Less than two months ago, the first season of HBO’s The White Lotus swept the Emmys, winning Best Limited Series and Best Writing for creator Mike White. Jennifer Coolidge and Murray Bartlett also took home gold statuettes for their hilarious performances. When it was announced that the show would become an anthology series, with the second season taking place in a White Lotus hotel in Sicily, it seemed that topping the first season would be an impossible task — but White, Coolidge, and a new cast of characters has risen to the challenge and then some.

There are several groups of guests that arrive at the Italian sunshine separately, but, whether they like it or not, they all become connected. Newly wealthy married couple Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza) are joining Ethan’s college friend Cameron (Theo James) and his wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy), despite Harper having no interest in becoming friends with the obnoxious, non-voting pair. Two local sex workers, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannò) are constantly scanning the lobby of the hotel in the hopes of bagging well-paying customers. Successful Hollywood producer Dominic (The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli) is bringing his son, Albie (Adam DiMarco), and father, Bert (F. Murray Abraham), on vacation to make up for his infidelity causing a riff in the family.
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Tanya (Coolidge) is back, this time with a disillusioned assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), who she keeps around despite the protests of her new husband. Trying to maintain The White Lotus’ stellar reputation is hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore). Just like the first season, the show starts with a dead body being discovered in the sea before it quickly jumps back to a week earlier, leaving the audience to guess which guest(s) meets their end on the sunny Island of Sicily.

Image Via HBO

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The White Lotus is essentially just a collection of conversations exchanged between wealthy vacationers, but the script and cast elevate it to be so much more than that. The dynamics, awkward silences, and Freudian slips bring the rich down to our level, giving them nowhere to hide as the show points and laughs at them. Plaza leads her sections of the season with her trademark awkwardness and cynicism. She just about shields her disdain at how the other half lives but is also trying to reckon with the fact that she’s now just like them. She can’t fathom how Daphne and Cameron are ostensibly happy, looking for signs that reveal that they are, as a couple, inferior to her and Ethan. These scenes show that despite having everything, you still look to put others down to make yourself higher — and Cameron and Daphne show that appearances are always deceiving.

These characters with more money than sense and ambiguous morality form a breeding ground for the opportunistic Mia and Lucia. Despite Albie defending the girls to his father, saying that they’re victims of an unfair system, they are never reduced to helpless women in dire need of cash. They’re two young women who do have dreams that feel like a far stretch, but they also have the time of their lives, charging food and wine to their current client and carrying the secrets of the men dining with their wives at the next table. Lucia and Mia are in some ways the heart of the show, the center of the spider diagram — and they have all the power to turn the guests’ holiday into a living nightmare.

Through the Di Grasso family, there are conversations between three generations of men, all with different views on women, love, and sex. Albie’s modern and feminist views clash with his creepy grandfather desperate to get his kicks while he’s still alive, which means flirting with literally any young woman he comes into contact with. Dominic is a sex addict who wants desperately to change his ways for the sake of his family but does absolutely nothing about it. And of course, Tanya is still a lost soul, always the last to realize the obvious. Her husband leaves in the middle of the trip, so she must rely on Portia to prevent her from having a nervous breakdown. But when a group of wealthy gay men takes a liking to her, Tanya realizes that you don’t need a man to find you attractive in order to give you some emotional satisfaction.

Image Via HBO

If you’ve seen the first season, you know that The White Lotus is not your run-of-the-mill dramatic comedy. The first season ended with someone taking a shit in another’s suitcase, for Christ’s sake. White has no problem in unmasking how gross and embarrassing life can be despite our best efforts to hide it. These characters fart while flirting with strangers; they lie, cheat, and repeat the next day. White makes them human without trying to rid them of any sense of responsibility. Like Succession in the sunshine, The White Lotus Season 2 knows that it has already established its absurdity, so it takes the time to build out its world and characters, raising the stakes of their secrets and lies.

The White Lotus would be nothing without the right cast. Coolidge continues to be at the top of her game, still being able to bring the humor and looking like she didn’t mean to. Fahy and Plaza have great chemistry, with Fahy playing the wealthy housewife with all the nuance that is required in 2022. Daphne isn’t a victim nor is she completely innocent, and never feels shadowed by her obnoxious finance bro husband. What’s there to be said about Plaza that hasn’t been already? She really is a powerhouse, with this role seeing her lean into a less obvious style of humor but still not sacrificing any of her comedic skill and timing. A far cry from Parks and Rec’s April, Harper is the character you can identify most with among the unfamiliar world of the uber-rich. Impacciatore rivals Bartlett in the first season, being a top hotel manager but never feeling the need to hide her judgment at some guests’ indiscretions and always managing to say the wrong thing. It’s a shame that Tom Hollander is not in a lead role because there is truly something intoxicating about the way he acts. He draws Tanya into his world of parties, operas, and pleasure in seconds, and we are sucked in for the ride too. His drawn-out, theatrical delivery of lines and tortured expressions make him the perfect scene partner to Coolidge’s disassociated but also pained Tanya.

The second season of The White Lotus is better than the first, as it feels like it’s not trying to prove as much. The characters are given the freedom to take precedence and the action unfolds from there on more smoothly. With some parties to root for and others that you’ll love to hate, prepare to be fully immersed in the absurd web of sex, lies, and sunshine that Mike White creates again to make lightning strike twice.

Rating: A

The White Lotus airs Sundays at 9 PM on HBO and is available to stream on HBO Max.