By JJ Ledewitz, Arts and Culture Editor
It only took one week for a resort full of arrogant rich people to delve deep into what it really means to go through life without living.
The White Lotus is a satirical, dark comedy drama series created by Mike White in 2021. Each season follows a new ensemble cast of characters spending a week at a location of the luxury White Lotus resort. In every season, as the episodes go by, the season’s deeper themes emerge and cause total chaos, which usually leads to cheating, breakups, addictions, fights, crime and in some cases, death. This season takes place in Thailand and tells a grueling tale of life, death and rebirth.
The Ratliff Family
The Ratliffs are rich and from North Carolina. Victoria Ratliff (Parker Posey) is an out-of-touch rich lady who can’t imagine living life without her money, while her husband, Timothy (Jason Isaacs), is a less arrogant, go-with-the-flow dad. But when he learns that he’ll be arrested upon arrival back in the states due to his company’s illegal activity (which will cause his family to be broke) he decides to keep it a secret from them. This secret haunts him, leading to thoughts of ending his life and the life of his family, a family who has said that they can’t imagine living without their money.
Death seems to be a better option than life for the Ratliff family. But what kind of life have they been living? One filled with money, absence of any sort of trouble. Is this truly life? If not, is that why the loss of their money seems worse than death to them?
Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) is the oldest of Victoria and Timothy’s children, and is a pompous, self assertive young businessman with only women on his mind. By the end of the week, he realizes just how crazy he has been and turns to meditation books to understand that he wants a real relationship. He goes from being a jock whose ego feeds off his affluence, to a young man with at least a bit of direction. He discovers love, which changes his view on the life he has been living. It hasn’t quite been a life, since he hasn’t really had anyone to share it with. By the end of the season, he’s reborn into a life with his eyes open.
The other two Ratliff children are Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), a college senior studying religion, and Lochlan, a shy yet well mannered high school senior. Piper wants to check out the local monastery – she wants to spend a year in Thailand with the monks and knows her parents would never let her. Because of her background, she thinks it’s easy to live with the bare minimum. Lochlan, on the other hand, isn’t like the other members of his family. He isn’t pompous or arrogant. He’s a people pleaser in the most well-mannered way possible, but he thinks he needs to prove to his family that he isn’t a kid anymore. He goes with Piper to visit the monastery and takes the monks’ words to heart – so much so that he decides to change the trajectory of his life. Both Lochlan and Piper’s story arcs bring them into what may be a “new” life, one with real meaning. But while Piper chickens out and realizes that life with the monks isn’t for her, and she actually can’t live life with almost nothing, Lochlan moves on to a life with added meaning.
Series creator Mike White paints an elaborate picture of the dynamic between life, death, and rebirth when it comes to the Ratliff family. He shows that each member of the family comes to the island effectively “dead”, having not lived a real, fulfilling life. Lochlan and Saxon both have their eyes opened to the unfulfilling lives they’ve been living. They’re different, though; Lochlan is younger and hasn’t had much time to live life while Saxon has tried to fill his life with everything he possibly can. Each leaves the resort reborn, on a path to a fulfilling life. Piper comes to the resort with the goal of being reborn, but doesn’t have the guts to do it. Victoria, their mother, lives decades of an unfulfilling life, so she doesn’t even think about her life the way her children have. And Timothy is caught between an unfulfilling life and being reborn, knowing that he’s lost all his money and he’ll go to jail. Even if he wanted to be reborn and sees how unfulfilling his life has been, it’s too late, he did too much damage to himself.
Rick and Chelsea
Rick (Walton Goggins) is mysterious, and clearly has ulterior motives for being at the resort – he’s here to kill the owner of the resort’s husband, the man who killed Rick’s father. Rick has been planning to do this for years, but Rick’s girlfriend, Chelsea (Amy Lou Wood), a young, free-spirited woman, believes that because she is Rick’s soul mate, bad things that happen to him will cause bad things to happen to her as well. Still, she trusts what he does. They are soul mates, after all. But as events unfold, Chelsea realizes how disastrous Rick’s actions could be. But it’s too late.
Series creator Mike White uses these two characters to show how love and hate, when taken to the extreme, can get in the way of living life, and can cause death before “real life” begins. Both of these characters believed their issues to be inevitabilities and to be the only thing between them and a fulfilling life, but if they only realized that those things were stopping them from living a fulfilling life, and they could easily drop those issues, they’d be at peace. Rick has spent his entire life preparing for this murder, thinking only once he goes through with it, he can live life. Chelsea believes they are soul mates, something she sees as a positive inevitability, so fully stopping Rick is out of the equation for her. The two of them believe that once the other deals with their inevitability, they can live a happy life together. But by the time they realize that they could be living that life now, their mistakes have caught up with them. Both end up dead; killed before they could start a life they were striving for.
Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie
Three women in their 40s on a trip, childhood friends reuniting for the first time in forever. That’s who they are. And that’s also where their similarities end. Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) is a Hollywood-based TV actress with a “perfect” house, a “perfect” husband and a “perfect” career. Kate (Leslie Bibb) is from Texas and also has a pretty good and luxurious life. Both Jaclyn and Kate could never understand a life without glitz and glamor.
And then there’s Laurie (Carrie Coon). A divorced corporate lawyer whose life never reached as high as Jaclyn and Kate’s. The three women want to have a good time and catch up with each other, but it’s clear that Jaclyn and Kate don’t view Laurie the same way they view each other. They haven’t noticed Laurie’s anger and sadness, because why would they? They live fake lives – lives full of things and stuff, money and fame, while Laurie is living a real life full of troubles and feelings – real feelings, not fake smiles and fake laughs.
Series creator Mike White uses these women’s dynamic to show the horrible truths that come with living a life of luxury while ignoring the realities of living. Laurie learns that sometimes, the richest and most egotistical people don’t even realize that they haven’t really been living. Life isn’t without troubles; life without troubles isn’t life at all.
Throughout this season, Mike White illustrates with complexity what it really means to live, to die, and to be reborn, through the experiences of these people. He shows how they are not truly living, and that real life is just over the horizon. The hints have been there, and if they are ignored for too long, death – real death – can snatch that life away.
Photo Caption: Bangkok, Thailand
Photo Credit: Unsplash