Hosts Jia Tolentino and Josh Bearman revisit their predictions and dive into the show’s exploration of identity. Plus, Josh sits down with Aimee Lou Wood to talk about Chelsea’s complexity, her soulmate connection to Rick, and the challenges of keeping that explosive finale under wraps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the main themes explored in Season 3 of White Lotus?
And I'm Josh Bearman.
And welcome to the last hurrah, the bonus episode for our season three companion podcast. We'll be talking to Amy Lou Wood later on. But first, like, we're just going to be talking about the big things of this season. What the fuck was this all about?
My big question actually is like, are these seasons each about something different or are they all about sort of some version of the same thing?
We started off early on talking about my whole kind of like my special private thesis about season one, which is that it wasn't about wealth or money or privilege, that it was actually this story that essentially explored Buddhist ideas of suffering and happiness. And then, of course, now... That's the explicit exploration here.
It's interesting because people – I think people will have said – like, everyone liked to be like, first season is about money. Second season is about sex. Third season, it's about spirituality. It's about life and death. But all of these things are the same idea to me. Like, does that make sense to you?
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Chapter 2: How does identity and desire influence characters in White Lotus?
Like, it's like –
The condition of being human is to live in a state of identity and desire. And these are the things that cause you to self-imprison. These are the things that cause your suffering. The things that we desire tend to be money and sex.
Right?
So it's like, it's the same. It's always going to be the same mess of themes to me. I mean, there's an aesthetic tilt towards one thing over the other. Like, season two is so, like, hot Sicilian. It's a very bodily season, et cetera. And this... There's lots of eternal return. There's a lot of bouncing droplets.
There's, you know, there's a lot of, you don't know what time it is of the day because it's this golden Thailand hazy.
It's always magic hour.
It's always magic hour. It's 10 a.m., it's magic hour. 3 p.m., magic hour. Middle of the night, somehow still magic hour. But you know what I mean? Like, I think your theory is correct. And I think it's also, yeah, I think it's every single story.
And I think that there's no real difference between the prison of identity and the prison of desire for money, the prison of desire for sex that you can't have or even sex that you can. Like, it feels like the same exact question to me.
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Chapter 3: Do the characters in White Lotus have souls?
Yeah. Well, I was thinking about your response to kind of the Buddhist treatise about season one. You're like, well, all stories are in some way about needs. But I think what's actually different in this case, the point is, in fact, that all those needs are irrelevant. Right. So that. Because the whole idea is like laying down this kind of Buddhist foundation for the story.
It's like everything else that everybody is saying is basically irrelevant, and only what's relevant is how you look past all those needs and sort of discover something. Because in a traditional storytelling, you'd have the need set something into motion, and then the plot gets resolved. And then as we see now in season three, the resolution of season three entails this –
kind of overture with the monk saying, the attempt for resolution is also causing you suffering. So what if there is no resolution, right? And what if the story doesn't need to be resolved and you don't need to have anxiety seeking resolution all the time?
And season two, it does feel like pretty distinct because it is this bedroom farce where it's about how to actually manage your needs in daily life with the transformation of the sexual politics of the foursome And there's sort of like a trade of insight and wisdom in that process. And so in that case, those characters are learning how to manage their selves and their identity in their daily life.
Whereas season one and three were about sort of escaping the needs of your daily life.
I think that one of the things that this season is asking overtly, and that the other seasons were not, is like, do you have a soul? Do you have, like, simply, do you have a soul? Which of these characters has a soul? What would remain of you if your life changed drastically? Like, what is there actually to you underneath whatever? And that, to me, it's like...
It's like Lachlan is the one kind of with the claim on it because he's not – he's the one that is not clinging to a belief structure yet. And he's the one that kind of has an intact soul almost as a result, you know? Like there's something where – like I was going to ask you – Which of these characters' belief systems sort of stands the test of this week at the White Lotus?
You know, like I think kind of Chelsea's kind of does. Chelsea is a wackadoo. Like, hey, read this book about how we're all sorted into groups one through 12. And if we're in, you know. And we're both in group seven, and so that means we're something to each other. But she's right. Chelsea has a belief in something beyond the visible and given, and it's an extremely open-ended one.
It's one that does not seek to establish or control anything. It's just her entire belief system is that there's something beyond this, and there's something we can do with that. And that I think she's kind of probably objectively correct in that she's— kind of vindicated.
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Chapter 4: How do belief systems affect characters in Season 3 of White Lotus?
Yeah, right. And again, it's a belief system that does not – it doesn't seek to establish a rigidity of like this is how you should be, this is how you shouldn't. Like Laughlin is like – it's the motion of it. So it's Laughlin and it's – Chelsea, and I think it's Lori, too. You know, like, I think what she says at dinner is really nice.
It's like, then I realize that perhaps the meaning is just simply that I have existed, and so have you.
Yeah. It's interesting also because then, I mean, I would say we don't know where Saxon's belief system is going to wind up, but he's now sort of primed to have a belief system. And, of course, he is who Lachlan is reacting against when he's trying to impress on him his idea of alpha male manhood and dominance, all of which we now suspect that's actually not his true identity. Yeah.
I want Saxon to come back because I want to see what that actual—where his belief system takes him.
Yeah.
But, yeah, Chelsea— strong belief system that permeates the whole show, I would say.
There's something in here about whose sense of self is capacious enough to accommodate multiplicity. Like, the people whose sense of self and sense of identity fails are the ones who understand their identity to be one of It's the most rigid ones, right? It's like Victoria.
It's like probably Jacqueline and Kate, you know, that their sense of self and identity is just very firmly in a bounded, checkmarked, good, admirable, visible, you know, and that is me and everything else is folded into that narrative. And the people whose senses of self don't trap them, but...
ground them and free them or whatever are the people it seems to me whose senses of self are firm insofar as they are open-ended perhaps all the way to frank who seems to be able to accommodate a 45-hour crack binge or whatever too and he's just like yeah i'm in my underwear stabbing this mannequin and tomorrow i'll be doing my ablutions at the temple or whatever
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Chapter 5: What role does self-awareness play in the characters' lives?
I think he's just like, wow, the great wheel of life contains multitudes. And that was me and this is me and I'm a terrible person and I am a transcended person. Right.
I like how we decided that Frank is the most enlightened being in the entire season.
He is under zero illusions about who he is. You know? Like, he is not bullshitting himself. He's scrubbed out all of his bullshit. And I don't know, there's something to be said for that. Like, there's obviously a hard limit to where self-knowledge will get you morally, but...
within the framework of the people we've been presented with this season, there is like a profound freedom he has in this absolute self-knowledge of his failures and his freedoms, kind of.
Yeah.
There's something interesting about how Piper and Saxon almost switch places. There's a symmetry in the way that they begin the season, and Saxon is like, I'm American Psycho. I'm a man of the world. I'm about money. I'm about conquest. I'm about sex. Piper is like, I'm wearing a white nightgown. I have pure thoughts. I transcend my position.
I merely wish to be a beautiful flower floating on the wind. directing my thoughts towards peace or whatever. And then by the end, Piper is like, hmm, like, I'm going to text my girlfriends and set up cocktail night or whatever, you know?
It's like, like perhaps... She comes back down to earth. She floats back down gently.
Yeah, she floats back down to earth. She's like, okay, what if actually I just stay rich and volunteer biweekly? And like, perhaps that's like the version of life that I... And Saxon is like, what if... everything I've ever believed is wrong and I need to find love and a soul. And that's fascinating, they slinch.
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Chapter 6: How does the concept of time contribute to the narrative?
It's its own sort of like Zen meditative thing. kind of mode of thinking. And then she just kind of lays that on everybody and it's like a magic, it's like a spell, right? It's like she makes an incantation and their whole, their lives together are completely changed, yeah.
I think, I mean, really specifically within the dynamic of female friendship that these ladies have been, you know, playing out this entire season, um, It's extremely important that the way she does that is by instantly unlatching them from mandatory happiness, which is the main thing that has caused all of the characters to deceive themselves.
The sort of layered, mirrored, reflecting self-consciousness and self-righteousness kind of builds into this nuclear relationship. arms race of just perpetual escalation of like, no, I'm happy and I've done it right and this is actually what I've always hated about you or whatever.
There are lots of different versions of the life you have, but you've chosen very specifically some relationship to the things that Lori says she's placed her religion in, right? In work, in love, in motherhood, in their beauty.
They have chosen a particular relationship and they have to defend that to themselves as the correct one and objectively the correct one or something and that it has made them happy. There's this way in which that relationship like completely false structure of thinking becomes almost ingrained as a natural slash mandatory one for women, particularly when you approach or hit that age.
And the incantation that she utters is like, but what if I didn't have to pretend that I did it right or that I was happy? And then suddenly they're all actually happy. And she says, and I'm just happy to be sitting at this table.
I'm glad you have a beautiful face.
And I'm glad that you have a beautiful life. And I'm just happy to be at the table.
That I found really, really well written, that that's the magic spell. Her just being like, yeah, I'm actually unhappy, but I'm really glad to be here. Yeah. And I guess the thing that it unlocks in them isn't, it's not happiness as they configure it. It's not happiness as they configured at the beginning, which is something that's visible, that you can photograph, that you can prove.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of the ending for Rick and Chelsea?
Thank you.
I would definitely say that in general, yeah, the season is positing a philosophical statement about the gap between, like identity is a projection, right, of what you think you're supposed to be, but who are you actually, right? What are your values and what are you, like you are your deeds, right, and your values, basically.
All the things that people think you are or you think you are, like I'm a successful lawyer or I'm this or I'm a mother or I'm a, I'm an Asian woman who wants to get railed by these – by like a series of men from the internet. Like that's actually what's so profound about Frank's insane monologue is because he has closed the gap on his – like himself and like ideas about projected identity.
And there's like he's – As you just pointed out, like he is completely at peace and at home with that. And he has no internal friction about who he is. And he knows exactly. And he's unafraid even to say it, right? There's no fear of who he is. And whereas everybody else like has some fear, right? And so then it's a question of to what degree do people overcome the fears about their identity?
To what degree do they even like heave that identity overboard and kind of start anew like Saxon?
I think there's also, if I were to try to posit what this season thought some teleological idea to aspire towards is, it's like the people that also make it out are the people that understand themselves to be works in progress. Like constantly failing works in progress. But it's like, you know, Frank does, certainly. Chelsea does, certainly. Laurie does, right?
And like Lachlan now, like he says it explicitly, like maybe it's just a test to see if you can become a better person day by day, year by year, whatever it is, White Lotus trip to White Lotus trip. And I think there is – I don't know. Like I do think that that stands up and the belief system that very clearly fails you in every possible way.
Narratively, spiritually, emotionally, in terms of your various happy endings is like, you know, you know, and you've got it and you're good. Every single person that thinks that will fail.
Yeah. The idea of like your identity is not any of the things that you think it is. When all of our characters enter the White Lotus for the week, right, they would list all the things that actually are not who you are.
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