each season’s victim and murderer will be — and Season 3 is no different. Here’s a list of predictions from some major publications following the show this season.
Cosmopolitan Feels Fairly Certain That Gaitok’s Time Is Up
Ranking all of the potential victims from the ensemble, Cosmopolitan believes Gaitok will perish in The White Lotus Season 3 finale. Cosmopolitan’s summary as to why reads, “Gaitok works in security, so his odds of getting involved in a gunfight are already high. Driven by his crush on Mook, he’s desperate to prove that he can be tough. And now that he knows Valentin and his Russian friends are the ones who robbed The White Lotus, he could have his perfect revenge. Perhaps what starts as a verbal confrontation escalates into a gunfight.”
As for the shooter, the publication believes it will be Valentin or his Russian criminal conspirators. Gaitok, after all, identified the perpetrators in Episode 7 following their brazen robbery of the resort earlier in the season.
Slate Predicts Valentin And His Cronies Will Die
Gaitok factors into who dies in Slate’s pick for the big reveal of who will die in the finale of The White Lotus Season 3, but with a twist. The publication believes he’ll be the person firing the weapon since he needs to prove his masculinity to win over Mook.
“After realizing at the Muay Thai match that White Lotus health hottie Valentin (Arnas Fedaravičius) and his Russian pals are the goons who concussed him and robbed the hotel in Episode 2, it seems likely he’ll seek to prove his masculinity and redeem himself for this season’s follies by exacting his revenge,” Slate notes in its prediction. “It could work out perfectly that the three Russians might once again show up armed to the hotel to rob the three bickering gal pals with whom they’ve become entwined. Enter: Gaitok’s vengeance.”
Slate also lists different possibilities of who dies and who the murderer will be, but the odds it places on Gaitok exacting revenge far outweigh the other scenarios they present.
Parade Believes Saxon Will Be The Victim
The oddsmakers at Parade Magazine also ranked who will be the potential victim from least likely to most likely, and it’s not Gaitok. Instead, they believe Saxon is not long for this world.
“It’s actually due to the risk of being in association [with] Rick that Saxon makes the top of the list. Giving eyes to [Chelsea] feels like the worst omen we get for a character in the show, considering how dangerous her boyfriend seems to be,” Parade notes in its prediction summary that came out on Feb. 19, three days after the season premiere.
“He also gets stonewalled when talking to the trio of older women on their girls trip. Frustration may start to build for a man who seemingly has gotten everything he’s ever wanted,” Parade’s prediction adds. “There’s a good chance he winds up as the one dead (though don’t rule out the possibility that he does the killing).”
Note: Parade noted that Saxon was “giving eyes to Rachel,” when in fact Rick’s girlfriend is Chelsea, which is why the summary is partially paraphrased above. It could be that Alexandra Daddario’s Rachel was on the writer’s mind when making the pick.
The London Evening Standard Thinks Timothy’s Time Has Come
Like other publications, The London Evening Standard ranks the odds of several different scenarios but arrives at the conclusion that “the perma-stressed Tim” who “just keeps getting bad news” is the person who will perish in The White Lotus Season 3 finale.
“First his accounts are being scrutinized, then his offices are being raided by the FBI and his assets frozen. He’s already contemplated suicide, and he keeps knocking himself out with his wife’s drugs so as not to have to face being awake and conscious,” The Standard writes.
“To leap from that to a murder spree isn’t that far-fetched, especially given those vivid hallucinations where he ends up killing half his family before turning the gun on himself,” the publication added. “True, he doesn’t currently have the gun, but when has that stopped anybody? This stuff writes itself.”
As such, the publication gives Timothy Ratliff a 9 out of 10 on the scale of the character on its “Likelihood of death” scale. Not far behind him, though, is Rick with an 8 out of 10 rating.
In short, The Standard says it’s “a very plausible scenario that he ends up being shot in retaliation for daring to pull a gun on one of the most powerful men in the country.”
Of course, reporters and fans will definitively find out who will be the victim and the murderer when The White Lotus Season 3 finale premieres Sunday on Max.
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