The new arrivals fall into four groups:

• The odd couple: Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and Rick (Walton Goggins), a pair of lovers with a 20-something-year age gap. He seems less than pleased to be vacationing at a wellness resort, but she’s easily amused by the beauty and ceremony of it all. They’re assigned Mook as their “health mentor.”

• The WASP-y family: The Ratliffs hail from North Carolina and consist of husband and wife Timothy (Jason Isaacs) and Victoria (Parker Posey), and their three kids, Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), and Lochlan (Sam Nivola). They’re here because Piper, a religious studies major, is writing her thesis about Buddhism and wants to interview a monk at a local monastery for research. Pam (Morgana O’Reilly) is their health mentor. When it comes to first impressions, Posey’s Victoria is the best and funniest so far with her slow Southern drawl and languid rich mom energy. With her near-cartoonish voice and one-liners, I wonder if she’s meant to fill the Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) void this season.

• The girls’ trip: Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), a TV actress, and her two childhood best friends, Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon), are enjoying a much-needed reunion after living in different cities. Their health mentor is a handsome Russian named Valentin (Arnas Fedaravičius), who promptly catches their eye.

• The trainee: Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) returns after first appearing in season 1 in Hawaii, where Tanya promised to help her open her own spa and then fell back on her word. In Thailand, Belinda is on a three-month program to learn some new tricks and “bring the magic back to Maui” after a “rough couple of years.” Her son is set to visit her next week. Staff member Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) shows her around.

Natasha Rothwell as Belinda

As the visitors settle into their rooms, their personalities and dynamics start to show.

The Ratliffs are amazed by the view but are not willing to give up their phones and WiFi. Saxon is especially pissed; what is he supposed to do all week without his phone? How can he work? He loves work. The khaki-wearing daddy’s boy works has a job at his father’s company and already seems like a prick. He also believes that brothers and sisters shouldn’t share rooms once they’ve, you know, grown genitals. (His words.) So, he and Lochlan, a.k.a. “Lochy,” will shack up together.

Another detail worth noting? Pam mentions that the native pong-pong trees at the resort bear fruit with toxic seeds—so toxic they could kill someone. Interesting.

Walton Goggins as Rick and Lalisa Manobal as Mook

Chelsea and Rick are frequent travelers who have been to spots like Costa Rica and Bali. She used to be a yoga teacher, while he doesn’t work much. They were about to visit Australia when Rick abruptly changed their plans to Thailand instead. He won’t share why, but he was furious to learn Sritala’s husband, an American named Jim Hollinger, was in Bangkok instead of at the resort with them. He snaps at Chelsea for asking questions; but she remains bright-eyed and unfazed.

The girls’ trip starts with a deluge of mushy flattery, but a power imbalance becomes evident. First, there’s the money: Jaclyn paid for the rooms, so the others insist on paying for their own treatments. And then there’s pretty privilege: Kate and Jaclyn shower each other with compliments on how they look amazing and haven’t aged in 20 years. (“Who’s your doctor?” Kate teases). Then Jaclyn visibly remembers to compliment Laurie, too. You can tell Laurie is starting to feel removed. And if this is supposed to be any shade toward Carrie Coon, I will not stand for it—did you see how she looked in that gorgeous blue caftan and gold swimsuit?

Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea

Later at the pool, Saxon’s sexual thoughts continue as tells his high schooler brother that long plane rides make him horny, especially with so many new, hot women around. He tries to flirt with the “cougars” (Jaclyn, Laurie, and Kate) to no avail. Then he asks Chelsea how to get a drink around here, and she coldly shuts him down: “You walk up to the bar, and you order one.” Brushing off his losses, Saxon turns this into a teaching moment for Lochy; it’s a numbers game, he explains.

At dinner, complete with a performance of a traditional Thai dance, Sritala meets the girlfriends; Belinda is delighted to see another Black couple at the resort (“And they weren’t staff!” she later tells her son on the phone); and Rick continues to cloud Chelsea’s vacation with his bad mood. “Want to get into some tantric later?” she suggests to cheer him up, but he just storms off.

The Ratliffs are having an awkward meal, too. Lochy is constantly being told what to do. His father wants him to get a posture treatment. He also wants him to go to Duke, but Victoria, surprisingly a Chapel Hill alum, wants him to go to UNC. She mouths, “Tar heel!” at her son at the table before falling asleep in her chair. Meanwhile, Piper still hasn’t set up her meeting with the monk at the monastery, which is suspicious after she wasn’t ready to visit the temple earlier today. (Girl, isn’t that the whole reason you came here?) But the most troubled family member turns out to be Timothy, who has been dodging calls from a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. He leaves dinner to finally answer, and learns that a reporter is writing a piece this week about a man named Kenneth Nguyen and his connections to the Government of Brunei. He asks Timothy, “Did you work with him in 2018 to set up a fund called Sho-Kel?” Timothy says he hasn’t spoken to Kenneth in a while and hurries to end the conversation. He then promptly calls Kenneth and leaves a voicemail, asking him to call back quickly. What shady business has Timothy been up to?

Jason Isaacs as Timothy and Parker Posey as Victoria

While Rick researches Jim Hollinger on his phone upstairs, Chelsea meets a glamorous woman at the bar, and they instantly bond over their sulky and balding boyfriends. Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon), her new friend, has been living in Thailand for a year, in a house up the hill from the resort with her partner, but they just got in a fight. When said boyfriend is revealed, he turns out to be a surprise returning character: Greg (Jon Gries), Tanya’s (Jennifer Coolidge) former husband who is also suspected of plotting her murder. What is he doing here in Thailand? How did he end up with Chloe? How will he be involved in the events of season 3? Will he finally get caught? Chloe and Chelsea decide to get piss-drunk, but the lingering shots on Greg feel ominous.

The flattery convention continues at Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie’s after-dinner drinks. Jaclyn says Kate, a successful woman with a husband and gorgeous kids, is “winning life.” Kate volleys back, celebrating how Jaclyn has found the man of her dreams. Again, Jaclyn forces herself to direct some attention to Laurie. “Everything you do is so hard!” she says of Laurie’s nondescript corporate job. And her daughter has turned into “a really cool girl,” Kate adds. Whatever that means! Laurie goes back to her room, downs the rest of her wine, and starts sobbing as she watches Kate and Jaclyn continue to chat in the living room. That feeling of being left out—being the third wheel, being the person on the sidewalk who has to walk behind everyone else because there’s not enough room for all of you—is so real.

Earlier, Kate recalled describing this getaway to her husband: “It is not a midlife crisis trip, it’s a victory tour,” she says with a proud smile. I can already see the embroidered pillows and Wine Mom™ posters on Etsy.

Lek Patravadi as Sritala, Christian Friedel as Fabian, Leslie Bibb as Kate, and Michelle Monaghan as Jaclyn

At bedtime, Saxon lectures Lochy to not “shrink away from life” like Piper does. She has issues, Saxon says, like the fact that she’s “never been laid before,” even though “she’s pretty hot.” (A reminder that, yes, Piper is his biological younger sister.) Lochy doesn’t know what he wants from life, so Saxon offers some suggestions: “Get laid. Get happiness.” He’s gonna help—with porn. Hm, Saxon wonders aloud, how is he gonna jerk off while sharing a room with his little brother all week? Solving his own problem, he goes to the bathroom fully nude, where he props up his iPad for some alone time in front of the mirror. His bare ass is fully visible to his brother, who uncomfortably tries to ignore the whole stunt. Save this poor boy.

Meanwhile, their parents are in bed talking about how much of an “asshole” Rick has been from Timothy’s tense encounters with him on the boat and outside the hotel. Victoria, chilled out on lorazepam, suggests Rick is just jealous. Timothy has a beautiful wife and family and an amazing career. “It’s all because of you,” she tells her husband, her words soaked in irony. “You did it. Everyone tells me what a great man you are.” Timothy realizes what’s at stake—his reputation, his business, his family’s wellbeing—if the WSJ report gets published.

I think about the audiobook Piper was listening to a few scenes prior. The author, presumably a Buddhist monk, reads, “Identity is a prison. No one is spared from this prison. Rich man, poor man, success, or failure. We build the prison, lock ourselves inside, then throw away the key.” It feels central to White’s mission this season, which is to analyze spirituality and religion, a far more existential approach than previous seasons of The White Lotus, which focused more on sex, relationships, and class. If identity is a prison, how can one escape it? The rich business man, the Hollywood actress, the horned-up white boy, the chic hotel mogul—we’ll see how these identities, and the people locked within them, are tested here in Thailand.