Warning: This post contains spoilers for the first six episodes of The White Lotus Season 2.
The White Lotus wraps up its second season on Sunday, and you know what that means: It’s time for somebody to die. Multiple somebodies, actually. As resort manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) learns from her unwitting romantic rival, Rocco (Federico Ferrante), in the flash-forward that opens the premiere, at least one guest has drowned—and there are “other bodies” somewhere, too. With the apparent exception of Daphne (Meghann Fahy), who is shown discovering a corpse floating in the Ionian Sea, victims could include just about any vacationer and a few of their Italian associates.
As usual, fans on TikTok, Reddit, and beyond have spent all season theorizing over who we’re about to see wash up on the Lotus’ idyllic beach. These predictions are fun, not to mention impressively detailed, but they tend to come out of obsessive analysis of the plot, dialogue, and individual shots—all elements that could also be vehicles for red herrings. If season 1’s pairing of murderer and body are any indication, however, then Mike White is probably embedding the most vital clues within the season’s most salient theme: romance as power struggle. With that in mind, we’ve gamed out who’s most likely to end their trip to Sicily in the ground and who, if anyone, might put them there.
Read more: In The White Lotus’ Provocative Second Season, Sicily Is for (Rich, Miserable) Lovers
Tanya and Portia
With the penultimate episode’s revelation that Quentin’s mysterious long-lost cowboy love is actually Tanya’s husband Greg, it seems clear that a broke Quentin (Tom Hollander) is conspiring with Greg (John Gries) to scam Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge). Tanya mentioned multiple times that she and Greg signed a prenuptial agreement. So either Quentin is trying to murder Tanya so he and Greg can split the inheritance, or he’s trying to film Tanya having an affair, which might void the prenup if it includes an infidelity clause. (Whether Greg actually loves Quentin or is taking advantage of Quentin’s undying devotion to him remains to be seen.)
Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), meanwhile, has finally wised up to the reality that something is amiss with her rowdy English boy. Following episode 5’s jaw-dropping sex scene, a drunken Jack (Leo Woodall) admits to Portia that he is not Quentin’s nephew, and that Quentin is broke, all while clearly keeping Portia from the party at which Quentin is executing his scheme against Tanya. Now Portia is stuck in a strange part of the world with a man she barely knows. She needs to get back to Tanya, but even if the two are reunited in Quentin’s villa, there’s still the fact that the Italian escort-slash-drug-dealer-slash-mafia-adjacent-dude Tanya slept with at the end of the last episode waltzed into the house carrying Chekhov’s gun. That firearm is bound to go off. But who will be holding it?
Tanya
Odds of Dying: Low. While Tanya is the target of some sort of scheme, actor Jennifer Coolidge is the lynchpin for the White Lotus series, which has officially been renewed for a third season. We’re guessing she sticks around for that season, even if she loses half her fortune to Quentin and Greg.
Odds of Killing: Medium. Is it hard to imagine Tanya successfully murdering another human being? Absolutely. But having your nine-figure bank account targeted by a conspiracy of your husband, your new best friend, and the hunk he enlisted to be your arm candy can do crazy things to a person.
Portia
Odds of Dying: High. Here’s what we know about Portia: she’s chronically depressed, she’s hooking up with a sloppy drunk who’s posing as the nephew of a nefarious schemer but is actually sleeping with him, and—most damning in the world of The White Lotus—her identity as both a woman and an employee of the uber-wealthy makes her especially vulnerable to cruel twists of fate. You can also imagine Tanya drifting off to her next Lotus getaway with the baggage of her assistant’s death weighing on her weary conscience.
Odds of Killing: Low. Maybe she’ll step up and try to rescue Tanya. But it’s hard to imagine Portia mustering enough concern for her boss’ life or her own to kill for any other purpose than self-defense.
Quentin, Jack, and Greg
Quentin, Jack, and Quentin’s entourage are up to no good. Cash-poor Quentin needs Tanya’s money to fund upkeep on his extravagant palazzo. His only other option would be to (shudder) let the public inside its hallowed halls.
Tanya and Portia have both caught on to their scheme—and the fact that Greg is likely involved—but how they will escape the situation has yet to be seen. The entire crew is due back at the White Lotus soon, a perfect setting for some sort of confrontation between Tanya and Quentin.
Quentin
Odds of Dying: High. Quentin told Tanya he would “die” for beauty, an all too portentous claim.
Odds of Killing: High. If Quentin will die for beauty, he’ll probably kill for it as well.
Jack
Odds of Dying: High. If the first season of White Lotus taught us anything, it’s that the upper classes use and abuse everyone else to maintain their status. Jack may be a drunken f—boi, but he also seems to be a victim of Quentin’s machinations and thus likely for the chopping block. He also spouted a lot of potentially foreshadowing drivel about making the most of today and not knowing whether we’ll be here tomorrow.
Odds of Killing: Medium. It seems Jack has some moral qualms about his participation in Quentin’s scam, so he’s less likely to pull a trigger than his so-called “uncle.” Still, Jack is desperate and confused and still clearly reeling from whatever “hole” he recently found himself in. It’s possible he stumbles into a volatile situation and acts without thinking.
Greg
Odds of Dying: High. Remember, Greg left only for a few days and is supposedly returning to Italy—if only to claim his half of Tanya’s fortune or celebrate with Quentin. Does he return at an inopportune time and meet the wrong end of that random Italian man’s gun? From a plotting perspective, Greg being dispatched now would free up Tanya for another series of poor romantic decisions in Season 3.
Odds of Killing: Low. Even if Greg is plotting to take out his wife for money, he likely wants to keep a buffer between himself and the actual dirty deed: Getting convicted of murder is an easy way to lose your inheritance.
The Di Grasso men
The Di Grasso family vacation didn’t exactly go as planned. The three Di Grasso men found their long-lost relatives, but were met with screams, curses, and threats of bodily harm by artichoke. “Who needs men?” one of their old cousins says. Patriarch Bert (F. Murray Abraham) is despondent he wasn’t met with a warm embrace: After burning down his own family life through myriad affairs, he always assumed he could find love elsewhere. He was wrong. His son Dominic (Michael Imperioli) is still fretting over the fact that Lucia (Simona Tabasco), the sex worker he hired to be his girlfriend for the week, has set her sights on his naive son, Albie (Adam DiMarco).
Albie, meanwhile, continues to be a crusader for feminist men everywhere—perhaps he’s trying a little too hard. Is he the type that will put himself in harm’s way for Lucia or Portia just to prove a point? Or, worse, is he a self-styled nice guy who turns out not to be so nice at all, becoming hostile toward a woman who has rejected him?
Fans are holding out hope that we might get a late-season appearance from Laura Dern, who voiced Dominic’s wife on the season 1 phone call. A surprise appearance from Dern could factor into the endgame. Better yet, perhaps she’ll be a featured player in Season 3.
Read more: F. Murray Abraham Loves His White Lotus Costar Jennifer Coolidge Just as Much as Everyone Else
Bert
Odds of Dying: Medium. Bert has fallen a number of times this season already. The recurrent clumsiness may be seeding an accident. Much has been made of how old he is. Considering we need to account for multiple bodies in the finale, Bert seems a likely candidate.
Odds of Killing: Medium. Though he’s approached Dominic and Albie’s trysts with the locals with good humor, he also has made it very clear that he believes in preserving the family at all costs: He constantly urges Dominic to fix his marriage, arguing that even Demeter forgave Hades for raping her daughter Persephone. (Quite the twisted logic!) If Albie wants to bring Lucia back with them to Los Angeles, introducing a chaos agent in Dominic’s home who is sure to seal the grim fate of Dominic’s marriage, Bert may be driven to step in.
Dominic
Odds of Dying: Low. Dominic, though perturbed by his son’s interest in a sex worker (and perhaps concerned he will make the same mistakes as his forebears), has not fallen into a contentious relationship with anyone this season. And he is, arguably, the most honest of the Di Grasso men: He isn’t deluding himself into thinking he’s a sneaky cheater like his father or a good guy like his son. He knows that he’s a bad husband. That level of self-awareness will probably save him from any real harm.
Odds of Killing: Low. Dominic seems happier to try to pay his way out of a bad situation than stir up a fuss.
Albie
Odds of Dying: Low. Albie will likely suffer some major blow in the finale episode and emerge an angrier man than the one who first arrived in Sicily. But he’ll have to live with the consequences of his choices when it comes to Lucia, not die for them.
Odds of Killing: Medium. Albie seems fated to commit some terrible act by the end of this season and thus fulfill his destiny of growing into a misogynist, despite his best efforts, as is the Di Grasso way. Could he rage out of control when he discovers Lucia is tricking him? Will he accidentally kill someone while trying to defend her? There’s a scenario in which both Lucia and Jack wind up bereft, if not dead, and Albie and Portia reunite, bonding over their shared experience of getting conned by sex workers, their guilt at surviving the ordeal, and their mutual embarrassment over trying to make one another jealous.
Harper, Ethan, Daphne, and Cameron
Tension among this foursome has reached a new peak. Harper (Aubrey Plaza) spent the last episode in a surprisingly good mood, either because Cameron (Theo James) confirmed that Ethan (Will Sharpe) didn’t cheat on her or because she’s determined to make Ethan jealous by either flirting with or outright sleeping with Cam. Ethan is not at all well and all those old resentments towards Cameron, who always went after the girls he was pursuing in college, are bubbling up.
Cameron, meanwhile, plays breezy, but he’s still worried either Cameron or Harper will tell Daphne (Meghann Fahy) about Cameron’s wild night with Lucia. Only Daphne seems to be living her best life, utterly unbothered by Cam’s infidelity or Harper and Ethan’s marital problems. After all, she has her handsome trainer to reunite with back in California.
Harper
Odds of Dying: Medium. Her odds of becoming a killer were much higher in earlier episodes, but now the rage has transferred over from her to her husband, Ethan. Ethan’s jealousy may lead to the death of Harper or Cameron, whom he believes to be having an affair.
Odds of Killing: Medium. After she and Daphne returned from Noto, she found a condom wrapper nuzzled between the couch cushions. She thought it was Ethan’s and was quietly seething until Ethan found the wrapper and confronted her about it. Although Ethan explained everything, Harper still wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him—despite this couple having a superiority complex rooted in having always told each other the truth—until the penultimate episode. Ethan now has suspicions that Cameron is flirting with his wife. It’s possible to imagine a situation in which Ethan attacks Cameron and Harper has to stop Ethan—by killing him.
Ethan
Odds of Dying: Medium. Depending on how his pent-up rage manifests, where, and in front of whom, he could attack Cameron or Harper and wind up on the losing side of that battle. The last episode also had him rage-swimming out to sea, buoys be damned, which felt ominous but may well be a red herring.
Odds of Killing: High. This season of The White Lotus may be sending us a message about supposedly nice men who snap. Albie and Ethan are the two prime candidates for a fall from grace. Remember when Cameron called Ethan “the original incel”? Cruel, no doubt. But Ethan has admittedly spun himself into a jealous rage over the mere idea that a sexually dissatisfied Harper turned to Cameron to fulfill her needs. Ethan could lash out at the man he believes is cuckolding him, at his wife, or at the sex worker who keeps bugging him about getting paid. He either ends up acting out violently or becomes so jealous of Harper’s supposed affair that he finds himself attracted to her again, and they rekindle the fire in their marriage. This ending would echo Season 1’s finale, which saw two people who definitely should not remain together do just that.
Daphne
Odds of Dying: Low. Not only do we see Daphne in the first episode—she’s the one who discovers the body in the water.
Odds of Killing: Medium. Daphne has brought up her love of murderous stories multiple times. She loves Dateline and has studied the husbands who kill their wives. She warns her husband that the Italian legend of the wronged woman who cut off her lover’s head is a warning to husbands. Plus her decision to try to make small talk with two other random tourists on the beach could be a play for an alibi. She also may have been up to some scheming when she supposedly booked the last available massage with a Chalamet-esque masseur in the last episode.
Cameron
Odds of Dying: Low. Cameron’s wealth, privilege, and general prickishness will likely insulate him from any true harm on a Mike White show. (See: Jake Lacy’s Shane suffering no consequences for murdering someone last season.)
Odds of Killing: Medium. We heard from Daphne in the first episode that “Cameron has a really long fuse, and then, all of a sudden, he’ll go crazy. He will lose it.” Though Cameron laughed in response to Ethan’s accusation that Cameron was hitting on Harper in the penultimate episode, if he’s badgered enough times, he may snap. Though their relationship is twisted, he does seem to love Daphne and will view any threat to their relationship as a threat to his fantasy existence.
Mia, Lucia, and Alessio
Lucia is seemingly trying to scam Albie, a dangerous gambit. We doubt Alessio is actually Lucia’s pimp. After all, she said in the first episode that she started soliciting clients on her own by setting up an online profile. Alessio is probably a friend or relative playing a role, and Lucia is likely hustling the Di Grasso men. She hopes they will pay her a large sum to help her out from under Alessio’s thumb.
Mia (Beatrice Grannò), meanwhile, has hustled her way into a job as the piano player at the White Lotus bar and secured the affections of Valentina by sleeping with her. Things are going a bit too well for Mia, who is more naive than her friend. Not to mention that the other shoe could drop if Giuseppe (Federico Scribani), the piano player she accidentally sent to the hospital, returns for his old job, or vengeance.
Lucia
Odds of Dying: Low. Mike White’s work tends to avoid clichéd tropes, and we’ve seen too many stories of sex workers murdered by their johns before. We suspect White will resist repeating that storyline and find some other twist.
Odds of Killing: Low. Lucia has a lot of loose ends, trying to see her probable scam against Albie through and recoup the money Cameron (and Ethan) owe her. But neither of those motives seem likely to drive her to kill
Mia
Odds of Dying: High. Valentina may be repressing some rage. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that she might kill Mia out of misguided guilt about their tryst, or fear of losing her job over having sex in an unused suite. That may be Mike White’s way of twisting the “dead sex worker” trope. Cameron or Ethan could also turn on Mia if she reminds them of their debts. Mid-season Lucia worried about being punished by the world for her sex work. Perhaps it will actually be her friend that suffers the consequences of the work Lucia persuaded her to try, compounding Lucia’s guilt.
Odds of Killing: Low. Mia already accidentally gave another character a heart attack this season by feeding him the wrong drugs. We’re guessing that’s the closest she’ll come to murdering someone.
Alessio
Odds of Dying: High. If one of the Di Grasso men decides to try to confront Alessio, it could end in some terrible fight. Again, money protects people in this world, so the Di Grasso men would likely win that confrontation. That said, Alessio is not technically a guest (not yet, anyway), so it’s unclear if he’d count among the list of dead hotel patrons Valentina was concerned about in the first episode.
Odds of Killing: Low. Alessio has been a background character with only a few lines in Italian in the show so far. It would seem a little odd if he appeared from nowhere to kill, say, Cameron or Albie.
The hotel staff
In the first season of White Lotus, the staff suffered greatly at the hands of their guests. Season 2 is more concerned with power imbalances in terms of gender rather than race or class, and in the first episode Rocco reports that several “guests” have died, not staff. Still, Valentina checked into a room for her tryst with Mia. Who knows what other staff members have skeletons in their closets. The show still may have some tricks up its sleeve.
Valentina
Odds of Dying: Low. We see Valentina in the first episode of the season alive and well when Rocco gives her the news about the dead bodies.
Odds of Killing: Medium. We would almost forgive Valentina from going on a murderous rampage against all the annoying men who won’t stop hitting on her female staff members and get to work already.
Rocco
Odds of Dying: Low. Rocco is the one who delivers the news of the corpses to Valentina in the first episode.
Odds of Killing: Low. Rocco is far too clueless to pull off a murder, and he would probably immediately confess to an accidental death.
Isabella
Odds of Dying: Low. Rocco refers to the people who died as “guests” in the first episode, and Isabella works at the hotel. Plus, considering that Rocco is her fiancé, he would probably be devastated if Isabella was among the bodycount.
Odds of Killing: Low. Isabella couldn’t hurt a fly. Everyone loves Isabella!