Ok: I don’t know if y’all fully realize exactly how GOOD the ending of this season of The White Lotus really was. 

And I don’t just mean entertaining. When I tell you that every single yogi, coach, and remotely spiritual person that I know was squealing in delight at the themes that came to pass in the final episode, I am actually not exaggerating. 

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Mike White masterfully took almost all of the stuff that we preach about in class and in sessions and turned it into a powerful, entertaining, story. I felt quite seen! I was literally screaming “yaaas” at the TV the entire time. 

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So I thought it only fitting that I do an article that’s a sort of close reading of these major themes in order to make them more accessible and clearer to those interested. 

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I feel like my inner former English major and my present life coach/yogi are about to have a party.

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Let’s get into it! Obvious warning: White Lotus season 3 spoilers are plentiful here. 

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First: what do I mean by “non-dual”?

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Non-duality is an entire other article in and of itself that I intend to write. But for the sake of this article, I will do my best to distill it down to just a few quick points. 

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1. It’s the philosophical tenet underlying Buddhism and many other eastern religions. The classic metaphor for it, as we saw constantly in the show, is drops of water vs the ocean. 
2. Non-duality states that when we consider ourselves to be just drops of the ocean—little, individual separate characters going about our lives—we make a gigantic mistake of perception that causes a lot of suffering. 
3. Because while, yes—we each do exist in separate bodies and lives, our true identity is more akin to the ocean itself. We are all infinitely connected, boundless, and free because at our fundamental level, we are pure consciousness—a tabula rasa.  
4. There are many practices to get you to ‘realize’ this, but as a quick starter, see if you can notice the gaps of silence between your thoughts. “You” still exist even when the voice in your head isn’t talking, right? 
5. That boundless sense of “I am” is what non-duality points to. It’s neutral, static, and is the precondition to literally every thought, feeling, or experience you could ever have. It’s our true identity—not the characters we play out in the world. 
6. But: we frequently get lost in the drama of daily living and our minds—which is called the ego. And when we do this—mistake ourselves for our egos when we’re actually something greater—we suffer immensely. 

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Once you understand that, what all the characters go through in The White Lotus becomes a lot clearer. Let’s break down the major arcs. 

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The awakened ones and the real winners: Lochlan and Laurie

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Our two “L” characters are the very subtle winners of The White Lotus in that they are the only two people that awaken to their non-dual nature, albeit in very different ways. 

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Let’s start with Lochlan. Good ol’ Lochlan is the one shining diamond in a family of egotists. He’s generally just down for the ride, happy to be at the party, and in his own (very funny) words, “a pleaser.” He doesn’t seem to think about himself very much and cares much more about the happiness of those around him. When his Dad asks him if he could “live with nothing,” he answers, quickly, in the affirmative. 

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And then, his Dad, consumed by his own ego, almost kills him. 

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We see Lochlan go through what is often called “the direct path” to non-dual awakening. Usually, this path is triggered by either a near-death experience (what Lochlan gets) or a profound trip on psychedelic drugs. We see Lochlan emerge from a pool of water, come back to consciousness, and state “I think I just saw God.” 

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That’s what non-dual awakening can feel like for some people. A brief, sudden moment of “waking up” to your true nature that immediately makes all the suffering you’ve been identifying with for years look absolutely trivial. You suddenly realize you’ve been hypnotized by a story in your mind for a very, very long time. 

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Our good friend Laurie comes to this same experience the other way—through the “indirect” path. Poor Laurie has to suffer a lot this season. Her life is sort of in shambles and unlike her fabulous and beautiful friends, she doesn’t really have anything in the material world she can hold onto to say that she “made it as someone.” Her character—her ego—is pretty despondent and depressed. 

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We watch her try to fix that thing throughout the show. She tries a shit ton of booze —doesn’t really work. She tries sexuality and men, and when Jaclyn steals her target, she becomes really irate. That was supposed to be her path to being someone in the group, Jaclyn! What the hell? 

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In the final episode, at dinner with her gal pals, Laurie makes an absolutely moving speech that I hope wins Carrie Coon some kind of award. I won’t summarize it all here, but she basically tells her friends, “Look, I’ve tried really hard all my life to be someone and to find something to hold onto, but it all went to shit. And I’m ok with that because I love you guys, I’m happy for you both, and I’m even more happy to just be here with you at this table right now.” 

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Laurie, unwittingly, walks the path most successful spiritual seekers take. She tries to find solace in something in the material world—her job, her kid, partying, men, etc—and each time she gets the thing, it somehow lets her down. She finally reaches the point of surrender, in which she realizes that none of that shit really matters in the end. She doesn’t have to identify as a character—the beautiful one, the family girl, the party girl, etc—to enjoy the present moment of being alive with her friends right here and right now. 

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Laurie had to go through the entire material world to realize, at the end of the day, she was the very thing that she was seeking all along. 

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Ok, so those are our two big winners. Let’s talk about the runner-ups: the fake winners. 

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The fake winners who chose materiality over spirituality—Belinda and Gaitok

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These characters got the “hmmm” endings of the season. On one hand, we love that Belinda finally gets the money she wanted to open her spa—she’s been trying since the first damn season! And Gaitok getting promoted to Sritala’s bodyguard is probably going to get him a shit ton of money as well as his beloved, Mook. 

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But in order to get these things, we watch both characters compromise their value systems and give into the demands of the material world and their egos. Mike White also, very poignantly, shows us how this may perpetuate suffering for them in the long term. 

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Belinda has to tell Pornchai that, despite their romantic tryst and promise to open a spa together, she’s leaving Thailand to go spend her money the way that she wants to. Ironically, this is the exact same thing that Tanya/Jennifer Coolidge did to Belinda in Season 1. In choosing Greg’s blood money instead of sticking to her values, Belinda perpetuates the cycle of suffering and harms a person that could’ve really cared for her. 

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It’s almost the same for Gaitok, who’s a Buddhist and deeply committed to not harming anybody. 

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An enraged Sritala screams at Gaitok to shoot Rick after he murders her husband. Gaitok hesitates, but eventually, shoots the man down, knowing that this will earn him Sritala’s favor and, his real desire, Mook. He can finally adopt the “tough, successful guy” identity that he has been craving all season. But again, to do so, he just has to give up his values. And we’ve also seen what Sritala is like as an employer throughout the season, and it ain’t cute. Do we really think meek, nice Gaitok is going to be happy working for somebody so egotistical? 

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These characters really seem to win on the surface, but they don’t win internally. They each have a moment in which they can “wake up,” but instead of taking it, they let the external world and material desire pull them away from their soul’s true calling. 

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The Ratliff family shows us the different stages of the spiritual journey in more detail. 

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The Ratliff’s represent the different stages of spiritual awakening 

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We already spoke about how Lochlan is our big winner here: he gets a non-dual awakening. But what about the rest of his family? Well, in a lot of ways, they represent the different possible stages of consciousness we can exist in as spiritual seekers. 

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First up, we have mama Victoria. She’s hilarious, sure, but home girl is also clearly suffering. She’s draining Lorazepam like their Tictacs because she’s anxious 24/7. She tells her husband she’d rather “die than live an uncomfortable life.” Victoria represents the stage of consciousness most people live in—total unconsciousness. She’s suffering, but has no idea why and doesn’t seem to care. She thinks her constant anxiety is normal and that medicine is the way to make it go away. She’s completely attached to the material world and the character she plays in it. It’s making her sick, but she’s blissfully, hilariously, unaware of this. 

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One level up, we have our boy Saxon. Saxon starts the season as a horrendous douche, but as we watch him interact with Chelsea, she seems to trigger a mini existential crisis within him. At one point, Saxon tells his father, “My job is all I have, Dad. That's all I am. Please let me know if something is up.” Saxon is very, very attached to his egoic character and is only just starting to see how miserable and empty that is making him. He represents the seeker; someone who’s just starting their spiritual journey. In the closing scene, we see him reading a book by Pema Chodron—one of my personal favorite spiritual authors. We can only hope you learn something from her, Sax! 

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Next up is Piper. Piper seems the closest to a spiritual awakening at the start of the season. She’s very into Buddhism, drags her family to Thailand, and is adamant about visiting a Buddhist monastery there. She recognizes how privileged she is and how much suffering there is in the world. She can also see how sick her parents and older brother really are, lost in their own egos. 

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But, poor Piper turns away from her awakening at the end because her pesky ego lies to her and takes over again. Piper lets her mind convince her that she can’t sleep on a gross bed or eat non-organic food for a year. Her deeply conditioned mind, which is attached to comfort, creates the illusion of Piper as someone who can’t actually live without these things. And, to her mother’s great delight, Victoria makes sure to spoil Piper rotten at the shop even more to keep her trapped in ego. 

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Piper is the best cautionary lesson for potential seekers out there—she represents the backdoor ego trap. She can intellectually see how her identity is the key factor in her own suffering, but she can’t bring herself to break her attachment to it. Because let’s be real, it’s much easier to think about stuff but much, much harder to actually practice. 

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And the interactions with Victoria are important because they hint at another impediment on this path. Most people are egoic and unconscious, like Victoria. Walking a spiritual path is a dramatic departure from what mainstream society tells us we should want. And, often unwittingly, our closest relationships can be the thing that pull us back into unconsciousness because we still want to belong and be with these people. 

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Poor Piper needed a good life coach in her corner! But thankfully for her, consciousness doesn’t go away. She’s always welcome to come back when she feels ready! 

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Ok our final Ratliff is the most controversial—Daddy Ratliff! We see him start the season as an egomaniac. He’s mister business, super accomplished, rich as hell, and gets his way. He yells at Rick for smoking a cigarette near his family and is generally rude as hell to the hotel staff. 

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Until, that is, he gets a call that rocks his world. He’s going to be indicted in a financial crisis that will, most likely, ruin him and every material possession he has. 

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Daddy Ratliff undergoes what we call in the field an existential ego crisis. It is when life, very violently and suddenly, decides to pull the rug from out under our feet and absolutely obliterate the limited person that we thought we were. 

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I myself, unfortunately, came to my awakening in a similar way—but that’s a story for another time. This is a direct path to awakening similar to what Lochlan goes through, but it is far more psychologically damaging, as we see throughout the season. Daddy Ratliff becomes immediately suicidal, incredibly distressed, and almost takes his whole damn family out with him, too. 

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That happens because when the character we think we are is violently, suddenly shattered in front of us, our minds literally cannot comprehend the experience and become incredibly threatened and afraid. Our minds are forced to confront the fact that they do not, at all, control the outcomes of life. And many minds cannot accept this, and instead, turn to suicide. In many spritual circles suicide is described as “the false self dominating the true one, thereby ending it.” Our poor friend Rick ends up this way. 

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We see Daddy Ratliff almost come to the same point as Rick—a horrific, violent ending—but he thankfully pulls back at the last minute and accepts that, for the love of his family, he can get through this crisis. He and his family can and will change to meet what life has given them. 

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He’s also awake, albeit he came to it in a very different way than Laurie or Lochlan. He’s a cautionary tale for those of us with well-developed, strong egos out there. When we forget who we truly are, we put ourselves at risk of life choosing to remind us. And sometimes that reminder is incredibly painful, but necessary for our long term growth. 

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The big losers—Rick and Chelsea 

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If there’s anybody who shows us the pitfalls of egoic identification this season, it’s our guy Rick. Rick is so controlled by his conditioned, small self that he believes his life has just been one big moment of suffering after the other. And rather than see, as Dr. Amrita tries to get him to realize that his attachment to his suffering is what’s perpetuating it; he decides that somebody in external reality is to blame—Khun Jim. 

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If he could only express his vast, violent anger at Khun Jim for taking his father away from him, then he could be free. He comes to Thailand to do just that, never questioning that he’s putting a lot of credibility into a second-hand story from his dead mother, or that he’s dragging Chelsea into misery and anxiety alongside him. 

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When he violently confronts Khun Jim in his home, for a second, we’re happy for Rick. He seems to finally be free of his suffering. Until, that is, Khun Jim shows up and confronts Rick with a gun in the final episode. Turns out our friend Khun Jim has a massive ego himself, and can’t let the fact that he got confronted in his own home slide. 

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He shows up at the hotel, says some choice words to Rick, flashes a gun at him, and then leaves. Suddenly, Rick’s own ego comes back online and he’s back in suffering mode—how dare this guy threaten me! 

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To Rick’s great credit, he seeks out Dr. Amrita—he can recognize that he is being possessed by his own conditioning and that he needs immediate help. Unfortunately, the good doctor can’t help him when he needs it, and Rick’s true self is consumed by his ego. He shoots Jim dead, which results in both his and Chelsea’s death, too. 

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He also finds out that, actually, the entire story he based his suffering on was wrong anyway! Khun Jim was actually his father this whole time. 

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Rick shows us what happens when we let our ego—the character we pretend to be—completely take the wheel. We spend most of our time suffering and blaming life itself for the hand it has dealt us. We never get to see that we ourselves play the biggest role in how we suffer based on our tendency to identify with passing, temporary moments. And, unfortunately, when taken to the extreme, this egoic identification results in violence towards ourselves and our loved ones, too. 

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Poor Chelsea is also a cautionary tale about pop spirituality. She’s very into astrology, crystals, and teachers who claim to know the metaphysics behind all of reality. She’s so consumed with these ideas that she is delusionaly convinced that Rick is her soulmate and they’re in a yin-yang battle to the death. She’s right in the end, but if she hadn’t been so obsessed with all that nonsense, she maybe could have seen that perhaps Rick was not in a place to be in a loving relationship with her. 

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Did you have thoughts about the finale too? Send me a message and let me know! 

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