Of the many things we’ve learned about Mike White since his career reached new heights with the first two seasons of The White Lotus, one is that he’s predictably unpredictable. It wasn’t hard to retroactively trace the paths toward Armond’s and Tanya’s deaths in those seasons after the dust had settled, but both felt in some ways as silly and random as they did cosmically inevitable. And so there is some futility in trying to predict the ending of Season 3’s Thailand-set season, and in assuming White will follow any of the same patterns he laid out in earlier storylines. And yet, it is hard to refrain from attempting to weave together the many threads he’s spun in advance of this season’s finale, and to identify which may lead nowhere at all.
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Here are our final predictions for who kills, who gets killed, and some odds and ends we’re hoping to see wrapped up during Sunday night’s 90-minute finale.
Read more: The White Lotus Season 3’s Penultimate Episode Sets Up Some Pretty Loaded Choices
Eliana’s Prediction: Timothy Ratliff Dies
Something weird is going on with the White Lotus’ (optional) no phone policy. The entire Ratliff family was asked to surrender their phones, iPads, and laptops upon arriving at the hotel. But every other White Lotus guest seems to be using technology constantly: Jaclyn is texting her (possibly cheating) husband; Chelsea is incessantly calling Rick; Belinda is using her laptop to solve the mystery of Tanya’s death. Is the Ratliffs’ wellness guide Pam just a stickler for the digital detox?
The Ratliffs being the only family isolated from the outside world obviously allows Victoria and the kids to remain clueless as the FBI raids Tim’s offices and ends their lives as they know it. But it also seems a handy way to set up a major revelation in the final episode. My guess is that after spending days dreaming of killing his family and himself to spare them the humiliation of being poor, Tim finally gets his hands on his phone and discovers that he is somehow off the hook.
I am not sure how, exactly, Tim will find himself free of any blame with his wealth intact. But the last time he spoke to Kenny Nguyen on the phone, Kenny threatened to kill himself. Tim said to go ahead and do that. Maybe Kenny did take his own life and shredded every piece of evidence connecting Tim to his crimes beforehand. Seems farfetched, but White Lotus characters have gotten away with worse.
It would be fitting for the rich white dude to weasel his way out of jailtime according to the rules that govern this series. After all, Shane Patton got away with murder in Season 1 as did Greg/Gary in Season 2. What’s a little white collar crime in comparison? One of the most prominent themes of this series is that the privileged never suffer any real-world consequences—only existential angst. It’s normal people struggling to make ends meet, like Kai from Season 1, who are duped by the uber-rich and suffer as a result.
It would also fit the theme of the season for Tim, who has been fantasizing about dying and rejoining the vast consciousness for the past several episodes, to finally get over his suicidal ideation, and celebrate the fact that he can return to his perfect life—only to find himself on the wrong side of a bullet. (Or a poison fruit smoothie. Or a poisonous snake. Or any of the other threatening things at the hotel.)
Who is doing the shooting? Possibly the security guards or the Russians. Maybe Gaitok, after being goaded by Mook last episode into aggressive acts, accidentally shoots a guest in a shoot-out involving one of the aforementioned thugs. For all I know one of those monkeys wandering free in the hotel gets his hands on a gun.
Read more: There Might Be More to Rick’s Confrontation With His Dad’s Killer on The White Lotus
Judy’s Prediction: Chelsea Dies
I have no confidence in the correctness of my predictions, but for what it’s worth, I’ve become convinced that—at least when it comes to the climactic death(s)—the Ratliffs are a big red herring. Compared with the brother-on-brother incest that erupted out of years’ worth of familial competition, repression, and dysfunction, anything else that could befall this tragic quintet, even murder or suicide, would feel mild by comparison. They could spend the rest of their lives stewing in that trauma, especially if the others learned what happened between the boys.
No, I’m sensing disaster for Chelsea—the Cassandra of this season, a prophet of doom whose ever-intensifying dread has gone ignored by a partner who underestimates her powers of intuition. As I noted after Sunday’s penultimate episode, Rick is entering the finale in the worst possible position for a White Lotus character. After seven episodes of pained teeth-gritting and wide-eyed astonishment, he’s found closure in confronting the man who killed his father (or not) and finding only a weak old guy too sickly to punch. As his alcoholic buddy Frank relapses hard on sex and substances, a beatific look crosses Rick’s face. His lifelong mission is complete.
Wait a second, though. Has Rick actually earned this catharsis? As we observed in both his counseling sessions at the resort and his dumbfounded response to Frank’s wild monologue at the Bangkok hotel, he’s allergic to not just introspection, but specifically the Buddhist teachings about nonviolence and non-attachment that he keeps encountering. Sure, he resisted killing Jim. But he didn’t actually reject violence; his choice to flip the chair out from under a man recovering from a stroke was still an act of physical aggression, and Rick seemed to be in such a panic when he finally did that, it felt almost random.
We don’t know yet what becomes of Jim after Rick runs out of the room. Nor do we know how Rick and Frank’s all-night party ends. But Jim and Frank, who’s suddenly bingeing on drugs and alcohol after months of sobriety, both seem to be in some physical danger. Meanwhile, we know that Jim and Sritala have a huge security detail, and it stands to reason that—particularly if Jim is more injured than he appears—they would go after Rick. As Sritala knows, he’s staying at the White Lotus. What she doesn’t know is that he stayed in Bangkok to celebrate with Frank and probably won’t be in any shape to fly back to Koh Samui until the following afternoon at the earliest. And who is at the resort, in Rick’s room, anxiously awaiting his return? Chelsea.
Her death might be more of a punishment for Rick than it is for her. Being a spiritually literate type, she could console herself, in her final moments, with the knowledge that she prophesied all this, not to mention the prospect of sinking into that ocean of collective consciousness. For Rick, though, losing the only person who’s ever loved him would be catastrophic. Whether he overdoses or simply blames Rick for his relapse, the inexplicably loyal Frank may not be in his life anymore, either. And then he’ll really know what it’s like to be alone in the universe.
Read more: ‘She’s Crazy in the Best Way.’ Aimee Lou Wood on Her Painfully Relatable White Lotus Season 3 Character
More Loose Ends
Victoria and Kate: Way back in Episode 2, Kate approached Victoria at breakfast to ask if they’d attended the same baby shower, for one Claire Popovich, in Austin. While Victoria did confirm she was there, she also kind of snubbed Kate, seeming to have no interest in reconnecting with this woman with whom she’d spent a weekend. It was a memorably strange moment, but one that wasn’t revisited in the subsequent five episodes. Nor have we really seen the Ratliffs interact with Kate and her frenemies since then. Also: while Parker Posey has given a delightfully big performance as a lorazepam-pilled Southern matriarch, neither her character nor Kate has gotten as much of an independent storyline as the other people in their respective groups. So the way I see it, they kind of have to reunite for a major moment in the finale. —J.B.
Laurie turns Karen: Who has learned even less from their sojourn to Thailand than Rick? Three amigas Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie—who are still judging, baiting, and hurting one another with the same cruelty that defined their friendship when they were kids. Now that Laurie has seen the pile of jewels at Aleksei’s place, it’s only a matter of time before the anger that’s been building up in her all week (or for her entire life) fuels an attempt to get the Russians in trouble. But you know what? I think it backfires. As Kate and Jaclyn pointed out, Laurie is the kind of person whose choices always leave her disappointed. And I wouldn’t underestimate the physical threat foreshadowed by the prominence of Aleksei’s snake tattoo. —J.B.
Watch: The White Lotus Season 3 Cast Talks About What To Expect
“I am your father”: As I wrote earlier this week, I subscribe to the theory that Jim Hollinger, the supposed killer or Rick’s do-gooder dad, is in fact his father. It’s all a little Darth Vader, but when Rick confronts Jim, Jim seems to recognize Rick’s mother’s name. They share a passing resemblance. And Jim calls Rick “my kind of drinker.” It will upend Rick’s entire sense of self to learn that the architect of his misery isn’t a man who ruthlessly killed his dad before he was born but Rick himself, who has built his entire life’s identity around being the orphan of a “good guy.” —E.D.
Fruit of the poisonous tree: I joked about Tim dying by poisoned fruit smoothie above, but Pam warned the Ratliffs about the poisonous fruit casually hanging from trees around the resort for a reason. And Saxon’s blender just keeps getting louder and louder each episode. I actually was confident the fruit would play a role in a guest’s death—someone makes a smoothie with the fruit intending to off themselves, only for an unsuspecting friend or family member to drink it—until the fruit got name-dropped on the “Next Week On” segment previewing the finale. Tim explicitly asks Pam about it again. Now that he has lost his gun, perhaps he’s looking for another path to leave this mortal coil. But I think HBO is too savvy to give away that twist in a preview. It’s probably a red herring. —E.D.
Who by fire: Speaking of menacing motifs, we’ve seen so much fire imagery throughout this season. Midway through the season, Saxon dismissed Piper’s attempts at dream interpretation by saying: “We all dream about fire and snakes because we’re all afraid of fire and snakes.” But since then, we haven’t seen fire interact with the guests’ lives the way snakes have, from Chelsea’s bite to Aleksei’s tattoo. So I’m betting it plays some kind of role in the finale. —J.B.
Belinda’s payday: I think Belinda winds up taking the money from Greg/Gary. In interviews, Mike White has suggested that she is the moral center of the show. But the whole point of White Lotus is there is no moral center. And if everyone else is going to break bad, why can’t Belinda get a little cash to jumpstart her business? And Greg/Gary seems to be excellent at hiding assets in offshore accounts considering he seems to have access to all of Tanya’s half a billion dollars despite being wanted for questioning in Italy.—E.D.
Who lives with the monks? Call it the reverse-Quinn plotline. In Season 1 of The White Lotus, the screen-addicted teen found the joys of nature and decided to run away from his family and stay in Hawaii forever. I think in Season 3, the supposedly enlightened girl who wants to shed the trappings of wealth will discover, after her night with the monks, that she would prefer the creature comforts of home. Lochlan, by contrast, could wind up staying if only to avoid seeing Saxon for a year after their night of debauchery.—E.D.
I agree there’s no way Piper stays at the monastery—and also that one of the other Ratliff siblings probably takes her place. But my money is on Saxon. The show seems to be setting him up to do a complete 180 from the noxious finance bro he’s been for most of the season. His name is literally an assertion of Westernness. His entire sense of self has been annihilated, between the incest and what he’s rightly convinced is Tim hiding a catastrophe at work; i can imagine him, more than anyone else, wanting to spend some time away from his family. And he left Chelsea’s place last night with an armload of books on Eastern spirituality. —J.B.
Checkhov’s—err, Gaitok’s—gun: Last week Mook goaded Gaitok into proving his manliness with some violent act. (Why Mook is interested in this baby-faced sweetie when her type is clearly a hardened security guard, I still don’t know.) So Gaitok has a gun and, presumably, he will use it in the finale. Does he confront Valentin? Try to help Jim’s security guards take down Rick? Given his inability to perform his job competently—he leaves the security booth unguarded with alarming frequency—I think the audience is expecting him to die in a shootout or misfire at a guest. But remember, he demonstrated surprising mastery of his weapon during target practice.—E.D.