White Lotus Season 3 Has a Problem, And It’s a Lack of Jennifer Coolidge

When Season 3 of White Lotus began, I was excited and eager to see where it was going. But as more episodes pass, it’s becoming more and more clear that the season is missing a certain something, and that certain something is Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid.

There’s no denying that when people think of White Lotus, they usually think of Jennifer Coolidge. It was thanks to her performance as the vapid and clueless Tanya McQuoid that earned her several Emmys and Golden Globes. She was so popular in the first season that despite the show being anthological, she was brought back in the second season and given an even more prominent role, ultimately being the token person killed at the end of the season. I honestly think that killing her off was the right move by the series, but it does mean that the show’s third season lacks the unique energy and levity that she brought to it.

Jennifer Coolidge was the center of the show’s comedy. While the first season was undeniably more comical than the second season, most of the show’s best bits were thanks to Coolidge. Her Season 1 plot was centered around her over-the-top grief and lambasting it while the second season exploited and made fun of her paranoia. That may sound a bit mean, but you still ultimately grew to like her character, even when other people were immensely frustrated by her. After all, the show was once focused on making fun of the ultra-wealthy at their expense, and Tanya was the perfect example of it. 

But once she died and White Lotus tried to move past her, it lost a certain energy. Season 3 is a lot darker as we shift our focus to Thailand, and the absence of humor is immediately felt. While Tanya’s brand of clueless disconnect was always worth a good chuckle, it’s not being replaced by anything worthwhile. Sure, there’s Saxon Ratliff’s sexism and immaturity, but we’re not supposed to point and laugh at how wrong he is. We’re meant to be repulsed by it, and while consequences are on their way thanks to Tim’s business dealings, the satisfaction of seeing Saxon get knocked down a peg won’t be as satisfying because it’s not for anything that he’s done. He’s punished by proxy.

Piper Ratliff does retain some of Tanya’s naivete, but it’s more from a place of youthful, sheltered innocence than the more worldly entitlement Tanya exudes. Piper was the one who convinced her family to go to Thailand and we can tell from the few moments she has away from her family that she’s in awe of the new environment. When she tells her brother Lochlan about her plan to move to Thailand, all I could think about was how she was a young white woman thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong with her actions, much like Tanya’s attitude towards… virtually anything.

However, the key difference between the two of them is that Tanya is entitled, but she’s a person who is woefully ignorant of others, though that may not be intentional. She can’t possibly comprehend that other people would find what she does annoying or rude. And that’s where a lot White Lotus’ humor lies. When she’s paired with Belinda in Season 1, she appeases Tanya’s ridiculous demands because she’s hoping she can get the money to start her own spa. When she’s with Portia in Season 2, Portia is just straight-up working for Tanya and has to do whatever she says. The rich are able to do what they want because the poorer people don’t have any options, but the fact that they’re the ones confused by everything Tanya did was funny. 

There is no commentary like that in Season 3. There is no ridiculing or mockery of the elite. We’re not laughing at them or even watching lower-class characters belittle them. The closest we got I suppose was in Episode 4 when Valentin suggested Jaclyn and her friends go to another resort, only for it to be filled with old people, and then he takes them to a bustling street in the middle of the Thai holiday Songkran where they get sprayed with water guns. Sure, it was funny to see Jaclyn, who is a somewhat entitled actress, get a little bit of karmic justice, but it’s hard to tell if Valentin did this because of some pent-up frustration with her or if he genuinely didn’t mean to offend her. 

While there isn’t any ridicule of the ultra-wealthy, there definitely is a pervading sense that most of the characters need to be knocked down a peg. The Ratliff family is a perfect example of this, and the same goes for Jim Hollinger, the owner of the Thailand White Lotus, whom Rick believes is responsible for his father’s death. Vengeance is coming, and it’s all from a much angrier place. It’s telling that the series was a lot more comedic in 2021 but over the course of four years, that humor has been slowly replaced with more biting condemnations of the ultra-wealthy and their effects on others.

But White Lotus wasn’t meant to be a serious affair. It used to have more variety in its tone, and Tanya McQuoid stood out solely for that reason. Whenever she popped in, she stole the show. A part of that certainly is because of Jennifer Coolidge’s performance, but another reason was just because of how lighthearted she made everything. Without that levity, White Lotus is missing an essential piece that helped it to stand out from all of the other dramatic exposés on the wealthy and their disconnect from the modern world. White Lotus should take its own advice now; it should unwind and have a little bit of fun.