Mike White has left us wondering, “Who’s in the water?” from the very first seconds of this season of The White Lotus. In the first episode of the season, “Ciao,” who does Daphne run into, and who else do the Italian police discover?
Are married couples experiencing varying degrees of marital distress? Is it one of the Di Grasso men traveling with his family to the homeland for male bonding? Lucia and Mia, two prostitutes, or struggling assistant Portia? All of these characters strolled up to the water and regarded it solemnly. They observed the waves crashing against the rocks and heard tales of people who had been murdered for their coastal homes and had their bodies thrown over cliffs.
White Lotus Season 2 Ends
At the conclusion of “Arrivederci,” it is returning White Lotus guest Tanya who is discovered drowned. Tanya’s frilly pink floral dress, which is eerily similar to the dress worn by the lifelike replica of Michael Corleone’s first wife Apollonia at The Godfather tourist attraction that Portia visited, served as a warning sign for her death.
Tanya said in the White Lotus season one finale, “Departures,” “Death is the last immersion experience I haven’t done,” and it is with a sense of narrative self-referentiality that White changes Tanya’s connection with water from the first baptism to second-season oblivion. Water is a well-known symbol of rebirth in literature and art, and White frequently invokes this idea in his own work while adding layers of surrealism and fantasy. Towards one of the film’s last moments, Quinn is seen paddling a Hawaiian-style outrigger boat farther from the coast (and his previous life) in the direction of the sun and something new.
In the climactic scenes of the episode, Mia and Lucia march triumphantly through the streets. Lucia’s alleged pimp is actually merely an acquaintance who will probably receive payment from the Di Grasso Women Rescue Fund.
