“To live is to be willing to die over and over again.” 

—Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

Every character arriving at the White Lotus’s Thailand resort in season three of HBO’s The White Lotus, enters with clear conceptions of Self. Brooding Rick (Walton Goggins) regards himself as an enigmatic vigilante, steadfast in his mission to avenge his father’s murder. Arrogant Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) perceives himself to be a prototypical alpha-male, brazenly chasing sex, money, muscles, and power. Authoritative Timothy (Jason Isaacs) occupies the role of a traditional patriarch in pursuit of the American dream, his days consumed with concerns over profit margins and his children’s enrollment in prestigious colleges. Even Piper (Sarah Catharine Hook), a college student studying Buddhism, comfortably conceives herself to be the black sheep of the status-obsessed Ratliff family, dedicating herself to spiritual enlightenment while deriding her kin’s bourgeois fixations.  Capitalist society asserts fixed identity as imperative to normativity, creating a social order where a fluid Self feels intolerable. However, contradictory to the dominant notion of identity as static and unified, lived experience proves to be multiplicitous, chaotic, and transient. Capitalism offers this paradox an illusory solution: we signal stable identities through consumption, ourselves essentially becoming marketable products, with institutions ensuring we repress that which reveals the fallibility of our binary social order. Identity is assembled and affirmed through material consumption: Saxon’s identity is sold back to him through protein powder and sleek electronics. Rick’s identity is sold back to him through cigarettes—the tobacco industry adores a troubled person in need of temporary (addictive) reprieve. Timothy’s identity is sold back to him through upscale vacations and private club memberships. Piper’s identity is sold back to her through understated dresses, such as an unassuming Ciao Lucia dress intended to communicate a disinterest in signalling wealth, despite its $395 price tag.

Over the course of the season’s eight episodes, each character on The White Lotus experiences some monumental circumstance that causes their previous conception of Self—that is, the stories they told themselves about themselves, the manners in which they made sense of the world, their egos—to utterly collapse. This could be attributed to simple structural coherence: in narrative storytelling, characters must undergo some sort of transformation during the plot in order for the story to be narratively satisfying. But, I believe that The White Lotus specifically forces its characters into ego death, destroying all previously held notions of Self. Significantly, I believe that the show recognizes experiences of ego death to be fertile grounds for rebirth into radical freedom from capitalist constraints of fixed identity. 

Those life-altering events that shatter our conceptions of identity and our systems of meaning-making can be described as “trauma;” a word that is tossed around so loosely in our era of Instagram therapy that its meaning has been diminished. In the book Mnemonic Imagination, Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering define trauma as “…when your sense of logic that your identity is built on is so deeply contradicted that new experiences cannot be assimilated. Trauma by nature restricts the self from imagining the future, because it’s an event so painful that it prohibits the self from developing meaning outside of the point of rupture.” Trauma is when something so unfathomable occurs that we cannot integrate it into those stories that we tell ourselves in order to live, to paraphrase Joan Didion’s famed line, which has been quoted so frequently that it has reached the point of truism. When Saxon recalls his younger brother giving him a handjob, he is traumatized—incest cannot be incorporated in his previous imagination of himself. When Rick learns that his father is not only alive but also the very man he spent decades of his life believing to be his fathers’ murderer, he is traumatized—the foundation for his goals and choices is revealed to be a fabrication. Trauma, as a rupturing force, is not necessarily as dramatic an event as our colloquial understanding suggests; Piper’s younger brother Lochlin (Sam Nivola) also choosing to practice Buddhism is enough to destabilize her ego and conception of reality. 

The institutionally sanctioned response to trauma is to find a way to integrate it into our narrative, so we can continue functioning as a normative member of society. We are conditioned to sublimate, to suppress, lest we are forced to confront the superficiality of our static identities, and thus the frailty of the entire social order. What if that place where identity dissolves, where meaning collapses, is not something to be sublimated or incorporated into one’s identity? What if so-called “normative” functioning is not an aspirational goal after all? What if, as proposed by Deleuze and Guattari, humans can exist in the dynamic state of becoming instead of the prescribed state of being?  In simple terms, what if it is possible to live as a person, not as a product? 

A recurring motif of incarcerating mise-en-scene alludes to the season’s theme of identity as confinement. Piper leans against a bed frame fashioned with horizontal bars, the windows of her bedroom stylized with vertical and patterned metal grille. Chairs in the resort’s dining area are slatted models. The White Lotus is not a subtle show—identity entrapment is quickly made explicit in the season’s first episode. As Piper reads a book by the fictional Buddhist monk Luang Por Teera (Suthichai Yoon), the voiceover literally states: “Identity is a prison. No one is spared this prison. Rich man, poor man, success, or failure. We build the prison, lock ourselves inside, and throw away the key.” We build the prison: we construct an identity. We lock ourselves inside: we reify that identity through material consumption, fashioning and re-fashioning ourselves into commodifiable subjects. We throw away the key: we avoid anything that threatens our order, we suppress or sublimate traumas that arise. 

Set in Thailand, where Buddhism is the majority religion, Buddhist themes suffuse the third season of The White Lotus. Statues of the Buddha are featured in numerous establishing shots, and Luang Por Teera provides spiritual perspective to multiple members of the Ratliff family (and, by extension, to the viewing audience). Buddhism proposes the concept of “no-self:” the concept that no permanent, fixed essence exists within us. This means that there is no singular Self that persists throughout life, no ultimate version of Self that we must achieve. Buddhism teaches that our nature—like the nature of all phenomena—is ephemeral, fluctuating. Accepting our natural state as transitory, attachment is what causes suffering: attachment to particular circumstances and outcomes, attachment to fixed images of our identity and coherent stories of who we are. Trusting these spiritual tenets means resisting the compulsion to fit within categories, to enclose ourselves into marketable beings. The instant one typifies oneself (I value arts and humanities, I am an artist and an intellectual), one becomes a demographic (capitalism sells me products that make me identifiable as this type of person). This is not to imply that one shouldn’t have values and preferences; rather, this recognizes that our attachments are not definitive of who we are.  

In a pivotal moment for Saxon, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) lends him the book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön; a volume of Buddhist teachings pertinent to times of trauma, to deaths of the ego. Chödrön writes about identity-construction through the metaphor of building a sand castle: “We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off-limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.” Capitalism sells the fantasy that one can find security as a completed, optimized Self; while life proves time and time again that everything is fleeting. Chödrön writes: “When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test for each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. … The only time we ever know what’s really going on is when the rug’s been pulled out and we can’t find anywhere to land. We use these situations either to wake ourselves up or to put ourselves to sleep.” (Emphasis mine). The question is not how to build an identity so stable that it cannot rupture; the question is how to react when the tide comes, when the castle collapses, when the ego dies? 

An initial allure for The White Lotus audiences is its murder mystery framing—each season begins with an unidentified corpse appearing on screen, the murdered character (or characters, in the case of season three) revealed in the season finale. Fan favourites Rick and Chelsea are the unlucky souls this season. In the second episode, Special Treatments, Rick meets with the meditation instructor Amrita (Shalini Peiris) who tells him: “the identity you’ve created brings you suffering.” Rick deflects, responding, “I never had an identity. I don’t need to detach. I’m already nothing.” This is, of course, an ego attachment in itself—Rick’s identity rests on an idea of himself as a terminally misunderstood, tortured man whose life is an irreparable tragedy due to the grave childhood trauma of his glorious father being murdered. Rick has a resonant encounter with Amrita right before travelling to Bangkok; a voyage on which he plans to kill Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), the man his mother accused of murdering his father. Tenderly, Amrita tells Rick: “You are not stuck. … You can let go of your story. … Find peace in this life. I have hope for you.” Her words strike Rick, subtly weakening his attachment to the fate he imagined for himself. In Bangkok, Rick opts to push Jim instead of shooting him, a choice which plays as a rebirth. Rick’s burden softens—confrontation with Jim lent closure to Rick’s drive for vengeance, and Rick’s ability to alter his plan sparks potential alterations in other facets of his life. Rick seemingly desires to heed Amrita’s words and free himself from the identity-construction that has impeded him. 

In the final episode, Jim shows up to breakfast at the resort, and accosts Rick; hissing that his mother was a “slut” and a “liar,” that his “father was no saint” and that he “didn’t miss out on much.” This speech is too much for Rick to bear—his newfound freedom relies on the perceived closure of his past narrative. Jim’s words fundamentally shake the foundation that Rick’s story was built on. As a product of a productivity-driven culture, it is unbearable for Rick to stand still in his rage—he must act. He rushed to seek guidance from Amrita, requiring counsel in this uncharted territory. But Amrita has another client—she cannot tell Rick who he is or who he should become. Rick’s closure was an illusion—the idea of a “new beginning,” of reinventing oneself, is still an attachment to forming a coherent story about oneself. (And, in our social order, “new beginnings” are profitable—trends of “glowing up” and a “new you” are essentially rebrands of the Self into an optimized market asset). So the show’s murder mystery climaxes: Rick shoots Jim, but rather than finally finding closure on the story of his childhood trauma, he learns that Jim was his biological father after all, an absolute demolition of the story he fashioned himself from. Rick doesn’t get a chance to traverse this unprecedented trauma, because he is killed too.

Chelsea also dies in the show’s climactic shootout, having followed Rick in another futile attempt to save her tormented lover. Despite her spiritual knowledge, disgust at egomaniacal businessmen, and intellectual understanding of dangerous relationship dynamics, Chelsea’s fatal attachment was imagining herself able to “fix” Rick. Chelsea’s ego is built on the belief that she is different, that she alone can “heal” Rick, despite his repeated demonstrations that he is dangerous for her—he literally releases the venomous snake that bites her in episode three. During her and Rick’s final breakfast, we hear a snippet of conversation where Chelsea analyzes a friend’s relationship, saying: “It’s like, babe, it’s never gonna happen, he’s never gonna give you what you need, he’s gonna withhold forever,” an assessment glaringly applicable to her own romance. Chelsea cannot let go of her attachment to an operatic love story in which she is Rick’s saviour; as she tells Saxon in the episode Killer Instincts, “I want to heal him. It’s like we’re in this yin and yang battle, and I’m hope, and Rick is pain.” I want to heal him, I am hope: though rooted in care, this is still an identity attachment; and one that serves our social order—men like Rick become “broken” due to the failure of normative systems of power (the nuclear family, for example), and it benefits those systems of power for the entire onus of care to be placed on individual women rather than disseminating the systems that cause such sickness in society.

Timothy (Jason Isaacs) experiences ego death in the season’s very first episode, as he answers a phone call from a journalist and learns that his past illegal financial dealings are exposed. The house of cards he built collapses. Timothy’s attachment to the perception of himself as achieving a particular standard of masculinity shatters.  Not only has he lost his career, his wealth, and his social status; but he must admit all this to his family—to Saxon, so eager to prove himself in his father’s business, to Victoria (Parker Posey), so concerned with respectability and the categorization of “decent people”—upending their lives as well. Metaphorically castrated, Timothy spends the season’s remaining seven episodes seeking solutions intended to avoid confronting the terrifying uncertainty of his new circumstance. He finishes Victoria’s bottle of the sedative Lorazepam—call me conspiratorial, but I don’t believe it is a coincidence that our culture accepts the psychiatric institution’s endorsement of numbing pharmaceuticals as the foremost remedy for life’s acute hardships, dulling emotional pain to ensure one remains a productive member of capitalist society. (This is a complex subject that I cannot cover in this article, but I recommend reading reporter P.E. Moskowitz’s writing on mental health & psychiatric medication). 

In the sixth episode, Denials, Timothy visits Luang Por Teera, ostensibly to scope out the monastery that Piper wants to live in for a year. The monk explains that many Americans feel “spiritual malaise” due to “lost connection with nature, with the family, lost connection with the spirit,” instead distracting themselves with “the Self, identity, chasing money and pleasure.” Timothy is told that he can’t outrun pain—outrunning pain is, of course, the objective he has been failing at all season. Stirred, Timothy asks Luang Por Teera what happens when we die, to which the monk responds: “When you’re born, you are like a single drop of water, flying upward, separated from the one giant consciousness. You get older, you descend back down. You die, you land back into the water, become one with the ocean again. No more separation, no more suffering.” Still seeking to outrun pain, Timothy latches onto the promise of no more suffering in death. Rather than exist in a precarious state, he nearly conducts a murder-suicide of his family. Watching his children sip poisoned piña colada, Timothy suddenly springs back to life, knocking the drink out of Saxon’s hand. Something shifts for Timothy once he is faced with literal death—perhaps a boundless love for his family, a love that cannot be quantified, a love that exceeds the boundaries of fixed identity roles.

The final shot of Timothy occurs on the boat back from the resort, cutting between his face and splashing water droplets from the ocean waves. Any graduate of an introductory film studies course recognizes the intended Kuleshov effect, communicating to audiences that Timothy is reflecting on Luang Por Teera’s words. He recognizes that he cannot rush the droplet’s descent into the ocean, that the “happy return” of death arrives after one has weathered the unpredictable odyssey of life. In this moment, when he can no longer outrun facing the consequences of his actions, he occupies a fertile temporality to become beyond traditional archetypes of patriarchal identity.

For The White Lotus characters, moments of rupture tantalize radical liberation from the prison of molar identity. Traumas plunge characters into an uncharted temporality where radical rebirth into a fluid, rhizomatic realm is possible. Death is not the core tragedy of The White Lotus—attachment to fixed identity is. “Happy endings” in The White Lotus exist in characters who leave our screens with ambiguous conclusions, evoking the possibility of rebirth into a life free from socially prescribed binary identity, a life lived in the vast potentialities beyond decided definition. We last see the Ratliff family on the boat leaving the resort, Victoria and the children wordlessly open their phones to news of Timothy’s scandal, their reactions unobserved by the camera. How will the Ratliffs navigate the total obliteration of the life they thought was permanent? What path will Saxon forge, now that his family’s wealth is gone, the Ratliff name disgraced, his previous career aspirations destroyed; will he be capable of practicing his newfound spiritual clarity?