“Oh my god, Mike White, what have you done!?” was what I yelled at my screen the moment it looked like that guy did that thing to himself. Which, you know…seemed not at all unbelievable considering we’d seen him nick a gun from Gaitok and even toy around with writing a suicide note before being interrupted by his Lorazepam-loving wife. 

Alas, even as White gifted us delicious GIFs of Parker Posey and Sarah Catherine Hook getting their primal screams on, it’s all quite quickly revealed to be a dream. Or a wish. Or a warning. Anyway, it’s all in Timothy’s (Jason Isaacs) head, and the image of his wife and daughter finding him bloodied on the floor is enough to force him to put the gun away and stave thoughts of killing himself for one more day. Which is, as it turns out, fateful given the spiritual education he gets when he visits the monastery Piper (Hook) wants to uproot her life in the U.S. for. 

As last week’s episode showcased, The White Lotus is at its best not only when it distills its many preoccupations into thorny one-on-one interactions that serve as catnip for Emmy voters (the FYC campaign for Sam Rockwell begins now!) but when it stages a friction between the world these characters live in and the world a week surrounded by a new culture offers them. This is arguably the promise of travel: the ability to witness a different kind of way of being. But even as that’s happening at an individual level for many of these characters, it’s obvious Mike White is also presenting a rather robust case against the American way of life.

This is obviously what’s most rankling Victoria (Posey) about Piper’s decision to live in Taiwa—uh, Thailand at a Buddhist monastery. Which is why she’s set on speaking to the monk who presumably brain-washed her darling child into joining some sort of cult. Her plan is simple: One chat with this guy will be enough to dissuade Piper from her Buddhist delusions. And so, just as the two Raitliff boys arrive clearly hungover from their wild Full Moon party shenanigans, mom, dad, and Piper are on their way out. Guilty over not having been there for his sister the night before, Lochlan (Sam Nivola) agrees to tag along. Which is all fine by Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) who is rattled by the flashes of what he remembers from the night before. Was there more than that one kiss between him and his brother? I mean, he can’t imagine and so he tries to drown out said memories with a smoothie as his family heads out for the day.

Of course, at the monastery Victoria doesn’t get an audience with the monk. Instead, both her daughter and her husband end up having tearful and quite vulnerable conversations in the presence of this enlightened figure. Piper admits she’s adrift: “Lately, it’s felt like everything is pointless,” she says, voicing perhaps what a lot of us are thinking these days. Buddhism has given her a sanctuary she wishes to continue. By the time Timothy comes face to face with the monk, he’s instantly disarmed. After all, he’s just as lost as Piper, especially now that he’s untethered from his phone and life (and problems) back home. Indeed, more than taking it as a chance to grill him about how cared for his daughter will be, Timothy approaches the encounter more as a spirituality primer: He asks what happens after death and is met with a haunting metaphor. “Death is a happy return,” like a drop of water finally rejoining the big consciousness that is the ocean. It may be enough to snap him out of his suicidal ideation. Maybe there’s a different way of doing things. A different set of values he could pursue. Maybe his daughter was onto something after all. 

Pragmatically, he ends up supporting Piper. But Victoria, still unconvinced, makes her daughter an offer she can’t refuse: If she spends one night in the monastery and still wants to be there, then Victoria will support, well…not support the entire thing, but won’t actively work against it. Lochlan, wanting to be there for his sister and perhaps steer clear of Saxon for a night, at least, agrees to stay with her. As he meditates there, he gets even more fleshed out memories than Saxon, who woke up with hazy images of him jerking off as Lochlan fucked Chloe in the bed next to him. And yes, it’s an image that brings to fruition the gaycest storyline the season has been teasing.

Welp! 

Turns out Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) wasn’t really stringing Saxon around. When she and the shaken Raitliff boy debrief by the pool under the scorching bright morning sun about their ill-conceived threesome (yes, that’s what Chloe calls it, much to Chelsea’s chagrin), she reminds Saxon that while she may have egged on the initial kiss between the brothers, she had no such say in the younger brother jerking off Saxon(!). Kudos to Schwazenegger for perfectly capturing the way that blink of a memory finds him ever more nauseated the more he ponders whether it’s true. Not that Lochlan takes it any better. Surrounded by a roomful of folks meditating, he all but spirals. 

Speaking of spiraling, back over at everyone’s favorite BFF trio, the drunken festivities are taking their toll. First up: Kate (Leslie Bibb) gets to see Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius) kiss Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) goodnight after leaving her villa. And rather than keeping that gossipy tidbit to herself, she tells Laurie (Carrie Coon), the same Laurie who was already wary of her actress pal and who immediately tries to both be aloof about it all while calling out Jaclyn’s hypocrisy: Why egg on Laurie to bed Valentin if she wanted him for herself? So typical! She’s not changed one bit! Watching Carrie Coon pivot from self-deprecating disinterest to self-righteous passive aggression—all but needling Jaclyn to tell them what she did with Valentin (she tries to deny it, of course, likely a way to keep her reputation intact for the partner who finally makes contact as soon as Valentin leaves)—is a joy.

It’s a tense, terse interaction that reveals everyone’s insecurities. Jaclyn thinks she can get away with hiding her late-night tryst. (In Laurie’s words, she constantly needs attention: “It’s sad. She’s an aging actress…it’s demented…it’s pathetic.”) Laurie tries to not show how wounded she is by it all. And Kate attempts to keep the peace, being left to feel like she’s just another gossipy hanger-on willing to impinge on her friend’s treasured privacy. (It all comes off like performative sanctimony, with only Laurie’s aggrieved aggression feeling like anything real, if still wrapped up in petty jealousy. Watching her dismiss Valentin in the morning then insist they all join him and go to the Muay Thai fight that night after all is proof she’s unmoored and processing in real time what Jaclyn’s actions did to her.)

It seems we’re headed to an explosive confrontation. Several of them, in fact. The Raitliffs (Timothy, reeling from the confession his wife makes about being utterly uninterested in living a life in poverty, which all but douses his new enlightened view of the world and himself) are headed with Saxon to see Greg and Chloe (and maybe Belinda will join in?) at their house atop the hill. The girls may or may not be going to see a fight all while Piper and Lochlan spend the night at the monastery. Oh, and Rick (Walton Goggins) and Frank (Rockwell) are headed out to meet Sritala (Lek Patravadi) after Rick conned her into thinking he knew a filmmaker who’s eager to work with her. It’s all a ruse to get himself into her property where he can come face to face with the guy responsible for his dad’s death. 

And so, what does Mike White leave us with? Timothy imagining a murder-suicide (with a gun he no longer has) and Frank and Rick (with a gun he most certainly has) arriving at Sritala’s home. The table’s been set for what may well be the most explosive night at the White Lotus yet. 

Stray observations

• • Honestly, I cannot fanboy enough about the pitch-perfect work Alex Bovaird is doing with the costumes this season. That Simpsons necklace Chloe was wearing? Divine. At once infantilizing and chic at the same time.
• • Gaitok successfully sneaking into the Raitliffs’ villa and miraculously finding the gun in time to go to a shooting range before anyone even noticed it was missing felt almost too easy. But I’m glad it means that the final image of Timothy shooting Victoria can remain a horrid nightmare vision and nothing else.
• • I haven’t talked enough about White casting The Zone of Interest’s main Nazi as the hotel’s manager but I, for one, cannot wait to see what Fabian has in store for his performance at dinner—nor for what Christian Friedel will be able to do with such a moment.
• • What wisdom do we think Jaclyn is gathering from reading Barbra’s biography? And, relatedly: Do we think Laurie is reading Emma Straub’s Modern Lovers for some book club she pretends to enjoy being a part of?
• • It’s time to begin theorizing what those shots we heard in the very first episode are all about, right? We’re clearly in the hotel so maybe the dinner at Chloe and Greg’s (maybe even the drinks at Sritala’s?) are red herrings, after all? And while we now have two guns in play my money is on Gaitok getting trigger happy (trying to prove his “killer instinct”) and wreaking havoc for all involved. Might Chelsea really get a Final Destination finale? Should we all be worried about Belinda, considering it was her son who opened the season? Or will White aim for a neater kind of ending for Timothy (or Victoria!), sparing either the indignity of living, dare we say it, a not rich life? (Sidenot: Was I the only one who had Big Little Lies’ Renata in their head while Posey said she’d off herself if she ever lost everything? “I will not not be rich!”