The wildest White Lotus theories heading into the season-two finale

Just like last season, the discourse over The White Lotus is heating up as it heads into the season-two finale. Episode six left us with a lot to talk about, offering further proof of some fan theories while straying away from others. Creator Mike White doesn’t always like to go the obvious route, so we expect there will be some surprises before the end of our time in Sicily, but at least some of these theories have to be pretty close, right? For now, we’re not going to deal directly with the most pressing topic on everyone’s minds (who’s going to die? We’ll have a whole feature devoted to that on Thursday), but there’s still a lot to discuss. So let’s dive into some speculation.

Take note that the following will contain spoilers up to and including the sixth episode of The White Lotus season two. So bear that in mind as you proceed.

Quentin’s scheming to get his hands on Tanya’s money

Something seemed off about Quentin (Tom Hollander) since he first appeared and immediately took an interest in Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge). He gave her the dreamy Italian experience she’d been craving, not to mention the attention she wasn’t getting from her husband. It was too good to be true, right? Since then he’s been throwing up red flags all over the place. The first hint of what he was up to might not have come from Quentin at all, but from Cameron (Theo James). In a conversation over Aperol spritzes, he casually mentions that these European aristocrats have no money: “They have all these palazzos and they got no cash.”

All the signs so far are pointing in that direction. Quentin isn’t a guest at The White Lotus, he just showed up there with his party crew. He inherited the villa in Palermo from his father, and it requires a lot of upkeep. He’s not about to sell it and open it up to the public (ew), so that’s where Tanya, his mark, comes in. He lavishes her with praise and reassurance, takes her to the opera, and tells her he lives for beauty. Then he says he’d die for beauty and ominously asks her if she agrees. Quentin’s “nephew” Jack (Leo Woodall), who is definitely not his nephew, pretty much confirmed in his drunken stupor that some sort of plan was afoot. Jack’s role in all of this, besides being available for sex when Quentin calls, seems to be to keep Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) out of the way while his boss works on her boss.

Quentin is secretly working with Greg

So the theory that Quentin isn’t as rich as he pretends to be is a pretty solid one, but what is his plan exactly? One big clue came in the framed photo Tanya noticed at the end of the episode. It’s a young Quentin in a cowboy hat with another man who looks a lot like Greg (Jon Gries). That can’t be a coincidence. It made us think back to his story in episode five about falling for a straight cowboy in Wyoming. He tells Tanya he’d have done anything for him, “And after 30 years I still would.” Does “anything” include luring Greg’s rich wife into a honey trap (Stefano Gianino) in order to invalidate an infidelity clause in that frustrating prenup he’s mentioned more than once? Some sharp viewers spotted a red light in the background of the scene, and interpreted it as a camera recording her and Niccolo’s romantic liaison. Could this be Greg’s way to get out of the marriage with some or all of Tanya’s money, of which Quentin was promised a large share for orchestrating everything?

An even wilder theory floating around is that Greg doesn’t have any ill will toward Tanya at all. Could it be that his mysterious illness has come back and this is his way to give her the Italian fantasy he couldn’t before his imminent death? It’s an overly generous reading of the situation, to be sure, but you can’t help but root for Jennifer Coolidge, despite Tanya’s self-absorption and obliviousness. Plus, we need her to come back for season three, wherever it takes us.

And what of the gun Tanya found in Niccolo’s coke bag? As we mentioned, we’re saving our speculation about potential victims for the forthcoming feature, but it’s worth noting that the body Daphne (Meghann Fahy) discovered was floating in the water near the hotel in Taormina, on the opposite side of the island from Palermo. So unless they all head back to the hotel together before everything goes down, neither the murderer nor the victim may be among this crew. Besides, it’s almost too obvious, too telegraphed. Perhaps White is engaging in a bit of misdirection here.

Portia is in danger

What kind of a “deep hole” did Jack find himself in before Quentin rescued him? Could Portia be headed down the same path? After her night with Jack, as he gets drunker and rowdier and ultimately spills the beans on Quentin’s scheme, she’s in a vulnerable position. Will she come to her senses and get the heck out of that hotel room while Jack is passed out? Even if she goes straight to Tanya to warn her of what’s about to go down, she may be too late. We just hope it isn’t too late for her to get out of there, period.

Harper is pretending to cheat to get back at Ethan—or to get him back

Back at the resort, we can’t ignore the weirdness going on with our favorite awkward foursome. Whether or not Harper (Aubrey Plaza) believes Ethan (Will Sharpe) lied to her about his boys’ night with Cameron, that’s almost beside the point now. She’s more upset that he’s not attracted to her anymore. He wouldn’t even deny it when she brought it up in their room. So making it look like she and Cameron are up to something together could be a revenge power play, either to get even or just to get some of Will’s attention back. The trip to the bar, the detour to the room using the flimsy excuse of retrieving her hat, the latched door, and the open door adjoining their rooms (which she specifically said they wouldn’t be using when they first arrived), might all be a ploy to mess with him.

Of course, she could have actually done something with Cameron, but there’s some evidence against this theory. Firstly, Harper has hated him from day one. He is everything she stands against personally and professionally. If she was simply sex-starved, there are plenty of less complicated ways to take care of that. No, it had to be Cameron specifically. But why go through with the deed if you can get the desired results without doing anything? Then there’s the fact that if they really were going to cheat with each other, the middle of the day while Ethan is waiting for a drink and Daphne might return from her massage at any time hardly seems like an ideal opportunity. They’re both savvier than that. And finally, if they did engage in something illicit, why hide it from the audience? This isn’t the type of show to hold back when it comes to sexual encounters. All we see is what Ethan imagines happened. That could be the key to what’s in store in the finale.

Ethan is slowly boiling over. He’s resented Cameron since college, and nothing has changed. He hoped to impress him on this trip now that he has money and (in his mind) equal status, but Cameron treats him the same as always. He put Ethan in a compromised position, and now he might be sleeping with his wife. Ethan can’t push that dark fantasy away and it’s seeping into old wounds that are still there. Could these two be headed for an explosive confrontation?

Cameron is financially insolvent

During the course of the trip, Cameron has been putting everything on his credit card (even his clothes, which mysteriously got lost with his luggage and still haven’t shown up), or charging it to the room. When it’s time to pay Lucia and Mia, he can’t come up with the cash. Is it because he doesn’t have it? Maybe that’s the reason why they eat at the hotel every night instead of enjoying all the culinary delights Sicily has to offer. It could also be the entire reason for the trip in the first place, an effort to raise some cash for a last-ditch investment scheme, now that Ethan has money to spare.

Going back to one of the first conversations Cameron and Daphne had with Ethan and Harper, he says that he’s been dealing with “a bunch of bogus claims” lately at his job. Bogus or not, they could be financially draining. He’s very specific about how, even when they get thrown out in summary judgment, you still have to go through the “depos and internal investigations.” It’s feasible he even lost his job over such an investigation. In which case, it would make sense that their bank account is nearly tapped out.

Daphne has a kid with her trainer

After that weird interaction between Daphne and Harper, where she tells her that one of the ways she copes with Cameron’s cheating is by spending lots of time with her handsome, blond, blue-eyed trainer, she shows her a picture of her kids—and one of them is blond with blue eyes. Some viewers have interpreted this to mean that her trainer is actually the father, not Cameron. Another take on this scene could be that she’s telling Harper in a roundabout way that her kids are what get her through the hard times with Cam. Either way, it’s a bizarre exchange that had us all looking at Daphne in a new light.

Daphne is the mastermind behind all of this

One of the favorite theories of our esteemed colleague Saloni Gajjar is that this is all a plan concocted by Daphne, who is proving to be far craftier than we gave her credit for. Did she plan for everything to go down the way it did on this vacation? Did she take Harper away for the night because she knew Cameron couldn’t resist the opportunity to misbehave? And that it would lead to everything that happened after? Is it some kind of revenge plot? Is she the woman in the story of the teste di moro, a cautionary tale about the consequences of betraying a vengeful woman? We keep coming back to that Dateline conversation, in which Daphne talked about husbands murdering their wives on vacation with an excited glint in her eye. “It happens more than you think,” she says. Sounds pretty portentous to us.

Lucia is playing Albie so he’ll take her to L.A.

There’s been a lot of talk about how forthright Lucia (Simona Tabasco) has been with Albie (Adam DiMarco) in the last couple of episodes. When we first met her she mentioned setting up her clients online, and it seemed like she was in control of her own fate. It’s not until Albie’s in the picture that she starts talking about her pimp, and Alessio shows up to grab her in front of him. Is Lucia taking advantage of Albie’s good-guy nature (or at least his belief that he’s a good guy) to get him to take her back to Los Angeles with him? Like Tanya, his illusions make him a pretty good mark.

Fans have already noted that the first time we saw Alessio was way back in the first episode. He’s there in the street the first time we meet Lucia and Mia. Lucia even talks to him, and there’s no hint of a threat there. Some have even suggested that he’s actually her brother, and there’s evidence to support that. Before she leaves with the Di Grasso men on their trip to look for their relatives, she talks with a bellhop whom she says is the brother of a friend. Later, while they’re driving to the village, Alessio shows up in a car to intimidate them. Did she arrange it while they were waiting to leave?

Laura Dern will show up in the finale

Speaking of the Di Grassos, our final theory has to do with a potential guest appearance by Laura Dern in the finale. We heard her voice on the phone with Dominic (Michael Imperioli) in the premiere, at first weary and then very pissed off. He hasn’t had much of a story to himself in the last few episodes beyond directly confronting his father and avoiding a confrontation with his son, so he’s due. With an actor like Imperioli in the cast, it would be a shame to waste him. Will we see Dern, who previously worked White on Enlightened, come to Italy to dress down Dominic in person? At the beginning of the season, Imperioli even hinted at a future appearance in a post on Instagram. “Although (so far) she has only been heard on the phone and not seen,” he wrote, “her performance is a standout among many great ones in the White Lotus troupe.”

Whatever happens in the end, we expect it to be epic. Episode six ends with Tanya being seduced by her mysterious Italian “arm candy,” while an aria from Madame Butterfly (the opera Quentin took her to in the last episode) plays us out. The opera tells the story of a devoted young Japanese girl whose American husband abandons her, only to return years later with his new wife to collect the child she bore him after he left. In the famous aria, titled “Un bel dì, vedremo,” she sings about her fantasy of her husband returning to her one beautiful day. But that’s all it is, a fantasy. It’s the same for the characters on The White Lotus. The fantasies they buy into leave them vulnerable to disappointment at best and exploitation at worst. Those who enter into transactional relationships with their eyes wide open, on the other hand, tend to be the ones who come out on top in this world. If that holds true in the finale, consider it a thesis statement for the entire series.