Thank you to Mike White for gifting us with this seven-week long, Italian game of Clue.
The White Lotus Season 2 airs its finale on HBO Sunday night, which means the show’s rabid fanbase will finally find out who dies. As he did in the Emmy-winning series’ first season, creator-writer-director White opened the season with the reveal of a death—or, in this case, multiple deaths.
As viewers have watched the show’s characters navigate a kaleidoscope of toxic interpersonal relationships, we have tried to piece together whether any of the plot lines hint at who might be leaving Italy in a body bag. There’s one thing we know for certain: Daphne (Meghann Fahy) is safe, as she discovered one of the bodies floating in the water, and so is Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), the hotel manager who springs into crisis-management mode.
So is it one of the Di Grasso men—in Sicily to intergenerationally bond and rediscover their roots—or one of the sex workers they’ve mingled with? Is it someone in the sexually chaotic foursome of married couples traveling together? Or is Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya doomed, following her return trip to a White Lotus hotel after last season’s drama?
The Daily Beast’s Obsessed staff makes their best predictions for who’s going to die below:
Albie Di Grasso (Adam DiMarco)
Any of the Di Grasso boys is a good bet for the finale death—grandpa Bert is covered in bandages while his son Dominic is about to get trampled by Laura Dern. But I’ll place my odds on little Albie, who’s developed a deep love for hooker Lucia in the past few episodes. Lucia appears to be scamming him, agreeing to sleep with Albie for free because she “likes him,” as a big guy in a scary car chases her around for money. My guess? Lucia has hired this guy to stalk her so that she can beg Albie and his family for money to pay him off. And while Albie pleads with his father to cut Lucia a check—we see this in the teaser for Episode 7—that’s not working out for him. I see Albie trying to fight Lucia’s “stalker” at The White Lotus resort to save her, and ultimately, getting killed in the fight.
– Fletcher Peters
Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge)
I won’t apologize for my correct take here—much as I love Jennifer Coolidge, Tanya needs to stop traveling to the White Lotus and stay home for a little bit. That is, if she makes it out of Sicily alive. This year’s trip has been astoundingly bad for her, from fighting with her shitty husband, to having him leave her alone in Italy almost immediately, to meeting a suspicious band of Brits, who get her coked-up and are most definitely trying to steal her money. (They are also most definitely in cahoots with said shitty husband on the whole scheme.)
Tanya’s drug-fueled party bender felt like the kind of last-hurrah recklessness that people only experience when they’re about to meet their maker. I don’t trust that bumbling Tanya knows how to get out of this scam, and her only true “pal,” Portia, isn’t around to save her. Not that Portia is so resourceful either. It seems unlikely that Tanya is going to get out of this palazzo trip to die for without suffering some serious damage, whether to her nose after all that coke, to her wallet after they rob her for everything she’s got, or her life when she fails to get away. After all this over-the-top drama, I implore Mike White to make a tough call: Keep the show feeling fresh by eliminating any recurring characters. Even if it means that they—Tanya—have to die.
– Allegra Frank
Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) and Quentin (Tom Hollander)
The White Lotus wants you to think it’s Jennifer Coolidge’s spaced-out, coked-out Tanya who’s going to die at the end of Season 2. And that’s a solid guess, considering that the “high-end gays” she’s chumming around with are patently up to no good and even seem to be in cahoots with her equally shady husband. Instead, I think it’s Tanya’s crazily dressed assistant Portia who gets swept up in their whole murderous scheme. She’s no dummy, so as soon as she puts two and two together and realizes her boss is in trouble (thanks to Jack’s slurry hints), she races back to the estate to tell Tanya what’s going on—but then ends up in the crossfire and dies. Then I think Tanya takes Niccolo’s gun, shoots Quentin, and is then able to claim self-defense so that she’s legally off the hook and is able to show up to whatever glam resort Season 3 has on deck. Because what is The White Lotus without her?
– Madeline Roth
Ethan (Will Sharpe)
Ethan is unraveling. He’s convinced himself that Harper cheated on him with Cameron, though my best guess is that Aubrey Plaza’s character is just trying to give him a taste of his own medicine after he gaslit her about the night with Lucia and Mia that ended with him cowering in the corner of their room as Cameron defiled their couch—and made the fatal mistake of leaving a condom wrapper behind. How exactly will this lead to Ethan’s death? A reprise of jet ski chicken feels likely as we know there’s at least one body floating in the water at the end of the season. But one way or another, it seems like Ethan is more ready to snap than anyone else at The White Lotus hotel heading into the finale, which could ultimately mean his own demise.
– Matt Wilstein
Greg (Jon Gries) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò)
Mike White would love for us to assume that deaths that occur must be related. But I’m smarter than that! There are plenty of ways that two people who have never met could both end up floating in the water. The first will be Greg, Tanya’s philandering husband (and BLM ambassador), who has been conspiring against his bride and manipulating his old cowboy lover, Quentin. Greg will die either by Quentin or Tanya’s hand, and Quentin will meet a fate not-so-pleasant, too. And, of course, there’s Mia—everyone’s least favorite hotel lounge singer. Everyone seems to think that a show like The White Lotus is “too smart” for an easy red herring. But when you’ve got seven episodes and a body count to up, you might fall back on the simple techniques. Mia has been a total non-factor so far, which makes her the perfect second body to throw into the ocean. How she gets mixed up in all of this, I can’t tell you—I’m not a psychic, just really great at predicting deaths on acclaimed television programs.
– Coleman Spilde
Alessio (Lorenzo Scalzo)
The internet has exploded with theories about Alessio ever since careful viewers discovered that, just a few minutes into episode one, Lucia greets him with a cheerful “Ciao!” This is in stark contrast to the terrified Lucia we see a few episodes later, when a furrow-browed Alessio is seen chasing her and the Di Grasso clan in his car through the streets of Sicily. Lucia suggests that Alessio is her pimp, and that he’s after his cut. It’s obvious that Alessio is in on whatever scam Mia’s running on the family. But another plot line intersects pretty well with this one. Remember that Albie, a bookish Stanford grad, only started talking to Lucia after Portia turned her attention to British alpha stud Leo. Albie’s hurt. He’s tired of being a good boy. And given Mike White’s penchant for “cuck” storylines, it’s easy to envision Albie finally taking matters into his own hands and killing Allessio to “save” his hooker with a heart of gold.
– Adam Manno
Gramps (F. Murray Abraham)
It’s not the boldest prediction to think that the old man whose health has been rapidly declining over the course of the season/his family’s vacation is the character who will likely die. But, even though he has issues with keeping his balance and has been walking around with a bandaid on his head, I don’t think it’s his health, necessarily, that takes him. I keep focusing on the fact that a body was discovered in the water. As we saw in the most recent episode, Gramps is beyond devastated—to an existential degree—by the cold response his family got when they knocked on the door of their distant relatives. My theory is that this is the one thing he was counting on to make him feel whole again. I think he jumps off a cliff into the water. Poor Gramps!
– Kevin Fallon
