The White Lotus: Season 3 Episode 1-3 Review

The White Lotus - in the same way a short vacation refreshes your perspective on life - is a perfect palette cleanser for TV viewing. As someone who's stuck in front of a screen for most of my day, it's difficult for anything, be it game, movie, or show, to really persuade me to stick around in front of a TV or monitor for longer than I should, yet The White Lotus has always held that power. A TV show that never feels like a huge commitment.

Taking us to gorgeous resorts in even more beautiful locations, The White Lotus has always been a very watchable show, not just for a chance to see how the other half live, but to dig deep into the strangeness and deviance that ends up going on within these hotels. You know something is bound to go wrong, and The White Lotus doesn't play around with the idea that its latest season could be any different. The catch is to keep you invested in all of the characters, whether in hopes they'll rise or fall, to see who gets the most unfortunate fate.

The White Lotus Season 3 takes us to Thailand, a location that exudes the same warmth and exoticism of the first season's location, but to avoid direct comparison, The White Lotus Season 3 introduces a focus on well-being, using new healing methods to try and refocus its guests mentally and physically. This also serves as a solid introduction to our characters, who they are and what they're searching for or dealing with, thanks to time dedicated to their therapy. It might be a bit too on the nose for some, but I found it engaging and a nice separation between the atmosphere the Thai and Hawaiin resorts created.

There are a few similarities between our roster of guests in the first and third seasons. The trip to Italy in The White Lotus Season 2 feels more like an outlier now, as in Season 3 we again have a dysfunctional family and a mismatched couple, but to reduce these characters to those roles would be doing them a disservice. Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey's family feels distinct and fresh, and Walton Goggins alongside Aimee Lou Wood are a far cry from the other relationships we've seen depicted in the show.

Largely, it's the characters that keep you hooked on The White Lotus, and while the writing is brilliant, a lot of your investment in the characters will come from their actors. As expected, no one in the cast disappoints. Having only watched the first three episodes, I can't comment on the entire season, but so far so good. Stand-outs include Parker Posey, who steals every scene she's in, as well as Carrie Coon, and the ever-excellent Walton Goggins. We might just have to accept Goggins is the king of television at this point. The Righteous Gemstones, Fallout, and now The White Lotus. Whatever he's given, he does incredible work with.

The casting of Thai talent is also very strong, and again The White Lotus allows you to find some characters you can actually empathise with through its depiction of the staff and locals just as it did in past seasons. While I would say that some characters are a lot more developed than others, and you can tell where the favourites lie in this season, there's still plenty of time for more threads to develop, and in a show where a mystery lies at its heart, it's probably for the best we can't figure everything out from these early stages.

In these first three episodes, I cannot say I am absolutely blown away by what I've seen, but I am more than intrigued to see where this story will go. As funny as it is secretive, The White Lotus continues to show that even a beautiful place filled with beautiful people can be anything but paradise. Now Succession is over, and Severance is showing Apple TV+ can be the new home of prestige television, HBO needs a show like The White Lotus, which is just as good as ever for the network after a couple of stumbles with House of the Dragon and Dune: Prophecy in 2024.