‘The White Lotus’ Conjures ‘The Princess Bride’ As We Try To Solve Who Dies And Who The Killer Is

“As everyone knows, Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me. So, I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.”

~ The Princess Bride

Season 1 of The White Lotus was something of a mad circus. There was something frantic about it, something raw and wild and violent. The music—tense, wild drum beats, screeching jungle sounds—echoed this sense of rising chaos.

And so we watched in horror as everything went terribly wrong. Armond’s unraveling as the pressures of the job tipped him off the wagon; Rachel’s dawning realization that her new marriage was a sham; Shane’s growing manboy rage; Mark’s daily dose of mid-life crises; Olivia and Paula’s toxic friendship; Tanya . . . being Tanya.

Out of the entire bunch, only Quinn walked away not just unscathed, but in a better place than when he arrived at the resort. And he did this by casting off the trappings of his former life. He left the White Lotus and slept on the beach; left his screens to the waves. Left the airport and headed out to sea on his canoe. Everyone else imploded—or found themselves stuck (or dead).

Season 2 is different. Where Season 1 was all about the unraveling and the chaos and the wild descent into madness, Season 2 is far more ominous. There’s a rising sense of dread and darkness. Where Season 1 was the Mad Hatter’s tea party gone horribly wrong, all I can think when I watch Season 2 is Something wicked this way comes.

One thing both seasons have done very well is toy with our expectations. Season 2, in many ways, has done this even better. While Season 1 was no doubt more fun—largely thanks to the outstanding performance of Murray Bartlett as Armond—Season 2 feels more nuanced, and I think it may be headed toward a more surprising finale.

In Season 2, I’m constantly unsure of my own judgments of people. For instance, the two married couples have taken me on a wild ride of uncertainty. At first, I agreed with Harper (Aubrey Plaza) that Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Cameron (Theo James) were artificial and fake. But then the pair surprised me by being genuinely affectionate and romantic in private—while Harper and her husband, the ever-dour Ethan (Will Sharpe playing essentially the total opposite of his flamboyant character Rodney in Giri/Haji), have essentially no chemistry in public or private, despite their superiority complexes.

Then, my expectations were overturned once again when Cameron, at the very first chance, cheats on Daphne with prostitutes. Ah, I thought, they’re not such a great couple, after all! I was right! But then . . . it appears now that they have an understanding, some kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” open relationship where Daphne has an ongoing fling with her trainer back home (who likely fathered her children) and Cameron gets to play with whomever he chooses. And they’re still madly in love and horny for one another in ways that Harper and Ethan have probably never been.

Whiplash. I certainly empathize with Harper’s own confusion, though I’m just waiting to see if she and Cameron really are gearing up for a fling or if that’s going to be a surprise twist as well. Perhaps we’re just in Ethan’s jealous, possessive brain right now? Though Cameron did make some pretty flagrant moves on Harper—and Harper probably hasn’t had sex in a very long time given Ethan’s preference for pornography over the real thing.

Speaking of sex, the once-sympathetic prostitute, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) is apparently running a con on the Di Grasso men—Bert (F. Murray Abraham), Albie (Adam DiMarco) and Dominic (Michael Imperioli).

The same goes for Tanya’s (Jennifer Coolidge) newfound cadre of rich gay friends, and Portia’s (Haley Lu Richardson) new boy-toy Jack (Leo Woodall). What began as a fun escape from Tanya’s marital problems—her new husband Greg (Jon Gries) is clearly over her—and a fun erotic escape for Portia (who ditched pooor Albie at the first scent of testosterone) has begun to go very dark. It seems obvious that some sort of con is being played on Tanya to separate her from her wealth. It seems obvious that Greg is in on the scam along with Quentin (Tom Hollander) and that Very Bad Things are about to go down.

But then again, perhaps we’re just being misled. Perhaps it’s all red herrings and misdirection.

And that is what makes this show’s mystery so hard to predict. Who dies? Who is the killer?

My best guess is that the deaths all occur in the Tanya/Portia/Quentin/Jack storyline. We have to remember Chekov’s Gun, after all. The idea that if there’s a gun introduced in the first act, it has to be fired by the third. In Season 1, Shane gets the pineapple knife and tells Rachel that they’ll use it for self-defense if the burglar shows up in their room. Later, he uses it to kill Armond.

Then again, there’s a literal gun drawn in Season 2 and while I want to apply the same rule here, it’s entirely possible that this, too, is just a red herring. There’s no doubt that the most ominous storyline is Tanya and Portia’s. They’ve been taken from the White Lotus and are now effectively in hostile territory with strangers who they no longer trust. They’ve heard the story of the lady on the island who was murdered for her property by the mafia. It doesn’t look good.

Then again, in the Ethan/Harper/Cameron/Daphne storyline we have the story of the adulterers and plenty of rising tension and bad blood to go around.

And in the Lucia/Di Grasso storyline we’re starting to think that Lucia is conning the American trio, but it’s entirely possible that this is also a misdirection, and she really is in danger from her pimp and that all this could spill over into violence.

Or what about the budding sex-for-favors fiasco that is Mia (Beatrice Granno) and hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore)? Will that end in tears? In blood?

The only thing we know for sure is that Daphne isn’t the victim. And if we want to draw a parallel to Season 1, the only character we knew for sure wasn’t dead was Shane and he ended up being the killer. Could that mean that Daphne is the killer? She certainly didn’t seem like someone who just got away with murder in the first episode. Shane, on the other hand, was angry and upset when we first met him in the airport.

I don’t know. That’s what I’m getting at. I don’t know and I can’t even make an educated guess because every time I do, I think: “Ah, but that could be a ruse! They could be making me think that to throw me off the scent!” And then I think: “Ah, but that could be a double ruse, doubly throwing me off the scent!”

And then I think of that scene in The Princess Bride when the Man In Black and Vizzini are playing the poisoned-wine guessing game, the duel of wits, and I realize that it’s no coincidence! Vizzini is a Sicilian and The White Lotus Season 2 takes place in Sicily, and we’re playing the exact same game he was playing with Wesley. We’re sitting at the table trying to puzzle it out and the show is staring back at us unblinking. “Never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line!” Vizzini shrieks just before he keels over dead.

What do you think, dear readers? Who is the victim(s)? And who is the killer(s)? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.