The White Lotus has invited rabid theorizing from the very beginning; a story that starts off with a dead body tends to do that. And when season two upped the ante with a few corpses floating in that beautiful Sicilian water? That’s the kind of body count that necessitates a “kill or be killed†report!
But there are more mysteries and outstanding questions in this second season than just who ends up dead. There’s so much backstabbing, frenemy friction, marital infidelity, romantic turbulence, and financial messiness going down at the White Lotus this time around that it’s difficult to tell how Mike White will wrap it all up with only one episode to go. So let’s try to figure it out together! Here are some of the big questions left about where these characters will land at the end of Sunday’s supersize, 80-minute finale, “Arrivederci,†and we invite you to share your own thoughts, theories, and musings in the comments.
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Greg and Quentin are working together — is Tanya going to die?
“Abductions†confirmed for us that the story Quentin told Tanya about falling in love with a cowboy in Wyoming 30 years ago wasn’t just a test to see if Tanya would recognize the plot to Brokeback Mountain but was actually the truth, and yes, that cowboy was Greg. But was Quentin who Greg was talking to on the phone earlier this season? Or is Quentin involved just because he’s in Italy and Greg offered him a payday?
And finally: Italian speakers have noted that the fortune teller’s reading in “Bull Elephants†included a warning that Tanya might die. Does Tanya end up a victim? Does Portia (who now realizes Tanya was right about Jack) get back to Palermo and rescue her boss? Or does Greg come back to Italy and end up one of those dead bodies floating in the water?
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Will the Di Grasso men grow?
In a rare moment of unity, the Di Grasso men were all worried about Lucia in “Abductions†and accepted her story that Alessio (who she told Albie was her pimp) was following her around. I’m still uncertain whether that’s true or a long con Lucia is playing — maybe to convince Albie to take her to the United States? — but ultimately Bert, Dom, and Albie all sharing an opinion on something was nice and a smart, counterintuitive setup for how their female Di Grasso relatives reject them soon after. Will either of these experiences help the Di Grasso men see past themselves, or will Laura Dern continue her (earned) tirades against Dom? Will our favorite Stanford grad Albie get conned, or will he tell Lucia to have a nice life in the same way that he said good-bye to Portia? Most important: Will someone give lonely Bert a hug?
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Does Ethan kill Cam?
At least Harper admitted to Ethan that their relationship isn’t meeting her needs. But did she have sex with Cam? Ethan is being eaten alive by this question in “Abductions†with nightmarish visions of Cam and Harper fooling around and a new distrust of Harper to match her distrust of him. This marriage certainly seems doomed! But does Ethan go a step further by killing Cam? One could argue that Ethan’s obsessive exercise is a way to burn off energy (and rage?) that would otherwise boil over — maybe toward Cam. It doesn’t seem entirely out of the question, but I think Ethan should have simply stopped hanging out with him after the whole Lucia-and-Mia thing, come clean to Harper, and suggested they leave the trip early. Then again, I am not a multimillionaire. Who knows why they do what they do!
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Does Daphne kill Cam?
The photo Daphne showed Harper of her blond, blue-eyed child, coupled with the description of her blond, blue-eyed trainer, has many thinking that Daphne’s method of getting revenge against Cam’s constant infidelity is by having a child with another guy on top of all the spending and mind games. Is the trip a way for her to eliminate Cam and start a new life? She did mention loving the true-crime genre and its “spouses be killing each other†truism, and she was alone on the beach in the premiere episode — a rare moment of isolation. Could it be because Cam, Ethan, and Harper are dead?
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Twist: Does Cam live?
The reality is that guys like Cam usually end up fine, so perhaps it’s worthwhile to consider that Cam, like season one’s Shane Patton before him, just might leave Italy in one piece and return to his Bernie Madoff–wannabe co-workers and whatever women he has on the side in the United States. Good riddance!