Capturing lightning in a bottle more than once, let alone twice, is no small feat, yet it's something that Mike White has done with the third outing of his social satire, The White Lotus. The symbolism! The gunshots! The robbery! The monkeys! The series, which is available to stream weekly in the UK on NOW TV, is sending cultural shockwaves around the world with each episode that's released.

One character in particular worthy of a mention is Gary (sorry, Greg, played by the actor Jon Gries), whose return to the White Lotus' Thai branch, sent our collective pulses into overdrive. It's not just his return alone that's sending shivers down the spines of fans of the show though, it's how central he already appears to be in each of the third season's storylines. In fact, Gary-Greg's presence in the new series of The White Lotus seems more sinister than ever.

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When did Gary first feature in 'The White Lotus'?

Let's go back to the very beginning. We first met Gary-Greg in season one when he's seemingly trying to break into Tanya's (Jennifer Coolidge) room. Tanya approached her room and politely told Gary that the room he was trying — and failing — to gain access to was her room. Looking bewildered, he looks confused and says 'Well, no wonder it's not working!' while waving his forged hotel key in the air. 'I'm so confused — [room] 594, I'm 592,' he says. 'I was drinking on the boat. I'm sorry about that, I'll get out of your way,' he says.

the white lotus season three
Courtesy of HBO

Gary-Greg then goes on to reiterate how he'd been drinking while on a deep-sea fishing trip with 'a good group of guys, bunch of buds, from the BLN.' Later in the series, Tanya has a treatment with Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), where she tells the therapist after her treatment that she'd fallen asleep during her treatment and had dreamed that she was 'at the top of this mountain range in Asia,' setting the scene for what we now know comes later.

Tanya also sees a physic during the first season, who tells her that the person she loves is in love with somebody else, somebody she describes as 'beautiful.' Fans have began deducing that all of this nods to the idea that Gary-Greg and Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) have potentially been together for years, and that his much younger girlfriend may well be complicity in the web of deceit.

What happened with Gary and Tanya in The White Lotus season two?

The sophomore season of The White Lotus is, obviously, where we learned of Greg's true intentions with Tanya. We began the series with Gary-Greg being upset that Tanya had brought her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), on their romantic getaway before Gary-Greg mysteriously gets called back to Denver 'for work', subsequently leaving his wife on her own before she is seduced by 'the gays.' The leader of the pack is Quentin (Tom Hollander), who we learn in the series' penultimate episode knows Gary-Greg, after Tanya finds a photograph of a young Quentin and Gary-Greg alongside each other in Quentin's Sicilian home. The implication — although it's never confirmed — is that Gary-Greg is Quentin’s long-time friend and lover, and the two are in cahoots to steal Tanya’s fortune. Portia also suspects the murder plot, when she realises the group has been lying about the relationship between her crush, Jack (Leo Woodall) and his ‘uncle’ Quentin, and that Jack has been employed to keep her away from Tanya.

white lotus season 3 fashion
Sky

During a conversation with Portia, Tanya realises that if she and Gary-Greg divorce, because of their pre-nuptial agreement, he will be left with none of her fortune. But if she dies, he'll get everything. In the, quite literally, explosive season finale, we see Tanya has grown so paranoid that the gays are about to murder her, that she shoots them all on a yacht, before falling overboard herself, fatally hitting her head on the rail.

What are the theories about Gary in The White Lotus season three?

Gary-Greg makes his return to The White Lotus when his girlfriend, Chloe, befriends the bashable and lovable Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) at the hotel bar, where she says that she lives at the top of the mountain (ahem, Tanya's dream in the first season) with her boyfriend. He's what they call in Thailand, according to Chloe, an LBH — a Loser Back Home.

In the second episode of the third season, Belinda, who is on an exchange programme to the Thai branch of the hotel, spots Gary-Greg across the restaurant but can't quite place him. He, it seems, also recognises her although refuses to admit as such to her. In the trailer for the third season, Christian Friedel’s character, hotel manager Fabian, tells Belinda: 'One of our regulars was just asking about you. He has a lovely girlfriend but he seems interested in you.'

white lotus season 3 fashion
Sky

'I think we should call the police,' she replies, leaving us to believe that she unearths the truth about Gary-Greg's incognito identity.

Unsurprisingly, Gary-Greg also seems to up to no good in Thailand, telling Rick (Walton Goggins) he does 'this and that' when asked what he does for a living, which is exactly what Quentin (Gary-Greg's assumed lover or friend) told Tanya he did for work in the second season of the show.

The lies! The scandal! Needless to say that we will continue watching The White Lotus season three with baited breath.

The White Lotus season three is available weekly on Sky and streaming service NOW.


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Lettermark
Naomi May
Digital Editor

Naomi May is a seasoned culture journalist and editor with over ten years’ worth of experience in shaping stories and building digital communities. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard, where she worked across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Digital Editor at ELLE Magazine and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others. Naomi is also the host of the ELLE Collective book club.