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Warning: This article contains spoilers for The White Lotus season 2. Since the start of this season, viewers have had one question: Who dies in The White Lotus season 2? Well, The White Lotus season 2 finale finally gave that answer—and it was hinted back in season one.
Like the first season, The White Lotus season 2 follows a group of tourists, employees and locals over the course of a week at a fictional luxury White Lotus resort in Sicily, which ends in the death of one (or more) characters. In an interview with StyleCaster, Beatrice Grannò, who plays Mia in The White Lotus season 2, revealed that the cast knew who died and who the killer was from the first day of filming. “I read the script the first day I got it. I was very shocked,” she said. “They sent me the whole script by day one because I had to know what my character arc was. That’s how they did it, so I knew it right away.” She continued, “For me as an actress, in order to do a good job, in order to tell a story that made sense, I need to know everything because I need to know where I’m going, where I’m starting and where I’m arriving. Also when you should film a series, you never film scene by scene. You maybe film the last one and then the first one so there was no point for me to not find out.”
So who died in The White Lotus season 2 and who is the killer? Read on for the answer to who died in The White Lotus season 2 finale and the ending explained for each of the characters.
Who died in The White Lotus season 2? Read on for who the killer was and which characters died in The White Lotus season 2 finale.
Does Quentin die in The White Lotus season 2?
Image: Courtesy of HBO.
Does Quentin die in The White Lotus season 2? The answer is yes. Quentin is one of two main characters who died in The White Lotus season 2 finale. Quentin died after Tanya shot him and other guests and crew members aboard his yacht on the way back to Taormina, Sicily. Quentin’s death came after Portia calls Tanya to let her know what Jack told her: That Quentin is broke and almost lost his house in Palermo but is expected to come into a windfall of money. While on the call, Tanya remembers a photograph she found in Quentin’s house of him and her husband, Greg, while they were young. Tanya also remembers that Greg encouraged her to go to Sicily, which led her to realize that he’s trying to kill her to inherit her money. Tanya tells Portia that, under her and Greg’s prenuptial agreement, Greg receives nothing if he and Tanya divorce; however, he receives everything if she dies. Tanya also realizes that Greg hired Quentin to kill her and left their vacation early, so he could have an alibi in her death. Later in the episode, Tanya, who loses her phone after dropping it overboard into the ocean, sees Niccolo, the cocaine dealer Quentin introduced her to in the previous episode whom she had sex with, arrive at the yacht in a tender boat with a black bag. While at dinner with Quentin and his friends, Tanya excuses herself to go to the bathroom before stealing Niccolo’s bag and locking herself in a bedroom. When she opened the bag, she found rope, duct tape and a gun Niccolo showed her the night before.
Tanya uses the gun to shoot and kill Niccolo, Quentin and his friends, Didler and Matteo. The only friend of Quentin’s who survives is Hugo who jumps off the yacht and swims to shore after Tanya runs out of bullets. Before Quentin dies, Tanya asks him if Greg is having an affair, which he doesn’t confirm or deny. Albie later confirms that Quentin and his associates died when he tells Portia at the airport that he heard the police “found a bunch of dead bodies on a yacht.”
Does Tanya die in The White Lotus season 2?
Image: Courtesy of HBO.
Does Tanya die in The White Lotus season 2? The answer is yes. Tanya is one of two main characters who died in The White Lotus season 2 finale. Tanya died after she jumped overboard Quentin’s yacht and drowned in the ocean. Tanya’s death came after she discovers that the captain of Quentin’s yacht is still live and knows that she killed Quentin and his associates. To escape, Tanya decides to jump overboard into the tender boat. However, when she jumps, Tanya misses the tender, hits her head on a metal rail and falls into the ocean unconscious, where she drowns and dies. The next day, Tanya’s body floats to the White Lotus beach, where it’s found by Daphne and brought to shore by the Taormina police. At the airport, Albie and Portia reunite, where Portia tells Albie that Tanya hasn’t been answering her phone calls. Albie then tells Portia that a guest died at the White Lotus. “Did you hear one of the guests died at the hotel?” he asks, to which Portia responds, “Do you know who?” Albie tells Portia no but when he tells her that there were also dead bodies on a yacht, Portia realizes that Tanya is the guest who died.
In the post-finale featurette, The White Lotus‘ creator, Mike White, revealed that he hinted at Tanya’s death in season 1 when she said the line: “Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.” “But maybe that’s the journey for her: a journey to death. Not that I really wanted to kill Tanya, because I love her as a character and obviously love Jennifer, but I just felt like we’re going to Italy, [and] she’s such a diva, a larger-than-life female archetype. It just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story,” White said.
White also explained why he didn’t want Tanya to be killed by someone else. “I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic. It felt like she needed to give her best fight back, and that she, in a way, had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her. So it just made me laugh to think she would take out this whole cabal of killers and that, after she’s successfully done that, she just dies this derp-y death. It just felt like that’s so Tanya.” White also hinted that Greg and Portia’s storyline following Tanya’s death may continue in a future White Lotus season. “Maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens,” he said.
In an interview with The New York Times, White revealed that he told Coolidge about her character’s death in The White Lotus season 2 months before filming started. “Jennifer, I’m sorry. You’re dying,” he recalled telling her. He continued, “In the first season, Tanya’s last line is, like, “I’ve had so many treatments in my life. Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.” I was like, maybe that’s where to take her story. In Italian opera, the women are supposed to cry and die, and I just imagined that that could be an appropriate story for the site of Sicily and this battle of the sexes, and Tanya is a victim of that.”
White, who described Tanya’s death as “derpy,” also explained that he wanted her death to reflect Coolidge as an actor. “It reminds me a little of Jennifer, because Jennifer, like, she’ll come and do this incredible performance and then lock herself in a bathroom. I can see Jennifer in this situation actually killing all the bad guys, surviving this assassination attempt, and then tripping on her way out the door. Part of Jennifer is: She’s not going to go down without a fight. She wants to live. But at the same time, she’s maybe a little klutzy,” he said.
Cooldige also confessed that she never tried to talk White out of killing Tanya. “You can’t talk Mike White out of anything, really. But whenever Mike was in a really good mood, and laughing about something, I’d go, like, ‘I don’t have to die, right?’” she said, to which White added, “Even when we were shooting the scene in the ocean where Daphne finds her body. She was like, ‘Should we just do one take where I pull myself up on the shore? Just one?’” Coolidge continued, “That’s an actress fighting for another season! I wanted to be practical in case Mike had a change of heart. I just wanted to leave the possibilities open.”
Coolidge also revealed that Tanya’s death scene was done by a stunt double. “I begged to do it! But Mike already had the stunt double there at the shoot. And she had been waiting for hours. There was just no way Mike was going to tell her, waiting out on the cold boat, that she wasn’t going to have her moment. So Mike wouldn’t let me do it,” she said. White added, “She really did want to jump off the boat. Into freezing water. There was no way.”
White also told The New York Times that he has no regrets for killing Tanya, though he will miss her. “I really love this story. I really thought it was a funny way to go,” he said. “And right. I don’t have regrets about that. But yesterday, I went over and watched the show alone with Jennifer. At one point, I was kind of laughing and I looked over at her, and she was so sad for Tanya. In that moment, I was like, Oh, this is the end for me and Jennifer. And Jennifer’s the reason I did White Lotus in the first place. Because I just wanted to write something for her and I just adore her. So it’s sad. I didn’t realize it until yesterday, but now I am sad. It’s going to be hard to do it without her. There’s definitely going to be something missing.” Coolidge added, “I didn’t expect, last night, to be as moved as I was.”
As for if Cooldige has forgiven White for killing Tanya, she told The New York Times, “No, not at all. I’ll forever be sad about this.” As for if any characters from season 2 could return for season 3, White responded, “The truth is, I don’t really know. I just don’t know.” When asked about White’s tease that season 3 will be about Eastern spirituality and the possibility Tanya could come back as a ghost, Coolidge responded, “Thank you for trying to get me in there.” White added, “I mean, especially if we’re doing something about the spiritual realm.”
How does The White Lotus season 2 end? Here’s The White Lotus season 2 ending explained for each character.
Portia & Jack
Image: Courtesy of HBO.
What happens to Portia and Jack in The White Lotus season 2 ending? The night after Jack tells Portia that Quentin has no money but is expected to come into a windfall of wealth, Portia wakes up and can’t find her cell phone. Suspecting that Jack took her phone to keep her away from Tanya, Portia steals Jack’s phone while he’s in the bathroom and calls Tanya with the information she learned about Quentin. Tanya also tells Portia that she saw Jack and Quentin, who claimed to be Jack’s uncle, having sex. Tanya, who suspects Quentin is trying to kill her based on the information Portia gave her, tells Portia to meet her in Taormina. Before they can arrange details, Jack finds Portia on his phone and takes the phone back. When Portia confronts Jack with what Tanya told her about him and Quentin having sex, Jack tells Portia that Quentin assigned her to him as his “job.” When Portia asks what he means, Jack tells her to leave the situation alone and that he’s driving her back to Taormina instead of touring Palermo like he first wanted. On the drive, Jack stops the car on an abandoned, dark street and tells her that he didn’t drive her to Taormina and instead to Catania, where the airport is. Jack then tells Portia to not return to the White Lotus and wait for Tanya and to go to the airport and fly home instead. Jack then warns Portia to not “mess” with “powerful people” before driving off and leaving her. Portia later reunites with Albie at the airport, where she learns that Tanya died. Tanya then tells Albie what happened between her and Jack, while Albie tells Tanya what happened between him and Lucia. Tanya then asks Albie for his phone number, and the two exchange numbers.
Ethan, Harper, Cameron & Daphne
Image: Courtesy of HBO.
What happens to Ethan, Harper, Cameron and Daphne in The White Lotus season 2 ending? While at breakfast, Harper calls Cameron an “idiot,” which triggers Ethan. Back at their hotel room, Ethan confronts Harper with suspicions he had that Harper cheated on him with Cameron after he saw Harper and Cameron return to the hotel together from the bar and noticed door unlocked between Ethan and Harper’s room and Cameron and Daphne’s room. Harper confirms that Cameron kissed her in her and Ethan’s hotel room before Cameron returned to his and Daphne’s room when Ethan started knocking on the door. Believing Harper and Cameron did more than just kiss, Ethan presses Harper to tell the full truth, but Harper maintains that nothing else happened. Ethan then goes to Cameron and Daphne’s room to look for Cameron. Daphne tells him that Cameron is at the beach. Ethan goes to the beach where he finds Cameron swimming and accuses him of trying to have sex with Harper. Ethan then attacks Cameron and tries to drown him before the fight broken up by a guest. Back at the beach, Ethan runs into Daphne and tells her that he suspects something happened between Harper and Cameron. Daphne tells him that he shouldn’t worry and that people don’t need to know everything to love someone and that relationships are about doing what you need to do to not be a victim of life. Daphne then asks Ethan to come with her to Isola Bella. Later, while in the midst of an emotional conversation, Ethan and Harper run into Cameron and Daphne at dinner. After dinner, back at their hotel, Harper asks Ethan, “What’s going to happen to us?” Ethan responds by kissing Harper, and the two have sex for the first time on the trip. Ethan and Harper, and Cameron and Daphne are later seen in love and still together at the airport.
Albie, Dominic & Bert
Image: Courtesy of HBO.
What happens to Albie, Dominic and Bert in The White Lotus season 2 finale? After waking up with Lucia, Albie tells her that he’s going to help her escape from Alessio, a man she owes money to, and offers for her to come back to Los Angeles with him, so she no longer needs to have sex for money. At breakfast, Albie asks his father, Dominic, for 50,000 euros to give to Lucia, but Dominic tells him no. Albie then tells Dominic that he would put in a good word for him with his mother, Abby, who Dominic cheated on and is separated from. Dominic agrees to the deal and allows Albie to wire 50,000 euros to Lucia. Dominic later calls Abby and tells her that he misses her. Abby tells him she can’t talk at that moment, but asks him to call her when he’s back home, which gives Dominic hope that their relationship can be saved. The next morning, after Albie tells Lucia that he sent her the money, Lucia sneaks out of Albie’s hotel room while he’s still sleeping. When Albie wakes up and sees Lucia isn’t next to him, he realizes he was conned for his money. Albie and Portia reunite at the airport, where Portia tells Albie that Jack was deranged, while Albie tells Portia that Lucia played him. The two exchange numbers.
Lucia & Mia
Image: Courtesy of HBO.
What happens to Lucia and Mia in The White Lotus season 2 finale? The morning after having sex with the White Lotus’ manager, Valentina, Mia tells Valentina how good she was in bed before Valentina rushes out of the hotel room to get to work. Later, the White Lotus’ lounge singer and piano player, Giuseppe, returns after he recovered from a drug attack he had when Mia gave him molly instead of Viagra. When he sees Mia, who replaced him as the lounge singer while he was in the hospital, at the piano, he tells Mia that the lounge singer is his job. Valentina then tells Giuseppe that he’s been fired and that Mia has been permanently hired as the White Lotus’ lounge singer because the guests like her more. The last scene of Lucia and Mia see them walking hand in hand through the streets of Sicily, where they run into Alessio, their friend and an employee at another hotel who pretended to be Lucia’s pimp so she could scam Albie. Lucia and Mia thank and hug Alessio before continuing down the street in happiness.
The White Lotus is available to stream on HBO Max. Here’s how to watch it for free.
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