Maybe, I’m sticking my neck out, but based on all the tell-tale clues in the last episode of season 2 and my own experience as a mystery/suspense writer, I’m predicting Tanya will return in White Lotus Season 3.
Spoiler Alert: Spoilers Throughout
White Lotus director and writer, Mike White, has left his options open even though so far in interviews he has mostly confirmed that Tanya died in the last episode of WL2, and that Jennifer Coolidge, the actress who plays her, has been written out of the series. But that could just be playful misdirection?
White is a brilliant writer and director exploring the lives of the ultra-wealthy as social satire in a TV series which cannot be categorized simply as murder mysteries in exotic settings. However, like any other successful writer/director catering to a mass audience, he must operate within a Hollywood rule book that generally prohibits killing off popular characters in TV series.
Hollywood Rule
That’s been the rule pretty much since Bobby Ewing (J.R.’s handsome younger brother) was killed, run down by a car, in front of our eyes in 1985 on the eighth season of Dallas, one of the highest rated TV series of all-time. The outcry from fans was such that it took producers an entire year to figure out how to bring him back from the dead. Which they did — in the stupidest way possible (It was all a dream!)
So, lesson learned: Leave all your options open. Never show the actual killing, or face/body of a popular character looking dead as a doornail with a big blood stain oozing out of the heart or head area, being zippered up in a body bag or — as in Bobby Ewing’s case — surrounded by family in the hospital as monitors flatline.
I know, you’re going to swear you saw Tanya hit her head on the small boat she was trying to escape in; you’re going to swear you saw her drown; that you saw her sinking to the bottom of the Ionian sea in the dead of night, then floating face down, eyes open apparently seconds before Daphne brushes up against a body and raises the alarm next morning. You’re going to swear you saw Tanya being zippered into a body bag which was then placed in a sturdier container which was then carried into a mortuary van. Look again!
What Viewers Did NOT See
In fact, you did not see Tanya lying lifeless on the beach or her face as the cops zippered up the bag. You did not see the zipper closing over Tanya’s face, and that’s really the only shot that would have established that Tanya had actually drowned. All the other shots are inconclusive and would be factually/scientifically inexplicable if Tanya had actually drowned.
Take, for example, the image of Tanya floating face down with eyes open as Daphne supposedly swims past her next morning. It’s a generally accepted scientific fact that, when someone drowns, water rushing into the lungs causes the body to sink to the bottom of the water. It is only days or weeks later when decomposition occurs and gases build up in the cadaver, that those gases float the body to the surface. So how come she’s already floating hours later the following morning?
True, the Ionian Sea is very, very salty which might allow a body to float longer than if it went in the water in the Atlantic. Also, Tanya’s body fat and her billowing dress might act as a flotation devices. However, in Season 2’s last episode the feet of the body floating on top of the water moments before it apparently brushes past Daphne are bare, without shoes. Yet, when Tanya went in the water, she was wearing high-heeled strappy sandals with the straps fastened around her ankles.
Take a good, hard look at those legs without shoes. Could they, instead, have been the legs of the white-jacketed Quentin compadre who dove off the boat into the sea when Tanya started shooting up the place?
What Viewers Heard
When Portia meets Albie at the airport, we assume she made her way there without going to the hotel first after Jack warned her she was in danger. Albie asks her where her boss (Tanya) is.
Portia replies, very calmly: “She’s not answering her phone right now.”
Huh?????
I know we are supposed to understand that Portia has gone straight to the airport after being warned by Jack that she is in danger. So, how could Portia be so sanguine about failing to reach Tanya? She has to be wondering why Tanya has not shown up at the airport? After all, they all arrived together and are all supposed to be leaving together.
The last time they had a conversation Tanya said she was on the yacht with Quentin, and both women talked about Quentin and/or Greg having ulterior motives. Then, both women decided they were, maybe, overthinking the situation. After Tanya realized that Quentin’s plot (and possibly Greg’s) was to kill her, she tried to call Portia but her phone fell in the water.
Given all that, it is literally incredible that Portia’s character would just leave Sicily without attempting to find out why Tanya is not answering her phone. Since Tanya’s phone ended up in the water, of course, she would not be answering it. So, what would a bright character like Portia do????
Duh!
Wouldn’t she call the hotel and ask Valentina, the manager: Hey, did Tanya return to the hotel? Can you put me through to her room? Whereupon, Valentina who by now would almost certainly know which hotel guest had drowned, would tell Portia that it was Tanya if indeed Tanya was the hotel guest who was being zippered into the body bag.
Portia not making that call or acting laid-back in view of Tanya’s absence at the airport would be a plothole that my editor would have alighted on with a swoop.
What? Viewers are expected to believe that Portia wouldn’t make the phone call to contact Tanya, or attempt to get help once she is at the airport safely surrounded by all the other vacationers with whom she’d just spent a week at the White Lotus?
Plus: Daphne was on the beach when the floating body was brought to the shore. Daphne would know if the guest was Tanya; would have recalled that Portia had arrived with Tanya, with the rest of that small group. Wouldn’t all the members of that group be talking and whispering about it at the airport ?
Anyway, you get the point??? Glossing over Tanya’s absence at the airport is a big cliffhanger!
Why Tanya Needs To Return in Season 3
#1 Because she is a huge favorite among viewers. Even Mike White isn’t sure how the series will work without her. White has hinted at taking the show to a different continent “like Asia.”
And, in the biggest hint about Jennifer Coolidge’s return to White Lotus, on Deadline Hollywood, he said: “Jennifer is my friend, and everybody loved her in the first season, and I was, like, I can’t go to Italy without Jennifer; and maybe that’s still the case, like maybe I can’t go to Japan without Jennifer either.”
#2 Greg cannot be allowed to get away with the conspiracy to murder Tanya and inherit all her money.
#3 Tanya has not completed her narrative arc. Tanya never changed from the first moments of Season 1 to the last seconds of Season 2. Tanya needs to return a worldlier, wiser woman who, in the first place, would never sign the stupidest pre-nup of all time (begging to be murdered by signing a document that gives her husband all her money if she dies!!!!)
Now that she’s had a taste of shooting to kill, it would be immensely satisfying to see her return as a woman who could take her revenge on men like Greg. Which would fit in nicely with Mike White’s plans to set the next White Lotus somewhere like Thailand or Japan to explore the theme of spirituality. And, karma ????
I would definitely tune in for that.