Now that 'The White Lotus' season two deaths have been revealed, here are the signs that pointed to that shocking ending all along.
As fans say "Arrivederci!" to the second season of The White Lotus -- and mourn a beloved character -- it's time to unpack that shocking finale.
Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you have not watched the season two finale of The White Lotus.
Yes, tragically, fan favorite Tanya McQuoid-Hunt (Jennifer Coolidge) met her demise in Sicily. After figuring out their quest to kill her for her money, Tanya fatally shot Quentin and his friends aboard their yacht before attempting to leap onto a smaller boat to freedom. Unfortunately, her impromptu plan unraveled as quickly as it came together when she hit her head and fell into the water, sinking to her untimely death.
"She's such a kind of diva, larger-than-life female archetype. It just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya's life and her story," creator Mike White said in a finale recipe. "I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic. It felt like she needed to give her best fight back and that she, in a way, had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her, so it just made me laugh to think, like, she would, like, take out all of these cabal of killers and that, after she successfully does that, then she just dies this derpy death and I just felt like that's just so Tanya."
While fan theories speculating who would wind up dead ran amok on social media in the lead-up to the grand reveal, there were signs pointing to Tanya's ill fate from the star. Pour an Aperol Spritz and follow along:
An Unhappy Husband
In the first episode, Greg does not hide the fact he's unhappy that Tanya brought her assistant, Portia, on the trip, ultimately telling his wife to "get rid of her." In the moment, it seems like a reasonable point of contention considering, to the viewer, it's a vacation for newlyweds. However, in hindsight, it's likely he did not want Portia there as she posed a possible barrier to his murder plot.
Channeling Monica Vitti
In the second episode, Tanya spends the day making her Monica Vitti-inspired fantasy come true atop a Vespa with her husband, Greg, before he reveals he has to leave. What is left unsaid is that Vitti famously starred in the 1960 film, L'Avventura, which was partly filmed in Sicily and is about a woman who disappears during a yacht vacation with her friend. While that's a more subtle clue of Tanya's impending doom, Valentina's response when Tanya tells her she's dressed like Vitti practically shouts it. As Valentina replies, "Monica Vitti's dead."
Dressing the Part
A clear Godfather fan, Bert Di Grasso organizes a tour of the Sicilian filming locations, which ends up offering a major clue later on as to which of the White Lotus guests will suffer their own untimely death. On the tour, the men and Portia -- who they insisted come on the excursion -- lunch near the spot where Apollonia was mistakenly blown up in Michael Corleone's car, marked by a car with a mannequin inside. While Portia is later spotted wearing a Godfather T-shirt with the car on fire, it's Tanya that ultimately wears the same floral-print dress that was on the mannequin during the finale, signaling unexpected danger ahead.
Odes to Opera
In episode five, Tanya heads to the opera with Quentin and his group to see a performance of Madame Butterfly. "After hearing the story of your love life, we decided you were like a tragic heroine in a Puccini opera," he tells her beforehand, making matters all the more foreboding considering Madame Butterfly, whose husband has left her, kills herself in the finale of the show. A less obvious, but still significant opera reference is when "O mio babbino caro" from Giacomo Puccini's Gianni Schicchi plays briefly after Daphne finds a body in the show's opening and at the end of the finale, when it's revealed to be Tanya. Similarly to Greg and Quentin's scheme to kill Tanya and steal her fortune, in the opera, Schicchi impersonates a dead man -- who left his fortunate to a monastery -- in an attempt to rewrite the will for the man's family. However, in a twist, Schicchi allocates the major assets that the family wanted from the dead man to himself.
Tanya, the Prophet
Amid suspicion her husband is cheating on her, Tanya enlists a tarot card reader to answer if her marriage to Greg will last. However, it seems she should have tried tapping into her own psychic powers. During the first episode, mid-romp, Tanya freaks out and pushes Greg off of her, explaining that she "must have been disassociating" while having a vision of men. In retrospect, it seems she had some kind of vision of her final days with Quentin and his group -- as well as a premonition of Greg's dark side.
"I was seeing all these faces of men with these very effeminate hairstyles," she tells him, "and then I saw you and your eyes were like shark eyes -- like, just completely dead. Just, like, dead."
Pre-Season Spoiler
As White pointed out in a finale recap, Tanya's curiosity about death was highlighted in the finale of the first season of The White Lotus, way before she ever set foot in Sicily. "I've had every kind of treatment over the years," she told Greg while discussing his declining health. "Death is the last immersive experience I haven't tried." Emphasis on immersive.
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