The White Lotus finale: Nothing from nothing leaves nothing

We are all born with needs.

Nourishment, warmth, touch, protection – these are the things we require in the first years of our lives. These are the things that give us a sense of well being, though given that an infant brain can’t possibly identify such a thing, perhaps enoughness is what the protected infant senses.

And love, of course. We needed that from the beginning too. For an infant, love is the fulfillment of all those elemental needs. For an adult it’s more complicated and more fraught.

From the time we begin to identify the self within us, those needs become desires and it is the pursuit of those desires that fills the rest of our lives with anxiety and not-enoughness. We might sense that this is the root of all our discontentedness, that as long as we desire we suffer. But it is the rare human that escapes their self.

In Season 3 of the White Lotus, show creator Mike White drives that point home and not just metaphorically. We have an actual Buddhist retreat and a monk dispensing the truth about the  corrosive nature of self and desire.

While the season finale felt a bit overloaded with action and plot and was laid out perhaps too neatly, it was ultimately satisfying in bringing all those themes smartly to fruition.

The body count in the episode was distractingly high – five by my count – and it was only the sudden reversal of a sixth potentially tragic death that saved this from being unbearable. 

The five main plot points – three old friends whose petty jealousies and resentments nearly undo them; Rick, obsessed with revenge, and his nurturing (co-dependent?) partner; the Raitliff family, beset by external and familial crises; Belinda, who returns from season one still hoping to open her own spa and willing to compromise her morals to get it; and Gaitok, a security guard at the resort, with his self-doubt over his masculinity – reached mostly credible resolutions.

It is not unintentional irony that these characters come face to face with their self-destructive defects at a resort, the very avatar of pleasure and privilege where people go to escape their selfs. Indeed, it is often the boundless pleasure such a vacation promises that underscores the emptiness within. For what desire fulfilled does not lead to chasing more and greater desire?

It is, strangely enough, a peripheral character – Sam Rockwell’s Frank in Episode 5 – who describes the hollowness and futility of endless wanting in an epic monologue that might well be taught in drama school going forward. Frank describes his former debauched life in which he had the money to make his fantasies reality. Ultimately, though, he begins to question the very nature of desire and tries to dissolve his self into the various women with whom he is having sex every night. 

The endless not-enoughness sets him on a spiritual journey and he is, when we first encounter him, at peace, though that peace will be interrupted by a return to debauchery before we see near the end of the series that he has once again found the spiritual path.

Resolutions and Discovery

When Piper discovers she needs air-conditioning and is a slave to comfort, she is at least self-aware enough to be mortified by it. She will be going home with her family, after all, and not staying behind to learn from the monk. Her mother acknowledges the good life they have and suggests that with all the suffering in the world, it would be wrong not to appreciate it. It’s hard to know what Mike White intends by this – is there some wisdom in this point of view or is it hopelessly selfish and shallow? – but it’s interesting to say the least.

Saxon has begun reading the books Chelsea has given him and is on his own path of self-discovery. He senses something is amiss with the family business – the thing around which most of his identity is based – and the sordid incest involving his brother has unmoored him.

Lochlan, who continues to alternate between Piper and Saxon, desperate for connection and acceptance, realizes he is on his own in what he calls “a family of narcissists.”

Tim’s plan is to poison everyone but Lochlan, who has told his father he would be fine if they no longer had a house. Lochlan, Tim surmises, can survive without the family fortune but such is the importance of having in Tim’s mind that it doesn’t occur to him the cruelty of leaving Lochlan as the lone survivor.

Tim comes to his senses at the last minute and takes the poisoned pina coladas from his wife, Piper and Saxon but the next morning, Lochlan unknowingly ingests some of the poison in a protein drink. He retches and after a series of visions involving water and the monk's silhouette, seems to die.

Meanwhile Jaclyn has come to understand her betrayal of Laurie with Valentin and apologizes sincerely. It is their last day together and she seems to want nothing more than for the friendships to survive. At dinner Laurie tells Jaclyn she’s glad Jaclyn has a pretty face and Jaclyn thanks her and Kate for being her friend in spite of knowing her defects so well. Kate’s description of the church that gives her life meaning might seem a bit icky and hollow but Laurie tells her how glad she is that Kate has found a happy life. 

Laurie shares how unhappy she has been, that nothing – including motherhood – satisfied her. But she also has come to understand that while she may not have a belief system to anchor her, time is what gives her life meaning and the three friends are seen for the first time huddled and happy together on a poolside lounge.

Rick has returned from Bangkok having apparently found catharsis from his desire for revenge for his mother’s death. He is a new man and Chelsea welcomes him radiantly into her arms. But it is not meant to be as Jim Hollinger, the man Rick had gone to kill in Bangkok, shows up at the resort and confronts Rick. In a shootout later that we knew was coming from the opening episode but which still felt like it belonged in another show, Rick kills Jim. But Chelsea catches a stray.

Rick, realizing what his need for vengeance has cost him, carries the dying Chelsea off. Gaitok, who is repelled by violence and to that point has been true to his own peaceful nature, shoots Rick in the back. Gaitok is spurred to this action by his girlfriend Mook’s earlier disapproval of his passiveness. 

When we see Gaitok later, he is a bodyguard and has won over Mook.

Rick peers up at the sky as his life ebbs and he nearly smiles. The trappings of a troubled life are releasing him and he is at peace. 

Belinda and her son successfully extort Greg/Gary for $5 million and she intends to finally open that spa. But she has to live with knowing that he will get away with the murder of Tanya in Season 2. She has also chosen money over love and leaves her lover waving forlornly from the pier as the boat carries her and Zion away.

There is a necessary grace note at the end when we see a pair of eyes opening and realize that Lochlan has survived the poison. He looks up at his father, still holding him in his arms and says he thinks he saw God. On the boat heading away from the resort, Tim finally tells his family that they are about to face a significant disruption in their life when they get home but that they are a family and will survive it. 

Mike White smartly ends the series with Billy Preston’s Nothing from Nothing Leaves Nothing.

We come into the world with nothing and spend our lives chasing our desires, seeking the elusive enoughness. 

But only our return to nothing will ever be enough.