Who Will Die in The White Lotus Season 3? We’ve Got Some Guesses

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the first episode of The White Lotus Season 3.

At long last, we've checked in to The White Lotus for our third stay at the obscenely luxe hotel chain, this time in Thailand. The third season of Mike White's smart, seductive exploration of themes ranging from sex and power to class and spirituality opens, in some ways, much like its Hawaii-set first season and Sicily-set second outing: with somebody, by the looks (and sounds) of it, freshly dead. The difference, this time, is that the chaos unfolds with a rash of gunshots raining down on the otherwise placid hotel grounds, invoking collective fears around mass shootings, and suggesting perhaps more carnage than we've seen in previous seasons.

Of course, that mystery will unfold over the course of the season, sure to include misdirects and diversions along the way. And even if White has said that the mysterious deaths that frame his show were never the main point, we can't help but play armchair detective and see if we can't zero in on some clues now that the first episode has dropped. Below, our initial theories for who might be dead, and why.

Read More: Behind the Scenes of The White Lotus’ Bigger, Wilder, Darker Third Season

Somebody relatively content—on the surface

Readers might presume that after two set visits and more than a dozen interviews with cast and crew I have a pretty good idea where Season 3 is heading. Nope! One of the most striking aspects about reporting on The White Lotus is how obsessively the show's secrets are guarded. While the cast were provided with full scripts prior to filming, they all had to sign NDAs and each individual’s copy would be temporarily confiscated when moving between locations lest any get misplaced.

Following my second set visit, I later discovered that one recurring character was deliberately hidden from me just in case their presence provided an inkling of the plot. (I’ve since discovered who that was but still remain very much in the dark!) So while I’ve plenty of insight into the different characters’ backgrounds and motivations, as well as the overarching themes, the identity of that floating body remains very much a mystery.

There are clues, however, mainly due to the way the mind of Mike White—that “Machiavellian madman,” as cast member Jason Isaacs puts it—works. Isaacs may also have hinted at something when he told me White “leads you down a path when you suddenly realize that the action’s all behind you, or to the left or right. So he sideswipes the audience.” That makes me think past the first episode’s most brooding hotel guests—Isaacs, Walton Goggins, or Carrie Coon—to a character who is, on the surface at least, happy and content.

White isn’t shy about killing off either staff (hotel manager Armond in Season 1) or a guest (Tanya in Season 2), which doesn’t help much. But he does get a thrill out of dispatching the show’s biggest names. That leads me to think toward returning spa manager Belinda, played by Natasha Rothwell; or health mentor Mook, played by K-pop superstar Lalisa “Lisa” Manobal of supergroup Blackpink. Either would cause a big stir and both are seemingly carefree at the start of Season 3. Then again, White did describe Lisa to TIME as a “pop star and also Princess Diana” to her fans. He wouldn’t … would he?—Charlie Campbell

Read More: Natasha Rothwell on What to Expect From Her Beloved Character in The White Lotus Season 3

A purveyor of spirituality

If we look at the last two seasons to try to find a pattern, the deaths at the end of each of those installments were (1) an accident and (2) a means of underlining the theme of the season. Season 1 investigated wealth and privilege, and it was Armond, the man in charge of catering to the untouchable guests, who ended up a victim of one of those guests. The second season centered on issues of love and trust, and Tanya—the lovelorn woman whose husband was plotting to kill her—wound up dead.

It’s difficult to see how Season 3 would fit that pattern. The gunshots in the first episode certainly don’t sound like misfires. It sounds like a mass shooting. White has said this season is darker, and maybe the gunshots indicate a more intentional and sinister death than in previous seasons. White also told my colleagues that Season 3 will explore spirituality and (I’m assuming) the guests’ ultimately empty gestures toward divine growth.

So the question becomes, whose death might underline whatever point White is making about spiritual tourism? So far, the student writing a thesis on Buddhism (Sarah Catherine Hook's Piper) seems most outwardly invested in the experience. So it’s possible it might be her, though the creepy stuff going on with her brothers suggests to me there’s a different revelation to come with that family—one I am frankly not looking forward to.

My guess is it will be some purveyor of spirituality who dies—perhaps the jacked Russian guy (Arnas Fedaravičius) acting as an emotional guide to the trio (Coon, Leslie Bibb, and Michelle Monaghan) on a girls trip? I have not gotten a read on that character yet, but his introduction suggests he’ll be a comedic foil. He seems to exist to point out that the spiritual healing mission of the hotel is a facade—the real point, at least for the guests who employ this piece of eye candy’s services, is escapism. Maybe White could find a way to make his death kind of silly, as with Armond getting stabbed after revenge-pooping in a suitcase or Tanya dying from tripping off of a boat after escaping a murder attempt.

I know one thing: it won’t be Patrick Schwarzenegger's creepy Duke grad, who seems to hit on anyone who moves. Those jerks never die.—Eliana Dockterman

The sweetest and bubbliest candidate

Considering that I failed to predict who died in the first two seasons—not to mention how spectacularly White subverted expectations by killing off Tanya in the last finale—I freely admit that, like Socrates minus the genius, all I really know is that I know nothing. My confidence in what follows is nigh on nonexistent. (For what it's worth, I've screened the first two episodes of the season, but I didn't feel any closer to a strong hypothesis after the second.)

Eliana is absolutely correct that the intro to Season 3 seems to be a mass shooting, rather than a misadventure turned fatal accident like the deaths of Armond and Tanya. Of course, the gunshots could be misdirection; just because they were fired, doesn't mean they hit anyone—or that they were even meant to. (With any other show, if you heard shots and saw a floating body, you’d figure the latter was the result of the former. But The White Lotus has a way of subverting assumptions.) From Monaghan's actor character to the resort's nighttime puppet-dance show to the Muay Thai match we know is coming, there are plenty of performers and spectacles in the mix this season. We may not be able to trust our ears.

The White Lotus' deaths, as Eliana also said, have historically functioned as White's last word on a particular theme. Piper is certainly most keyed in, as far as we know at this point, to the Buddhist ideas that underscore this season. When she listens to a recording about identity as a prison, that seems like a big clue—not that she gets murdered, but that that theme is going to resonate with the arc of any character who bites the dust. With that in mind, Isaacs' Timothy—who's flown halfway around the world only to find himself on the hook for a scandal back home—and Goggins' Rick, a depressive, unsavory type who's constitutionally incapable of relaxing, both seem like prime candidates.

On the other hand, there's something else Tanya and Armond had in common: Both were big, largely sympathetic but morally compromised personalities. (I doubt Belinda will die—in part because she's practically a saint, in part because White seems unlikely to kill off two returning characters in a row, and in part because I think the cold open featuring her son has to be a feint to make us worry about her.) In Season 3, the character who comes closest to fitting this description, so far, might be Aimee Lou Wood's Chelsea. She's naive, she's bubbly, she's sweet, she's silly—but she's also in deep with a much-older guy who is real bad news. Plus, it looks like she's also going to be spending time with Tanya's murderously scheming widower, Greg.—Judy Berman 

Maybe it’s the pills

In two seasons of this series, White has shown viewers that he’s willing to kill on both sides of the class lines that drive the show’s drama—Season 1’s hotel manager Armond, and Season 2's wealthy, insecure hotel guest Tanya. Armond’s death made thematic sense within a cynical, or maybe just realistic, worldview in which the fabulously wealthy are generally impervious to consequences, and the striving workers who serve and clean up after them face no meritocratic path out of servitude. Tanya’s accidental drowning after getting sweet murderous vengeance on her con-men was an ending fit for the tragicomic heroine of a kind of Italian opera. So unfortunately for the purposes of our prognosticating, we can’t rule out any category in particular.

I’m with Judy that Belinda is too pure, and too predictable for those expecting the returning cast member to face the same fate Coolidge’s Tanya did. And while the escalating angst and turmoil felt, for very different reasons, by Isaacs’ Timothy and Goggins’ Rick give those guys a general sense of foreboding, I think, to Charlie’s point, they’re also too obvious as tragic figures, felled by their own high- and low-class cons. I’m most compelled by Judy’s nod toward Chelsea, whose love for Rick is inexplicable but true, who’s a bit of a floater but not unappealing in the way of more opportunistic gold-digger types. I’m similarly worried for Tayme Thapthimthong's Gaitok, a sweetly smitten security guard who wants to be good at his job and get a date with his mega-crush. I very reluctantly name him here as a potentially unlucky bystander who not only gets neither of the things he wants, but a fate as bad as those dreams are good. Or maybe, just maybe, the only person to die will be Parker Posey’s Victoria, of a tragic, accidental Lorazepam overdose—Eliza Berman