I’ve always been more drawn to the moment right before something ends. That strange, suspended place where the ending exists but hasn’t happened yet. When I watch a show or read a book, I move fast until I get too close to the end. Then I pause. I’ve read 900 pages of a 1000-page novel in days, and left the last 100 sitting for weeks. Because something about knowing the ending is near makes me hesitate. There’s almost something holy about it. That’s where I am now. Before The White Lotus finale, I need to write something.
The finale airs at 4 am. Where I live, and I won’t watch it then. But I feel the ending stretching somewhere ahead of me like heat in a hallway.
The characters this season don’t feel exaggerated or overly written. They feel like people I can actually encounter in real life; at an airport, on a group tour, or sitting two tables away at a resort restaurant. None of them stood out too much at first, but there was always something about them that made me keep watching. A sentence said with a slightly wrong tone, a glance that lasted just a second longer than it should have.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
There’s Rick and Chelsea. Rick often acts like he doesn’t owe anyone an explanation, not the people around him, not even Chelsea. But Chelsea isn’t naive. She watches him carefully because I think she wanted to figure out where she stood. Their silences aren’t just distance; they are negotiations. They might love each other or Rick might just be tolerating her. It’s hard to tell.
The Ratliff siblings were framed so deliberately in their first scene that I haven’t been able to forget it. Saxon wore dark sunglasses that blocked his eyes completely. Piper had oversized noise-cancelling headphones on. And Lochlan, the youngest, was drinking from a bottle that covered his mouth. It was immediate, almost too perfect: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. As if these kids grew up knowing exactly which sense they needed to shut off to keep going.
Valentin’s overly polished smile when speaking to the group of women, for instance, felt like he was doing two things at once—masking the fact that he was involved in the robbery subplot, and also performing the kind of friendly, agreeable energy expected of hotel staff toward wealthy tourists. His charm never fully relaxes. It is always too sharp around the edges.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
It doesn’t feel like the characters are hiding something obvious, it feels like they are constantly deciding what not to say. I don’t find myself rooting for anyone in particular, but I don’t dislike any of them either. I feel like they weren’t written to be liked or hated. They are just… people. Most of them acts the way someone might act when they’re trying too hard to stay composed in a place they don’t fully belong.
The setting adds to that discomfort in a way that builds slowly. The resort was beautiful, almost overwhelmingly so. But over time, that beauty stops feeling relaxing. It becomes too curated, too balanced, like it is hiding something beneath the surface. Like the lotus flower!
Also, just when things starts to feel a little too still, the music comes in It is perfectly timed, never too loud, just enough to remind me that something was about to shift.
So here I am again. In that strange, suspended place right before something ends. The White Lotus finale is still waiting for me, the characters still haven’t unraveled, and for a little while longer, everything still feels possible. I’m not avoiding the finale, not really. I just want to stay here a bit longer, in the quiet tension of almost. Because once the ending arrives, the spell breaks. Perhaps that’s why I keep pausing, because the moment right before the end might be the most real part of all.
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
The picture is from here.