The White Lotus is returning to our screens with a new cast, but the same reliable structure. We are welcomed back to a beautiful hotel where disaster will inevitably strike. The guests arrive over by boat to their destination, waiting to be greeted by the smiling and waving hotel staff. The swift return to the familiar allows for the digestion of the new – a new place with (mostly) new characters – easier. Speaking of the new place, we are traveling with Mike White to the tree-laden shores of Thailand this season. The hotel, as usual, is miraculous and designed in the style of the locale. There are monkeys climbing the nearby trees and wellness guides help you make the most of your time in the health and wellness centric hotel. It’s all sumptuous to take in, but the majority of us viewers were raring to meet the new guests and staff who will be involved in one way or another with the shoot out shown to us in the show’s openings moments.

Like every season before it, season three of The White Lotus introduces us to our guests and staff in a mostly siloed manner. Their interconnection will weave in, out, and around as the season progresses. But for now, let’s take a look at each of these groups to see who the players in this game are.

The Staff of the White Lotus Thailand

Another familiarity of the White Lotus, is that we don’t just get to know the guests each season. The staff and locals have been key characters in the previous two seasons and this season doesn’t seem to be any different. The extent to which they are involved remains to be seen, but all I know is Mook – played by popstar, Lisa – deserves everything and the general manager gives me the heebie jeebies.

The Old Friends

Three beautiful, blonde friends arrive in Thailand to reconnect and relax – what could go wrong?! Well, already a lot for sweet Laurie, but more on that in a moment. Kate, Jaclyn, and Laurie are all old friends who are using this trip as a chance to reconnect. We don’t know much about them even by the end of the episode except that Kate is a rich wife based out of Texas, Jaclyn is an actress who stars in a popular tv show, and everything Laurie does is so hard. There is a clear tension between Laurie and the other two women who have spent the majority of the first day throwing shallow and aggressive compliments at one another. As she throws wine down her throat, it’s hard not to feel so Laurie. Carrie Coon is already a standout, which is unsurprising to anyone who has ever seen her in literally anything before this. Her finest moment being a cathartic sob in her hotel room as she watched her two friends laugh together in the main area of their bungalow.

I expect the tension to continue and perhaps lead to a juicy, long-brewing fight between their ‘great’ friends that exposes a lot of repressed pain.

The Ratliff Family

In typical White Lotus fashion, we have a fucked-up family amongst the guests for the season. The Ratcliff’s might take the cake of all the messed up families we have seen thus far – though it will be tough to beat Albie and his father both sleeping with Lucia last season. From the moment we meet the Ratcliff’s it’s clear that all is not well. The parents for one, are textbook rich, white folks from the south. Parker Posey is as hilarious as promised and Jason Isaacs is trying his best to have a convincing southern accent. They introduce their trio of children to the hotel staff and audience as Saxon, Piper, and Lochlan. The family is current split between Duke – Saxon and Timothy – and North Carolina – Victoria and Piper – leaving little Lochlan as the swing vote in this very intense school rivalry. The intermixing of such bitter rivals is crazy enough, but when you mix in the strange sexual dynamics we witness in episode one it seems to just be the surface of the issues with this family.

To start, Timothy is clearly in some serious legal trouble. Though he is toted around by his wife as a good man, father, and husband, there is something dark within him. A phone call from a journalist at the Wall Street Journal reveals that a former business partner is in some deep shit that likely implicates Timothy. At his side is Victoria, glazed eyes and loopy smile permanently affixed on her face. She is a walking pharmacy in the shape of a southern housewife, I am loving every single second of it. Shout out to Parker Posey for having some of the best line delivery out there. Each moment she is on screen is delightful, unlike the moments when her eldest son is anywhere in view of the camera. Patrick Schwarzenegger plays Saxon with a tremendous amount of confidence and care, he deserves a lot of credit for making me hate a character as much as I hate Saxon after one single episode. It’s a remarkable feat. This kid is laced in privilege, cockiness, and audacity. His sister, Piper, is the opposite in her dainty and quite presence. The middle child of the Ratcliff clan is responsible for the family ending up in this location as she is hoping to interview a local monk for a paper at school. She is a beautiful girl who dresses in a strangely frumpy way and has two completely different relationships with her brothers – a clear disdain for Saxon and motherly love for Lochlan. The youngest member of the family is caught in the middle of everything: schools, his siblings, and his identity. It is he who is unfortunately the center of much of the awkwardness of episode one. Let’s look at the weird moments we witnessed from this family so far:

• Saxon made a comment about how Piper and Lochlan sharing a room would be weird because siblings shouldn’t share a room once their genitals are fully developed.
• In a conversation with Lochlan, Saxon describes his sister as hot and surmises that she is a virgin.
• After discussing the attractiveness and sexual experience of their sister, Saxon quickly changes the subject to a much more sibling-friendly conversation: porn! Specifically asking Lochlan what kind of porn he likes to watch.
• It gets better though because after this, he gets up out of bed revealing he has been NAKED THE WHOLE TIME to go masturbate in the bathroom.
• While the door is still open Lochlan takes a bit too long of a look at his naked brother and the look on his face is not one you want to see between people who share the same parents.

I don’t know what to make of all this, but I sincerely hope the theory that Lochlan is adopted is true, because otherwise ICK!

The May-December Couple

Ahh yes, the familiar and tired pang of seeing an older man with a younger woman in a TV show. Thankfully, these are two human beings who bring me nothing but joy to see on the screen. Aimee Lou Wood and Walton Goggins play a May-December couple this season and though they are allegedly together, Walton’s Rick doesn’t seem to have any interest at all in his paramour. Instead, he grumpily sulks around while she lounges around by the pool. But the story isn’t that simple, this is White Lotus after all. Rick might be the most mysterious character on this season and Chelsea brings us the most surprising moment of the premiere.

From the moment they appear on screen Rick looks uncomfortable, as if he has no desire to be in this place with this person by his side. Nothing seems to cheer him up, but something does peek his curiosity: one of the owners of the hotel. In addition to being an owner, Sritala Hollinger is also a former actress and singer whose wealthy American husband lives in Bangkok. It is this husband who intrigues Rick to the point of him asking multiple people if Jim Hollinger is at the hotel. The reasons behind this are already causing me to spin webs of theories. Is Jim his father who he is trying to reunite with? Is, as one Reddit user suggests, Rick a hitman sent to kill Jim? Does Jim owe him money and is hiding away in Bangkok? Is Rick terminally ill and looking to make amends with Jim? There are so many possibilities, but the fact that Rick allegedly insisted that he and Chelsea go to Thailand leads to me believe that this search for Jim is heavily premeditated. That and he isn’t even allowed in Australia so they couldn’t go there anyway. But like why?! Very mysterious.

Chelsea does her best to keep a positive attitude and manages to deal with the grumpy Rick without much of a crack in her perfect, little smile. Like the supportive younger girlfriend she is, she suggests ways to cheer him up: “Maybe we should get fucked up tonight!?” and “Want to get into some tantric together.” But in the end she spends much their first day in Thailand alone. Alone at the pool getting shameless hit on by Saxon, but shutting him down like a pro. Alone at the bar where she meets a new friend and we see a familiar face…

Familiar Faces

Thank you to the HBO gods for bringing Natasha Rothwell back into my life. If you only recognize her from season one, I implore you to go check out the fantastic series Insecure where she plays an absolutely hysterical friend of the main character. I was delighted to find out that Belinda is back again, this time to learn more about wellness from the staff of the White Lotus in Thailand. I was not delighted to see though that the mother who was referred to by a character in the opening scene of the episode – where the foreshadowed shooting will occur – would be Belinda. It looks like that character, Zion, is her son who will be visiting her from college during her stay. I pray that Belinda is okay and get a chance to learn and love this season…but this is The White Lotus, so I won’t hold my breath.

Though I am excited to have her back, Belinda was not the only face to return from a previous season. After Rick left her at dinner, Chelsea made her way over to the bar where she met a local girl who was also avoiding her boyfriend. Chloe, a former model, shared that her boyfriend was “the bald guy, the one with the orange shirt.” The camera panned over to one of the LBH’s – “loser back home” – in attendance at dinner that night: Tanya’s widower, Greg. THE WAY I GASPED!!!! So the man who supposedly hired Quinten and his crew to kill Tanya off last season to be with his new girl is currently hiding away with this lovely woman in Thailand at another White Lotus hotel?!?!?! The absolute gaul of this man. He must be punished.

Even though Greg is scum, I absolutely loved this surprise. I was worried that nothing would really catch me too off guard this season, but this was a welcome pearls-clutching moment.

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Needless to say my gears are turning at hyperdrive following this premiere. I am so excited to see how everything unfolds and feel so uncertain about the killer or killers who will be firing the gun at the end of the season, but have come up with a theory for nearly every character. Let’s see how it all goes and come back here next week for another recap!