Spoilers below.
Turns out, snakes are everywhere around The White Lotus Thailand. As the emcee of the local cobra show says, they’re not just in the jungles, but in farms and cities too. And as we see in episode 3, they’re also slithering all over the floor at Rick and Chelsea’s (poor Chelsea!) impromptu date—and hiding in plain sight in Kate, Jaclyn, and Laurie’s girls trip. The serpentine presence could be a biblical omen, according to Chelsea, or a warning, according to Piper. With a mysterious murder on the back of our minds, we won’t take that hint lightly. Victoria’s dreams are getting ominous too.
In her sleep, the mother of three sees a tsunami headed for the beach, with their North Carolina home placed right on the shore. This is surely a side effect of Lochlan showing her tsunami YouTube videos the night before, but at breakfast Piper suggests that it could mean something else. Saxon scoffs. “We all dream of fire and snakes because we’re all afraid of fire and snakes. It’s not that deep,” he says.
But it is that deep. If anything, the titanic waves in Victoria’s subconscious are quite the metaphor for Timothy’s looming scandal, which is about to come crashing down at any moment. In fact, Timothy has just received a voicemail saying the FBI obtained a search warrant for his office. “Do not talk to anyone until you hear from me,” a colleague tells him on the phone.
The news sends Timothy so over the edge that he decides to oblige by the resort’s no-phones policy after all. If no one can contact him, he can’t get in trouble, right? Saxon is disgusted by this change of heart—did he mention he loves to work?—so his father butters him up to ease his mind. He knows his son will have an amazing career, but he has to learn that it’s important to unplug and enjoy what really matters in life, like family. It’s a valuable lesson, but Timothy is just trying to keep Saxon from finding out what’s going on at the office.
Meanwhile, Rick is up to something shady, too. At the breakfast buffet, he introduces himself to Sritala as a Hollywood producer and tells the actress-turned-hotel owner that he knows a director who’d love to meet her. She’s skeptical at first, but gives Rick her contact in Bangkok, where he plans to go the next day. Chelsea echoes our thoughts when she later asks—and I paraphrase—What the hell was that? Rick, again, won’t share. “Scorpio. So secretive!” says Aries Chelsea. As his life partner and soulmate, she wants to know everything about him, but he won’t budge. “Our signs aren’t even compatible,” he tells her. (I would check that with the AstroTwins, Rick!)
Surprisingly, Rick does open up during his stress management session. “I’ve done a lot of bad things,” he tells Dr. Amrita, but his father “was a good man.” His murder has hung over Rick ever since. “I can’t get my life back.”
Another couple on uncertain terms is Mook and Gaitok, whose head is feeling better after getting knocked out in the last episode. Not wanting to show defeat, he offers his services to Sritala if she ever needs an extra bodyguard. Mook worries this means he’ll be away traveling, be he flirtatiously replies, “only if you came with me.” It doesn’t take long for poor Gaitok’s bubble to burst; Sritala’s other, more intimidating bodyguards scold him for trying to take their jobs and call him a “pussy.”
Lochlan’s masculinity is also under attack in his corrective posture session. He’s told he sits in a “defensive posture” and protects himself “with his female side.” This could be explained by Lochy’s tendency to blend into the background among his family’s big personalities. They always pull him into different directions, whether it’s Piper with spirituality or Saxon with bulking up, or his mom with UNC and his father with Duke. “You meet them on their plane of reality,” the guide tells Lochy, “but what is your reality?”
At the pool, Chloe and Chelsea gab about their grumpy older boyfriends when Chloe reveals what Greg/Gary told her about his ex wife—as in the Tanya McQuoid. “All I know is she was a real mental patient,” Chloe says. According to Greg’s version of events, Tanya was so depressed she walked into the ocean, kept going, and never came back. The only thing they found was part of her leg floating in the water. White Lotus fans know that the whole story is false—and that we need to put some respect on Tanya’s name.
Rick takes Chelsea to buy some weed in town, but she wants to have a little fun. Ok, why not a live snake show? In tight venue, the couple watch as handlers display snakes for the small crowd to see. But the weed is starting to kick in and Rick is starting to panic. (I’m no chemist but I don’t think marijuana is supposed to make you feel this way?) He gets out of his seat and decides to free all the snakes from their glass cages, even though they’re venomous. They might be seen as dangerous, but they deserve to live freely—much like himself—except the act isn’t so much heroic as it is a little insane. When Chelsea runs after Rick, a cobra darts at her leg and bites her and she’s rushed to the hospital. Maybe that weed was laced, Rick thinks.
Later at the girls’ dinner, Laurie talks about her “energy session” with Valentin, which Jaclyn set up for her because she wants Laurie to have a little fling. Kate is a quite spooked by all these “New Age” meditation and healing practices. She finds them a bit “witchy.” But that’s what Jaclyn likes about it, she prefers that over the very male-dominated narratives and figures in Christianity. This is where things start getting tense. Kate, as a woman, actually likes going to church every Sunday in Austin. No, she does not find it weird to be among so many conservatives in Texas. Why would it be? So, Laurie has to ask: “Are you a Republican?”
“No!” Kate exclaims. But before her friends can sigh in relief, she adds, “I’m an independent!” Her husband, though? Yes, definitely a Republican. The fear in Laurie and Jaclyn’s eyes is growing now.
“You didn’t vote for Trump though, did you?” Laurie prods.
Leslie Bibb’s response here is so good. She scrunches up Kate’s face with sarcasm and forced politeness, then drops her shoulders and gets more serious as if to ask, Really? And she darts her eyes over to Jaclyn. Not a single word was spoken, but so much was said. To me, this is the season 3 equivalent of the look Meghann Fahy’s Daphne gives Ethan in season 2.
“Are we really gonna talk about Trump tonight?” Kate says, shrugging it off the question and swiftly trying to end the conversation. The way Laurie and Jaclyn look at each other, you can already tell the gossip session after dinner is going to be so good. Sure enough, Kate overhears the two talking about her in the middle of the night. “I mean, Trump? Are you insane?” one asks. They speculate that Kate just does whatever her husband says and is trying to fit in in Austin (which is a blue bubble within Texas, but I digress). After gossiping about both her friends in the last episode, now it’s Kate’s turn to get roasted.
Elsewhere at dinner, Belinda, who has spent another lovely day of training with Pornchai, realizes she just might recognize Greg. She approaches him at dinner to confirm her suspicions. She asks if he ever came to the White Lotus Maui or dated a woman named Tanya, but he denies, lying right to her face. If that exchange wasn’t eerie enough, later that night, Belinda senses there might be something—or someone?—hiding in her room.
Before bed, Rick calls an old pal named Frank and tells him, “I need your help with a couple things” when he goes to Bangkok. Chelsea is more hung up on the fact that she just had two near-death experiences in a row. Why would Rick let loose all those cobras? Doesn’t he know snakes are evil? “Even evil things shouldn’t be treated like shit, it’s only going to make them more evil,” he says poignantly, again referencing himself.
Over at the Ratliffs’ villa, Timothy is being weird as he and Victoria get ready for bed. “Is something going on?” she asks him. He doesn’t give her an answer, but maybe her dreams tonight will.
