Ryan Kirksey
The following recap contains spoilers for The White Lotus S3E7, “Killer Instincts” (written and directed by Mike White)
Mike White and the producers of The White Lotus don’t try and obfuscate that the theme of “Killer Instincts” is violence. More specifically, what are the urges we have to create violence, when is it appropriate, what is our violent nature, and are we actually able to control that part of ourselves?
While the closest thing we see to actual violence in this episode is Rick (Walton Goggins) tipping over an old man in his chair, it’s the implied violence, the threat of violence, and the opportunity for so many people on this Thai journey to commit violence that makes for such a tense episode.
Kudos to Mike White for stitching together the opportunities and conversations about violence with the duality of scenes of the Muy Thai beating the crap out of each other and Buddhist Monk Luang Por Teera (Suthichai Yoon) saying that the only “good faith response to violence” is to sit with your feelings and confront your fear, the source of all violence.
Considering the escalating circumstances for many of our main characters, there is certainly a lot of fear percolating around the resort. The only question that remains is how much violence will be manifested from this fear.
Tim, Victoria, and Saxon Ratliff
After five or six days, there is finally someone in Tim’s (Jason Isaacs) family who recognizes he is wandering around in a drug-induced stupor all day long. Saxon sounds a lot like his mom when he confronts his dad about what is going on and whether it has anything to do with their careers.
“Dad, I don’t have anything else but this. I don’t have any interests, I don’t have any hobbies, OK? If I’m not a success, then I’m nothing. And I can’t handle being nothing.”
Does Tim use this moment to open up and confess or even share a moment emotionally with his son? Of course not, and then it’s straight back to the whiskey-lorazepam cocktail he has been surviving on all week.
Victoria (Parker Posey), while initially reluctant to go to the dinner party, uses it as a time to ask young Thai women why they are with middle-aged bald men and if any of them would like to come back to North Carolina, where she can really help them. As Victoria gets less and less dependent on lorazepam throughout the week, she has less and less of a filter and has become one of the best parts of Season 3.
Tim continues to be black and white, however. He is either strung out and incoherent or having visions about killing himself and his family with the gun he stole. But when he goes to look for the gun, he realizes someone has taken it and panic sets it. He is much more panicked about this than he is about his livelihood crumbling around him, and it’s a strong indication he may do something truly violent in the finale.
Piper and Lochlan Ratliff
The short scenes with Piper and Lochlan in the temple, complaining about the bad food, the dripping water, the uncomfortable beds, and the long lessons were certainly the low point of this episode. It appears Victoria doesn’t even need to pray for Piper not to like the temple, as it seems to be happening on its own.
When Lochlan says he wants to take a gap year so he can spend it in Thailand with his sister, it almost appears to be the straw that broke the independent child’s back. Piper was interested when it was a complete break from her family and their social and religious pressures. If Lochy is going to stay as well, this idea seems to have become completely uninteresting to Piper.
Gaitok and Mook
Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) makes good on his promise to bring Mook (Lalisa Manobal) to the Muay Thai fights for their first official date. This sounds weird as it rolls off the tongue, but we have seen clues from the first episode that Mook prefers this macho stuff, and prefers that her paramours have a sense of machismo as well. When Gaitok confesses that he was very good at the gun range, but has no desire to use it because he doesn’t believe in violence, Mook pushes back.
“You can prove him wrong. It’s good you have strong morals, but you have to live in this world,” she says. It’s clear she would have NO issue with Gaitok lighting some people up with that gun. After Gaitok spots Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius), Alexei (Julian Kostov), and Vlad (Yuri Kolokolnikov) at the fight, there might be some candidates.
Vlad’s bald head gives him away as one of the thieves Gaitok saw after the jewelry store robbery at The White Lotus back in Episode 2. Valentin is with them, and Gaitok finally puts it together that Valentin was the inside man who distracted him while the other two raced through for the robbery.
Gaitok’s boss, Pee Lek, doesn’t think Gaitok has a “killer instinct.” Which version of Gaitok wins out—his pacifist, Buddhist side, or the “I’m desperate for Mook to love me” side—will be a fascinating subplot to the finale.
Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie
The cougars finally had their big blow-up in this episode, one day after Kate (Leslie Bibb) confesses to Laurie (Carrie Coon) she saw Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) sleep with Valentin the day before. All of the aggressions that have been passively held in for the whole trip come out. They think Kate is fake and shallow, Jaclyn is vain and selfish, and Laurie is constantly disappointed (in their opinion) by wondering, “If you always choose the short stick, is it bad luck? Are you life’s victim? Or are you doing it to yourself?” Ouch.
Laurie, choosing not to take the short stick with one day left in the trip, goes to the Muay Thai fights alone, where she runs into Valentin, Alexei, and Vlad. Instead of Valentin, she chooses Alexei for a quick, one-night fling, not realizing this will lead to his Russian girlfriend showing up right after Alexei tries to con her for $10,000, forcing her to run half-naked from the house after escaping out the window.
It’s, on the surface, a shameful event for Laurie, but actually shows a moment where she did something for herself and didn’t suffer any immediate negative consequences. Might those consequences be coming in the finale? Sure, but after the words and actions from the “friends” she came with on this trip, there isn’t much more that could hurt her worse than that.
Chloe, Chelsea, and Saxon
Apart from a few funny scenes in this episode, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) is mostly sidelined in “Killer Instincts” because she is off calling Rick or talking about how worried she is about him. Chelsea does allow Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) to briefly try a moment of connection and meditation with her, but when he gets handsy after a few minutes, she gets out of there until her soulmate can return.
But Saxon’s got bigger problems to worry about than just Chelsea brushing him off or his dad being aloof about their company and what’s going on. Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) tells him the straight truth about what exactly Gary (Jon Gries) wants from them now that he knows about Chloe cheating while at the boat Full Moon Party.
It turns out Gary’s parents didn’t exactly care about closing or locking the door when they were having sex when Gary was growing up. Gary, then, became fascinated with watching them and has grown into a man who fantasizes about watching his partner with someone else, coming in and taking her, role-playing that he is saving his mother so Gary can have her all to himself. Wow.
Whether any of this is true or if it’s a ruse to get Saxon alone so Gary can kill him remains to be seen. But Saxon offers a few quick and confused “What? No! What? No!” comments and bursts out of there. Gary’s deep stare at Saxon as he leaves offers no clues as to whether he wanted to kill Saxon or sit in the corner while Saxon was “boning” his girlfriend.
Belinda, Zion, and Gary
“Let’s just go see what he has to say” might just be the first step in a violent journey between Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and Gary. Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) encourages his mom to go to Gary’s party and hear Gary out, and insists that it’s perfectly safe because he and so many other people will be around.
That all sounds well and good until Belinda (wandering around alone) is confronted by Gary at the party and he tells Belinda he wants a few minutes alone with her. Nice security apparatus, Zion! A small slice of blame also has to go to Belinda for agreeing to see Gary alone, however.
What Gary wants to explain is, yes, he was married to Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), but he had nothing to do with her suspicious death. The only reasons he fled America for Thailand was to avoid “legal shit and lawyers and people making assumptions.” You don’t sound guilty at all, Gary, not even one little bit.
What he does want is to give Belinda some money that he knew Tanya would have wanted her to have. He offers her $100,000 in exchange for letting him live in peace where he is. Now, I don’t know what exactly I would do in that situation, but I’m probably not getting off that couch for less than $500,000.
Gary must legitimately have heard from Tanya about Belinda (how else would he know what to offer money for?), and I truly think he wants to just be left alone. Do I think Gary is capable of murdering someone himself? I don’t, I think he hires people for that, but we now know he is into some pretty freaky stuff, so I’m willing to have my mind changed.
Belinda and Zion high-tail it out of there after Belinda says she will have to sleep on it.
Rick, Frank, Sritala, and Jim
What was built up to be a violent and heated confrontation between Rick and the man who killed his father actually becomes something of a moment of Zen for Rick when he is finally alone with Jim (Scott Glenn). But first, I have to get some stuff off my chest about this con Rick and Frank (Sam Rockwell) are pulling.
I believe these two make some kind of livelihood running cons around the world, but it turns out they really suck at it. When Rick pitches his friend “Steve” as a director, they don’t even pick a real person, nor come up with plausible movies that he would have directed. Sritala (Lek Patravadi) almost catches them in a lie at that moment.
Then, when she asks what movies of hers they enjoy, they have literally no answer. If you’re going to run a con based on the fact that a director likes what he has seen an actress do in movies, it would make sense that you actually become mildly familiar with what movies she is in! These two guys are up here just half-assing it, saying they liked her when she was royalty and that she will be basically a prostitute madam in the new movie. Get it together, guys.
However, The Enforcer, The Executor, and The Notary are a trilogy I definitely want to see now.
Somehow, Frank is able to appeal to Sritala’s vanity long enough for Rick to pull his best James Ford on Jim. But instead of shooting him, or even choking him with whatever is close by, Rick kicks his chair over, realizing his journey has been about the path to get to this point, not about crossing the finish line.
Most Likely to End Up Dead in the Water
With the finale up next (apparently a 90-minute episode titled “Amor Fati,” which is a Latin phrase meaning “Love of one’s fate”), let’s take stock of what we know is going to happen, and then could cause those scenarios.
We know that there will be intermittent gunshots and then a whole barrage of bullets throughout the resort. We know the only person completely and unequivocally immune from this is Zion and the unnamed masseuse we see in Episode 1.
In addition, we know that Rick threw his gun in the trash in the middle of Bangkok. That leaves the gun at the security shed at The White Lotus and the guns packed by Sritala’s bodyguards as the only firearms still in play (that we know of).
With Gaitok knowing about the robbery and Valentin’s involvement, Rick races back to the resort to escape Jim and Sritala, and their bodyguards are likely to follow close behind. The puzzle pieces start to find their homes at this point. I can easily see a scenario where Gaitok, trying to impress Mook and his bosses, confronts Valentin about the robbery. If this kind of confrontation happens anywhere close to the time Sritala’s bodyguards arrive, they could get the wrong idea and start shooting back.
Any of Rick, Gaitok, Valentin, the Russian friends, or another White Lotus guest could get caught in the crossfire, but it’s clear Gaitok and the bodyguards are going to be involved in this somehow. However, with that much gunfire in Episode 1, and the scenes from next week focusing so much on the suicide fruit and the Ratliff’s blender, it’s clear that we may be looking at multiple body bags by the end of the episode.
