Exquisitely awful guests and drama it’s impossible to look away from: it can only be the third, Thailand-based season of Mike White’s luxury resort drama. Bring on the memes!
Sure, The White Lotus is an acclaimed drama, eagerly anticipated after more than two years away from our screens, but it is also a solid and reliable meme factory. From the second season’s banger of a theme tune, to every line Jennifer Coolidge’s character deigned to speak, when The White Lotus is in season, the internet transforms into its fan account. For such a rich and well-crafted satire on bored elites and their casual cruelty, it really does translate well to screenshots and parodies. These memes, they’re trying to murder me!
In an age of fragmented attention spans, then, The White Lotus is that rare cultural phenomenon that still feels like a collective activity. These days, only a handful of shows would warrant mass speculation about how a season is going to end, and The White Lotus has become one of them. Inevitably, it returns for a third series under the heavy weight of expectation. Can it survive the loss of Coolidge’s Tanya, killed off with operatic gusto at the end of season two? Can it survive a new theme tune? Thankfully, the answers are yes and yes. It has had a few minor tweakments but the work is subtle, and it basically passes as its former youthful self.
