Is it hot in here, or is it just The White Lotus? The first season of Mike White’s celebrated HBO comedy largely functioned as a scathing critique of the wealthy and the toxic attributes of colonialism while doubling as a murder mystery. Initially marketed as a limited series, its huge popularity and awards success were too significant to be ignored, all but guaranteeing a second season.
Now we’re in the heat of Season 2, which ingeniously takes place at another White Lotus hotel, this time taking full advantage of Sicily’s natural beauty. Just like in Season 1, there lies at least one big mystery this time around. But creeping below the surface is television’s horniest show, trading in Season 1’s colonialism for sex, lust, and infidelity.
The White Lotus is the television equivalent of that moment when your eyes meet with the person of your dreams across the bar. You get to talking, and there’s a miraculous connection; then comes the flirtation, the getting-to-know-each-other, and wondering if maybe, just maybe, you’re about to have the best night of your life. That electricity, that passion, that tension, and—let’s be real—that straight-up horniness is all captured magnificently by the show’s second season. The tension is often unbearable, but my word, is it smoking hot.
Absolutely everyone at this hotel wants to fuck each other. And there are a lot of people! I can’t imagine a better gift to the Sicilian tourism board than creating a wonderfully horny show where beautiful people want nothing more than to tear each other’s clothes off. As if the picturesque beauty and delicious food weren’t enough, the promise of a wild sexual adventure all but confirm that Sicily is going to be the biggest travel destination of 2023.
A quick recap for the uninitiated. (Wait, why aren’t you watching The White Lotus? When people say we’re in the era of peak TV, this is the exact kind of show they’re referring to. Get on it!) This season brings us three different groups of travelers: There are three generations of the Di Grasso family, son Albie (Adam DiMarco), father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), and grandfather Bert (F. Murray Abraham). We’ve also got two young, sexy couples on holiday together; Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Cameron (Theo James), and Harper (Aubrey Plaza), and Ethan (Will Sharpe). Finally, we have the return of Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), the bona fide fan favorite of Season 1. This time, she’s brought along her new assistant Portia (Hayley Lu Richardson), who’s desperate for a little R&R. While every character has different intentions on the trip, one thing is for sure: every single one of them wants to bang.
This becomes immediately apparent, as waiting at the dock for the boat everyone arrives on are two young women, Lucia (Simona Tabasco), a local sex worker, and her best friend Mia (Beatrice Grannò). Dominic has already hired Lucia for the week ahead of time. Of course, in a show as thorny, horny, and unpredictable as The White Lotus, the sexual web is bound to be far more tangled than that. If you made a chart of who fancied who, you’d end up looking like that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme (you know the one).
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The reason The White Lotus is so successful at being so horny without feeling sleazy is that it understands the desires, wants, and needs behind horniness. Brilliantly, White breaks these phases of that horny feeling into phases—the yearning, the will-they-wont-they, and finally, the sex itself. In an extra layer of masterclass writing, while all three phases are shown throughout, each phase is attributed to a different group of hotel guests.
First up, the yearning, brought to you by the Di Grasso family. As Albie, Dominic, and Bert are from different generations, their desires are different. Bert, despite his age, is horny as hell. However, there’s an almost tragic element to his character, as while he’d happily get it on with anyone and everyone, he recognizes that his age is a significant barrier. There’s a degree of jealousy in the way he looks at his son and grandson, knowing that they’re at or entering their sexual peaks, while Bert’s glory days are behind him.
For Dominic, sex is a burden, but it’s one he desires possibly more than anyone else in The White Lotus. He has, of course, hired Lucia for an entire week of fiery sex, but Dominic is crushed by the weight of his impending divorce. He’s a serial cheater, but he’s desperate to break the cycle to get his family back. It’s never that easy, of course, and Dominic is all too familiar with following his dick’s intuition rather than his brain. Never a wise move.
Albie, the youngest of the trio, is damaged by the legacies of his father and grandfather, who both frequently indulged in infidelity. Albie is determined to be different, breaking the mold by being a “nice guy”—not the nightmare guys you read about on Reddit, mind you, but a genuinely good person that respects women and the importance of relationships. This is something he puts into practice when meeting Portia, whom he feels instantly attracted to. Instead of acting on his desires, he takes things slowly to showcase his gentlemanly qualities. It’s noble, but his yearning bores Portia, who rebukes his desire. In full holiday mode, Portia longs for something sexier, rife with passion and desire (and lots of sex), which she later finds in the impossibly hot British tourist, Jack (Leo Woodall).
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Things get complicated when Lucia and Albie end up falling for each other. Dominic has to pay for sex with the young escort; Lucia, however, wants to have sex with Dominic’s son because she has a legitimate interest in him. Albie is the one man Lucia isn’t charging for sex—a list that includes not just Dominic, but Cameron too.
Because while the Di Grasso family is absolutely, certifiably horny, the show’s most scintillating sexual tension comes courtesy of the married couples. At first, it appears that Daphne, Cameron, Harper, and Ethan are just some hot rich people in need of a vacation (albeit with some ulterior motives possibly at play). But their group dynamic becomes more and more complex with each episode, to the point where it’s practically labyrinthine—and sexily so.
From the outset, it’s clear that Harper is not a fan of Cameron and Daphne, as she spends all her private time complaining about them to her husband. But is there something more to her disdain? As the season unfolds, we discover some serious discontent between Harper and Ethan; the pair never have sex, for various reasons. Ethan seems to have an addiction to pornography, and he’s much sexually intimate with his hand than his wife. While Cameron and Daphne appear to have the perfect marriage, the cracks in the facade appear rapidly. Cameron, like most men in The White Lotus, cheats on his wife whenever he’s able. In Episode 3, he does just that, having a threesome with Lucia and Mia in Ethan and Harper’s room while the women are on an overnight trip of their own.
Among everyone in the cast, there’s so much drama, history, and lust between these four—it’s like The Big Chill, but with a lot more sex. In one memorable conversation, Cameron jokingly (?) tells Ethan he wants to be inside him, the most pointed of his regular references toward wanting to have sex with Ethan. It could be played off as Banter Between Bros™, but considering how unstoppably thirsty Cameron is, there’s just enough there to suggest that he would pounce on Ethan if given the chance.
Fabio Lovino/HBO
If that’s not enough, there’s a palpable sexual tension between Harper and Cameron. In the premiere episode, Cameron fully undresses while he knows Harper is in the room; she watches him silently. By the end of the most recent episode, Episode 5, Cameron has rubbed Harper’s leg under the table at dinner while Daphne and Ethan sit unaware. This all comes, mind you, during a conversation about whether Harper has ever had a threesome (she has, she reveals). We know there are multiple deaths to come this season, and I can’t shake the feeling that it’s coming out of a blood-soaked orgy with this flirty foursome—especially since Daphne was the one who spotted a dead body on the beach in the first episode’s flash-forward.
But most of all, the horniest scene of the entire season—and maybe the year—has these couples to thank. In Episode 3, Daphne and Harper are on a girls’ getaway to Noto, leaving their husbands behind. Daphne and Harper stand in a square together, and when Daphne leaves Harper to get some cash, the camera fixates on Harper. Standing in a gorgeous teal dress, she effortlessly evokes the classic Hollywood beauty of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Everyone around her knows it, too, as dozens of men are completely transfixed by her.
Harper begins to walk as if in slow motion while the men stare at her. She returns their glances, her face reading confusion, concern, and most importantly, an intense sexual curiosity. She looks up and down knowingly, reflecting on her incredible sexual power, in a smoldering sequence that beautifully illustrates The White Lotus’ understanding of desire. Even though Harper doesn’t do anything with these men, her recognition that she so easily could is emblematic of how the show interweaves sex and power this season.
Finally, there’s Jack and Portia, who are in the phase of horniness that everyone else wants to be at: They’re actually getting it on, and they can’t keep their hands off each other. Episode 5 spends a good deal of time with these two as they can’t away from each other—and why should they? They’re young, hot, and ready to make this holiday count. Good for them!
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But Episode 5 ends in a shocking moment that nearly upends everything we knew about The White Lotus’ thesis on sex this season. Tanya and Portia have been whisked away with an array of fabulous (and fabulously wealthy) gay men, led by Quentin (Tom Hollander), who owns a stunning palazzo in Palermo (say that five times fast). Jack, who claims to be Quentin’s nephew, also joins the crew—giving him and Portia time to have ample sex.
Quentin promises Tanya that she’s “never seen a freak show like this,” and he means it in more ways than one. As Tanya wakes in the middle of the night, she walks through the magnificent palazzo, and she hears people having sex. While we all assume it to be Portia and Jack, she enters a room and is horrified to discover that Jack is penetrating his supposed Uncle Quentin.
It’s a moment that takes the most awkward sex scene of the first season—the rimming that won Murray Bartlett an Emmy—and amplifies it tenfold, delivering a moment infinitely more taboo than anything dreamed up by White before. It all but enshrines The White Lotus in the esteemed halls of horniness for daring to go this far. And there are still two more episodes to go.
