Season two of The White Lotus focuses on the guests and staff of the titular resort in
Taormina, Sicily.
Despite the White Lotus resort being a dream vacation, the season opens seven days in the
future, revealing that for some unfortunate guests, the Italian getaway would end in death.
But let’s start at the beginning, as the newest guests arrive in Sicily.
Tanya McQuoid arrives at the White Lotus on vacation with her new husband, Greg.
Greg is frustrated that Tanya has brought her young assistant, Portia, along with her,
and the tension in their relationship doesn’t end there.
Greg is temperamental for the duration of his stay at the White Lotus and constantly
takes secret calls that he insists to Tanya are for work.
As Greg repeatedly reminds Tanya, he is nowhere near as wealthy as her, and due to their pre-nup,
he still needed to work.
And that work eventually calls him back to America, leaving Tanya and Portia alone in
Sicily.
Also checking into the White Lotus is Hollywood producer Dominic Di Grasso, his sleazy widower
father Bert, and his nice guy Stanford grad son, Albie.
The Di Grasso trio are in Italy to reconnect with their familial roots and explore their
homeland.
Originally, Dominic’s wife and daughter were supposed to accompany the family on their
trip, but they decided to stay home in America after discovering Dominic’s repeated infidelities.
Upon first arriving in Sicily, Dominic hires local sex worker Lucia and her friend Mia
to stay with him in secret.
Eventually, Dominic feels guilty over his actions, and breaks off his arrangement with
the women in the hopes of bettering himself and winning his wife back.
Although their sexual arrangement with Dominic comes to an end, he does still allow Lucia
and Mia to use his guest access to the hotel, greatly frustrating the short-tempered hotel
manager, Valentina.
Lucia teaches her friend Mia about the perks of sex work, then prowls the hotel guests
for new potential clients.
Meanwhile, Mia has big dreams of being a professional singer, and sets her sights on charming the
hotel’s lounge pianist Giuseppe in the hopes that he can secure her a regular singer gig
at the White Lotus.
Mia offers to have sex with Giuseppe to earn his favor, but when he takes some of Lucia’s
pills that he assumes are viagra, he instead collapses and is hospitalized.
With Giuseppe gone, Mia is able to convince Valentina to allow her to fill-in during his
absence.
Meanwhile, Valentina becomes romantically obsessed with a receptionist, Isabella.
When Isabella informs Valentina that she is engaged to fellow receptionist Rocco, Valentina
is devastated.
Mia takes this opportunity to seduce Valentina as further thanks for the singing gig.
When Giuseppe returns from the hospital, Valentina fires him and gives Mia the full time position.
Other new guests at the White Lotus include Ethan and Harper Spiller, on vacation with
Ethan’s college roommate, Cameron Sullivan, and his wife, Daphne.
Ethan is newly wealthy after selling his tech company, and Harper is suspicious that the
brash Cameron has only re-entered Ethan’s life to take advantage of his newfound wealth.
Harper is put off by Cameron and Daphne’s seemingly out of touch and privileged lives,
and their constant public displays of affection.
This is in stark contrast to her relationship with Ethan, who seems to have lost interest
in Harper romantically.
Harper’s reservations about Cameron are seemingly confirmed when Daphne takes her
on an overnight girl’s trip.
Cameron pitches Ethan to invest in his company, then buys Lucia and Mia’s services for a
night of drugs and sex.
Although Ethan refuses to have sex with Mia, he does keep the events of his night with
Cameron a secret from Harper upon her return.
When Harper finds Cameron’s condom wrapper in their room, she assumes Ethan is lying
to her and has cheated on her.
Having actually grown close to Daphne, Harper vents her frustrations to her new friend.
Daphne confesses to knowing about Cameron’s infidelities, but admits to having affairs
of her own to cope, and even implies that one of their kids was secretly fathered by
her trainer.
Ethan then becomes paranoid that Harper secretly cheated on him with Cameron. Harper confesses
to drunkenly kissing Cameron, but Ethan believes they went even further.
Ethan then confronts Cameron, before telling Daphne of his suspicions.
Daphne seems oddly fine with this revelation, before inviting him to explore a nearby island.
Upon Ethan’s return from his mystery trip with Daphne, Ethan heads to his hotel room
where he finally initiates sex with Harper.
Meanwhile, Albie begins a brief relationship with Portia, but things fizzle out when she
meets the much more exciting and charismatic Jack.
Albie then meets and pursues a relationship with Lucia, unaware that his father had slept
with her just a few days earlier.
Dominic tries to dissuade Albie from seeing Lucia, but has no way of doing so that wouldn’t
reveal his own indiscretions.
As Albie and Lucia grow closer, Lucia confides in Albie that she owes a lot of money to a
man named Alessio.
Albie, thinking Lucia’s feelings for him are genuine and that they could continue to
pursue a relationship in Los Angeles, makes a proposition to his father.
If Dominic agrees to pay Lucia fifty thousand euros, then Albie would tell his mother how
remorseful and changed Dominic was in an effort to win her back.
Dominic reluctantly pays Lucia the money, but Albie is disappointed to discover that
she had scammed him.
Meanwhile, the lonely Tanya is befriended by a wealthy British man named Quentin, who
had inherited a home from his father in Palermo.
Quentin and his eccentric friends immediately take Tanya under their wing to show her a
good time in the hopes of lifting her spirits.
Portia tags along with her boss and her new friends, and Jack is revealed to be Quentin’s
nephew.
As Tanya confides in Quentin about her struggles with Greg, he confides in Tanya about his
own experiences with heartbreak.
He had only been in love once in his life, decades prior to a cowboy he met in America
who couldn’t love him back because he was straight.
Tanya soon begins to grow suspicious of her new friends.
First, she secretly catches the supposed relatives Quentin and Jack having sex.
Then, during a massive party thrown by Quentin, she discovers from photographs that Greg was
the cowboy from Quentin’s story.
Despite Tanya’s reservations, she ends up being seduced by Quentin’s young and attractive
cocaine dealer.
While this is happening, Jack takes Portia for a night out.
Despite Portia’s insistence on returning to her boss, Jack continues to get drunk and
insists on the two checking into a hotel instead.
Portia then discovers from the drunken Jack that he had taken her out as a distraction,
and that Quentin wasn’t his uncle, but instead a wealthy man who had saved him from a very
bad situation in exchange for sex.
Portia calls Tanya to warn her about their precarious situation, but it’s too late.
Jack takes Portia’s phone and keeps her away from Tanya, while Tanya is trapped on
a yacht with Quentin and all of his friends.
Quentin needed money to help pay for the upkeep of his estate, and was working with Greg to
kill Tanya and steal her inheritance.
Tanya manages to find a gun in the cocaine dealer’s bag, opening fire on her would-be
captors.
After murdering Quentin and his associates, Tanya attempts to jump in the dinghy which
could drive her to safety.
Unfortunately, she hits her head and drowns.
Jack, feeling slight remorse over his involvement in the murder plot, takes Portia to the airport
and warns her of the danger she was in.
As the season comes to a close, Cameron and Daphne remain together in their open relationship,
Harper and Ethan have reconciled, Dominic is given new hope in his marriage, despite
still having a wandering eye, Albie and Portia reconnect after their terrible experiences
in Sicily, and Lucia and Mia walk off into the sunset, having successfully acquired the
money and job they were after.