Who snuffed it? The White Lotus finale theories, featuring sex tapes and supervillain Daphne

After six glorious, sun-drenched weeks, it’s nearly time to check out of The White Lotus season two. With the second run of his adored anthology series, Mike White has built on the addictive chaos of last year’s Hawaii-based debut to create another sparkling set of episodes.

Now visiting Sicily, this year’s White Lotus guests are just as wealthy, and just as f***ed up. Going into the final episode, several storylines are about to reach their peak, and some unlucky holidaymakers are going to end up in body bags.

There’s Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya, whose discovery of an old photo mere moments before an extramarital tryst may imply some darker intentions at play by her latest admirer, Quentin (Tom Hollander). Miles away on a night out, Jack’s (Leo Woodall) boozy “charms” are wearing thin with Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), who is starting to suspect that her boss Tanya may be in trouble.

Meanwhile, there are potential red flags surrounding the Di Grasso men – grandfather Bert (F Murray Abraham), dad Dominic (Michael Imperioli) and son Albie (Adam DiMarco) – and their connection to sex worker Lucia (Simona Tabasco). Is Lucia at risk of true harm, or is it the family who is more likely to get hurt when her and Dominic’s secret inevitably tumbles out?

And we can’t forget the quickly crumbling couples’ retreat. Ethan (Will Sharpe) is growing increasingly suspicious about whether anything untoward happened between Harper (Aubrey Plaza) and Cameron (Theo James) in their locked bedroom, while the enigmatic Daphne (Meghann Fahy) breezily enjoys her time away from motherly duties.

As shown in the opening moments of season two, with a corpse floating in the Ionian sea, we know that several people won’t be leaving the White Lotus alive. But the questions remain – who? How? And, for goodness sake, why?

Here are our theories…

Killer Quentin

Quentin and his posse of “high-end gays” seem a little too good to be true: they’re rich, they’re generous and they’re the first men in forever who’ve made Tanya feel good about herself.

In episode five, when Quentin first welcomed his new friends at his palazzo, the mysterious Englishman told Tanya that he has only ever been in love once: with a straight American cowboy from his past. It is looking extremely likely that that cowboy is in fact Tanya’s horrible husband Greg (Jon Gries), who left her alone in Sicily.

If it is, then there are strong grounds to suspect that Greg and Quentin are still romantically linked. After all, Quentin did tell Tanya: “I’d have done anything for him. And the amazing thing is, after 30-odd years, I still would.” This begs the question, then: did Quentin befriend Tanya so that he and Greg could run off into the sunset with her money? (She has a half-a-billion-dollar fortune – and there have been numerous references to this and to her and Greg’s prenup throughout the series.)

After the fifth episode, it seemed possible that Quentin was either trying to subtly persuade Tanya to take her own life, or to frame her murder as suicide, given that he took her to Madama Butterfly, the opera in which the protagonist takes her own life.

And it seemed that cheeky chappy Jack could be in on this plan – distracting Portia while Quentin gets inside Tanya’s head. After all, Greg was furious when he discovered, in episode one, that Tanya had brought Portia on holiday.

There are numerous moments in episode six that further add fuel to this theory. Tanya is being plied with an alarming amount of cocaine, which seems like a purposeful move to disorientate and disinhibit her – she ends up having sex with Niccolo (Stefano Gianino).

While in a coked-up state, Tanya also glimpses an old photo in Quentin’s palazzo of two men wearing cowboy hats – could it be a snap of Quentin and Greg? Almost certainly.

Jack, meanwhile, is majorly giving Portia the ick on a night out in another town. He drunkenly reveals that Quentin is actually pretty broke, but that he’s about to come into some serious cash. Could that money be Tanya’s?

He also talks about he’s relieved that he is finally doing something to repay Quentin, who got him out of a “deep, dark hole” – we already know he’s providing Quentin with sex… but is he also helping him top Tanya? Ellie Harrison

Tanya’s sex tape

As pointed out by writer Evan Ross Katz on social media, there’s a mysterious red light in the corner of the room when Tanya and Niccolo start to get all hot and heavy. Not only is capturing this encounter without Tanya’s knowledge gross and violating, but a sign that her night of drug-fuelled sex with a possible mob member won’t just lead to a rough morning after.

Xural.com