SPOILER ALERT: This evaluation comprises spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus,” now streaming on Max.
“Cease worrying concerning the love you didn’t get,” Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wooden) instructed her companion Rick (Walton Goggins), in considered one of their ultimate moments collectively on the just-concluded season of “The White Lotus.” She went on: “Take into consideration the love you’ve gotten. I like you. I’m proper right here.”
This was an try to drag Rick again from the brink; consumed by his personal rage without delay once more recalling his tough childhood, Rick went to a spot the place, generally, Chelsea might discover and recuperate him. And it was an announcement of function for a sometimes-wobbly season of tv that primarily caught the touchdown: On this iteration of “The White Lotus,” we needed to generally cease worrying about what we weren’t supplied. As a result of the brilliant spots, like Wooden’s incandescent efficiency, had been proper there. For all that may be counted in opposition to this season of “The White Lotus,” it didn’t merely mint a brand new TV star in Wooden; it knit her charisma into the very plot of the present, in order that her final absence resounded.
Wooden, beforehand a standout on Netflix’s “Intercourse Schooling,” couldn’t assist however pop off the display from her first look on “The White Lotus,” however her work within the season’s early episodes felt at occasions confounding. Why was this younger lady — vivid, effortlessly humorous, with an askew humorousness and a present for speaking to only about anybody — spending time with the downbeat and depressive Rick? Wooden has a face seemingly designed to catch the digital camera’s focus, or that of a fellow lodge visitor down the bar; wide-eyed and with sweetly distinctive entrance enamel making her smile not merely an emotional expression however an occasion, she’s a discovery for the present and, one senses, for nearly any potential companion however the one ignoring her.
However — up till she met her destiny within the season’s ultimate conflagration — Chelsea was to not be pitied. This was the trail she had chosen and, in a well-calibrated appearing duet with Goggins, Wooden made clear that this couple’s historical past transcended one actually dangerous week. Rick was preoccupied by his plans to say revenge on the person he believed had killed his father; previous to that, although, the notion that the couple had skilled a great deal of good occasions fell on Chelsea to light up, and he or she did so with a wistfulness that made clear that she was with Rick for causes past blind loyalty. Within the season’s penultimate episode, she described their pairing as “yin and yang”: Her relentless optimism tempered his downbeat power, however his world-weariness lent her the ballast of life expertise. Those that would possibly consider this relationship as purely transactional in an age the place viewers police “age gaps” and energy dynamics acquired the creepy model in Charlotte Le Bon and Jon Gries’ characters, international bon vivants looking for little from each other past accompaniment to the following social gathering.
Wooden’s description of the “yin and yang battle” — one wherein she precisely foresaw that one of many two’s outlooks, hope or ache, would “finally win” — got here throughout as if uncovered for the primary time. Like lots of the finest characters on “The White Lotus,” Chelsea is without delay sophisticated and deeply undertherapized, analyzing the specifics of her life solely as Mike White’s net of plotting closes in on her. However the best way the belief dawned on her wasn’t sorrowful or baleful — it was only a truth of life, one which she might bear with good humor. She was the hopeful half of this romantic equation, in any case.
“The White Lotus” tends to be higher at forging stars than at leveraging them. Once I consider standouts over the present’s three-season run, examples that come to thoughts are performers who had been successfully unknown to me — Alexandra Daddario, Meghann Fahy, Adam DiMarco — or comedy character actors who hadn’t but gotten to ship a significant, 360-degree efficiency. (For the primary two seasons, that’s Jennifer Coolidge; this time round, it was Leslie Bibb.) And on this custom, it’s Wooden who is that this season’s discovery, a performer whose care and understanding of her character’s deeply held self-belief made a sophisticated relationship legible, and made its ending right into a tragedy.
I’ve seen critiques of the present’s format, three seasons in, as limiting — as if the system of a dying proven at the start of the proceedings, then approached over the course of every week’s trip, has run its course. If a killing is to be the hook for every season, then I believe that Chelsea’s represents about as significant as this season might have generated, partially due to the component of shock. It’s stunning on a plot degree that the battle between happiness and agony has been so decisively gained, and stunning on some degree past mind {that a} character who appeared so vibrantly alive is the one who left. So many friends, this season and earlier than, spend their time at areas of the White Lotus lodge chain in zonked-out catatonia. (And that is performed effectively throughout the board — the sequence’ three middle-aged feminine pals, for example, spent a lot of the season snug and safe in delusions that saved them secure and distant from each other themselves.) Chelsea, hesitant to spend an excessive amount of time analyzing her relationship however looking forward to Rick to come back again to her in order that she will reside it, is simply the other.
Maybe that’s a means the season approached its putative theme of spirituality, one which — as I’ve written — acquired misplaced at occasions within the sex-and-money swirl that has outlined the sequence all through its run. Chelsea had deep perception in Rick, even in moments when their path ahead appeared occluded; she needed to be part of one thing larger than simply herself; she discovered pleasure not in analyzing why she felt this manner however in pursuing the deepest connection she might. Wooden, shaking off the indignities of Chelsea’s being ignored or maltreated, returned to the connection anew not merely subservient to Rick however understanding that she would possibly, possibly, have the ability to convey him towards a form of grace. And as illuminated by a standout efficiency by a genuinely thrilling new star, all of this appears a bit like religion.
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