[This story contains major spoilers from The White Lotus season three finale, “Amor Fati.”]
The first thing White Lotus creator Mike White knew about season three was how it was going to end.
“The ending was kinda the first thing I really thought of — Belinda leaving with money and leaving somebody in the same way she got left [in the first season],” said White, who wrote and directed season three finale “Amor Fati,” on the The White Lotus Official Podcast after the episode released Sunday night. The supersized 90-minute season ender brought Natasha Rothwell’s character full circle, as she essentially becomes Tanya, the deceased fan-favorite character played by Jennifer Coolidge. Or does she become Greg, Tanya’s ex-husband who orchestrated the murder (played by returning star Jon Gries)?
Rothwell was asked that question in a separate interview for the HBO show’s official podcast that also released after Sunday night’s finale.
“Maybe she’s a little bit of both,” admits Rothwell.
In the end, Greg gave Belinda $5 million in exchange for her and son Zion’s (Nicholas Duvernay) silence over the suspicious death of his late wife. Back in season one, White Lotus: Hawaii staffer Belinda and wealthy guest Tanya forged a friendship and planned to go into business together before Tanya disappeared (she tragically died in season two on a boat in Italy, after defending herself from a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by Greg, and her death was covered up).
After taking the money, Belinda’s final act at the White Lotus: Thailand, where season three takes place, is to then do to staffer, and lover, Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) what Tanya did to her. Belinda scraps her and Pornchai’s plans to go into business together, and the Thailand saga ends with Belinda and Zion heading out on a jetboat, $5 million richer, as the victors of season three.
“I think that moment [of Belinda leaving with the money] will feel like deja vu to the audience because of what happened to her,” says Rothwell of the Tanya comparison, “but I think if they look at it closely, you’ll see she’s departing with kindness. She reiterates multiple times… some things have changed and she just needs to wrap her head around those things, because her life just got really big.”
Rothwell calls the final exchange between her and Pornchai “heartbreaking,” but she stops short of drawing a clean line from Belinda to Tanya, the latter who chose her life with Greg over her plans with Belinda. “I think there’s more grief on Belinda’s part than perhaps Tanya’s part,” she says. “Tanya’s about to go get dick. So she’s like, ‘Bye girl. I gotta go.’ Belinda’s a little bit more heartbroken — and she doesn’t say no. She’s just like, ‘Right now, I have to get my bearings…” And I do think that maybe she’d circle back [to Pornchai].”
Rothwell explains that if Belinda had brought Pornchai along for the ride, it would be like her “getting another dependent” in this moment of freedom from financial burden. “She even says to Zion, ‘Can’t I just be rich for five minutes? Right now, no one is asking anything of me,’” Rothwell explains, citing her early days as a working actor as being able to relate to Belinda’s “never-ending dread” about money. “She’s like, ‘Let’s just pump the brakes and sit in the space where I’m not doing something for someone else, and I’m not making plans. I’m just enjoying the comfort of security.’ I think that’s why she doesn’t bring Pornchai on the journey for this next chapter, because she doesn’t know who she is outside of trying to work. I think she’s taking care of herself.”
Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda and Nicholas Duvernay’s Zion making a deal with Jon Gries as Greg in season three. Max
That line of Belinda asking her son “Can’t I just be rich for five minutes?” goes back to White’s full-circle ending for season three.
“There was some criticism,” White admitted on the after-show podcast about Belinda’s season one ending. “She was the Black character; she was the dutiful put-upon worker; and then she got this very sad ending where she’s consigned to work there forever, while everybody’s riding off into the sunset. And some people thought that was accurate. Some people thought that was too depressing or whatever.”
He added, “There was a lot of conversation about that part of it.“
So after the sadness over his decision to kill Tanya — which meant the departure of his close friend, Emmy winner Coolidge — White went back to the drawing board to ask, “What could be something happy that comes out of it?”
He said of Belinda’s choice: “It’s easy to be virtuous and have certain kinds of ideals when you have no money and don’t have to really put your money where your mouth is. It’s one thing to be, ‘Oh yeah, I’m gonna do this spa for women,’ whatever her sort of fantasy was — but she needs someone to bankroll it. And then you’ve got the money, and it’s like, ‘Can I just be rich for like five minutes?’ I just feel like that’s very honest. ‘You know what, just let me enjoy this for a second.’”
When White imagines now what Belinda’s future looks like, he said, “Maybe she will go and do something meaningful. And I think people do — I’m not that cynical. That was actually an anchoring idea, that she would go and have this kind of Stella-gets-her-groove-back kind of thing with somebody there and is maybe fantasizing about maybe starting a business with this person, and then this windfall comes and it’s like, ‘I’m outta here. Sorry.’”
He continued, “And we love her because we are with her. We get it. But at the same time, it feels very human and doesn’t make it the end of some ‘80s comedy where you see them put up the sign of their spa for less fortunate people and giving massages to housekeepers or something.”
Rothwell, for her part, says she collaborated with White to contribute scenes that felt authentic through the lens of Belinda being a Black woman, citing the look she gives to another Black couple at the White Lotus: Thailand as an example. “I pitched him the scene and that came out of us talking [about] when I see Black people when I travel. It doesn’t matter where in the world I am, I’m gonna go up and say something if we’re in a really homogenous space, because I want that person to feel seen and 10 times out of 10 they they love being seen and want to feel seen by me,” she says, adding of White, “It’s just a dream to be able to collaborate with someone at his level who sees value in my ideas.”
As for her vision for Belinda now, Rothwell says she believes her character is likely headed for a new life, not too dissimilar to Greg becoming “Gary” in Thailand.
“I think she’s trying to adjust into this upper echelon of society,” she says, imagining her future. “You get out of Dodge pretty quick. She’s worried about being pursued by Greg, and so I think she wants to go off grid perhaps. Maybe she’ll go by her middle name.”
The ending also could open up both her and Gries to return for the already renewed fourth season of HBO and Max’s Emmy-winning hit. “Selfishly, I wanna come back. I don’t know if I will be, but who knows?” she says.
Gries, meanwhile, also didn’t rule out a return. “You never know,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in his finale interview. “There’s no trying to predict anything Mike White does. I never presumed I’d be in season two. Same for season three. Everything he does has an element of surprise to it. Yes, I would love to come back. But does the book on Greg seem like it’s complete? I can’t tell you.”
In the end, Rothwell sees Belinda as a conduit for the audience into The White Lotus — or at least, she was, until she got rich. “I think that’s why audiences are so drawn to Belinda,” she says. “She has such real, relatable reactions [like], ‘I’m gonna die. Let’s call all the police.’ She’s trying to stay alive and she’s gripping her purse like she’s a nanny on a bus. She’s having really human, authentic reactions, which is just a joy to play because [in] the world of Mike White, it’s adding something that we don’t get to see through the other characters.”
White Lotus season two is now streaming on Max. Head here for all of THR’s season three interviews and coverage, including our uncensored oral history with White and the cast, breakdown of the finale and finale interview with Jon Gries.
