How 'The White Lotus' Hid Its Biggest Gut Punches Until The End

Spoiler alert: This piece discusses in detail the finale of The White Lotus.

The initially obvious targets of derision in Mike White's The White Lotus, which wrapped up Sunday night on HBO, were the most actively, aggressively nasty people: Shane (Jake Lacy), who couldn't stop griping about a luxury vacation even as his new wife made it clear he was ruining the trip for her; Olivia (Sydney Sweeney), who mistreated her brother and acted like the world's most ungrateful and spoiled daughter; and perhaps the Mossbacher parents (Connie Britton and Steve Zahn), who were unleashing their children on the world with such blithe inattention to how wealth was warping them.

But in the end, the series saved its sharpest satirical cuts for three characters who seemed, early on, to be the most sympathetic in the group: Rachel (Alexandra Daddario), Shane's wife; Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), the struggling single woman grieving her mother; and