Warning: Spoilers ahead for season three of The White Lotus
“I’m gonna help you get your joy back, even if it kills me,” Aimee Lou Wood’s happy-go-lucky Chelsea promises her older, far grumpier boyfriend Rick (Walton Goggins) in the White Lotus season three premiere. It’s a throwaway line, but worth noting in series creator Mike White’s new Thailand-set season—especially when we have an inkling of how the season will end.
Halfway into the doomed getaway, viewers know that the tranquil wellness center will eventually erupt into gunfire. Zion (Nicholas Duvernay), son of visiting spa center manager Belinda (a returning Natasha Rothwell), is the only cast member we know will be safe from the violence (as it begins, anyway). We don’t know who is pointing the weapon, and which unlucky vacationers will check out of the resort in a body bag.
As we did in Italy, Vanity Fair will be on the hunt for all White Lotus callbacks to seasons past, as well as potential clues about who could be this season’s killer or victim(s). If you’re watching weekly—especially you, Parker Posey!—come back after each episode for a breakdown of all the Easter eggs scattered throughout the series’ third season.
Episode 4: Hide or Seek
The Rule of Thirds
After being bitten by a snake (ah, men) and witness to a robbery, Chelsea wonders what third awful event awaits her: “Things happen in threes.” She shares this theory directly after we see the “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” three-monkey statue, which sits in the Ratliff family’s suite. That in itself is a callback to an earlier Easter egg related to trios.
Out for Blood
This week’s episode also offers insight into Rick’s father, a “do-gooder” who helped the Thai locals prevent a “shady American” from “stealing their land.” According to Rick, he was killed by the man who owns the White Lotus Thailand. Both previous seasons of White Lotus also delved into land ownership and cultural appropriation. “Is this a bit, ‘You killed my father, prepare to die’?” Chelsea asks, referencing Inigo Montoya’s (Mandy Patinkin) famous scene in 1987’s The Princess Bride. In that movie, Inigo rightfully avenges his father and survives the duel. Here’s hoping Rick gets just as lucky.
Careful What You Google
After spotting Jon Gries’s Greg (now going by Gary), Belinda can’t shake the feeling that she’s seen that guy before. So she Googles Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuaid in search of answers. Naturally, we paused the screen to read Tanya’s fake bio, which refers to her as “an American businesswoman and heiress to the McQuaid shipping fortune” who “was briefly married to Greg Hunt from the Bureau of Land Management” from 2020 to 2022. (Who else remembers Tanya mistakenly thinking the “BLM” to which Greg referred stood for Black Lives Matter?)
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Fabio Lovino/HBO
“Tanya spent most of her time traveling the world and visiting exotic locations,” it continues. “Before her untimely death, she had a desire to support aspiring business owners and entrepreneurs.” This suggests that Tanya made many offers to fund the dreams of people like Belinda—even if she never got around to fulfilling them with her $497 million net worth.
Belinda’s shocked face makes it clear that she didn’t know of Tanya’s demise until this moment. Among the news articles about her death is one that refers to a potential true-crime docuseries, plus a headline that reads “HEIRESS’S HUSBAND WANTED FOR QUESTIONING IN ITALY.” Before his name change, it appears that Greg did not return authorities’ requests for questioning. Belinda has the only appropriate response to this information: “Motherfucker!” And across the resort, Greg/Gary is doing a bit of scrolling himself, taking a look through Belinda’s Instagram.
Man to Man
