Season one of The White Lotus focuses on the guests and staff of the titular resort in
Hawaii.
Despite the White Lotus resort being a dream vacation, the season opens seven days in the
future, revealing that for one unlucky person, the beach paradise would end in death.
But let’s start at the beginning, as the newest guests arrive in Maui.
Newlyweds Shane and Rachel Patton arrive at the White Lotus on their honeymoon.
When the couple are told the Pineapple Suite they reserved was double-booked and are placed
in a lesser, although still exquisite room, Shane takes this as a personal affront and
confronts the hotel’s manager, Armond.
Armond, tired of his treatment by entitled and pompous guests like Shane, decides to
react passive aggressively and constantly makes moves to sabotage Shane’s honeymoon.
Meanwhile, Shane can’t drop his bitterness toward not receiving the room he wanted, and
lets this minor inconvenience completely sour his honeymoon with his new bride.
Rachel isn’t used to living a lavish lifestyle like Shane, and their new marriage is further
fractured when Shane insists she quit the journalism career she was actually passionate
about pursuing, as Shane made more than enough to support her financially.
Things go from bad to worse for Rachel when Shane’s mother, Kitty, arrives at the White
Lotus to crash their honeymoon.
As Rachel begins to fear she is now nothing more than a trophy wife, she confesses to
Shane that she regrets marrying him.
Nicole and Mark Mossbacher arrive at the White Lotus with their daughter, Olivia, Olivia’s
friend, Paula, and their socially-awkward, technology addicted son, Quinn.
Nicole is the powerful CFO of a major tech company, who carries the burden of being their
family’s primary moneymaker.
Mark starts their vacation anxious about a potential cancer diagnosis, but is quickly
given a clean bill of health by his doctor.
Instead of accepting this good news and enjoying his vacation with his family, Mark allows
his entire worldview to collapse upon the revelation that his own father was secretly
gay and died of AIDS.
Mark begins to feel self-conscious about his masculinity and becomes insecure about his
wife being their family’s main provider.
To cope with these feelings, Mark begins drinking and becomes more adamant that his son Quinn
put down his electronics and start acting more like a man.
Eventually, Mark begins to be more open and vulnerable with Quinn.
Maybe too vulnerable, as he reveals to his son that he had once had an affair.
While Nicole was already aware of this past affair and the couple had moved on from it,
this public revelation stirs up old wounds, and she rebukes Mark for telling their son,
putting a further strain on their relationship.
Meanwhile, Quinn begins taking his father’s advice and tries to be more active while on
vacation.
When Olivia kicks him out of their hotel room, Quinn begins sleeping on the beach, where
he meets a group of locals that invite him out to canoe.
Olivia and Paula start their vacation by getting high off of drugs they smuggled into the resort.
When they accidentally leave their stash at the beach, the hotel manager Armond finds
it and takes the drugs for himself.
Olivia also becomes jealous and even more entitled than usual when Paula begins a relationship
with hotel employee Kai.
Kai tells Paula about how the White Lotus was built on land stolen from his people.
Paula convinces Kai to break into the Mossbacher’s hotel room and steal Nicole’s $75k necklace,
a gift from Mark in an attempt to make up for his affair.
Unfortunately for Kai, the pressure of Nicole holding her family together finally comes
to a breaking point, and Nicole leaves the family’s scuba diving trip early.
Mark follows Nicole to comfort her, and the two catch Kai stealing the necklace.
Mark steps in to protect Nicole, and Kai beats him up before escaping.
Having seemingly put his life in danger to protect his wife, Mark finally earns the respect
of his family.
Tanya McQuoid is an eccentric woman grieving the death of her mother, who has come to Hawaii
to spread her mother’s ashes.
When her attempts to schedule a massage fail due to the spa being fully booked, Tanya befriends
and pays the spa’s manager Belinda to lead her in a ceremonial chant.
Tanya is so happy with the results that she offers to fund Belinda’s own wellness business.
For Belinda, this was a life-changing offer.
For the wealthy and aloof Tanya, this was just another potential business venture that
she pays little mind to.
This power imbalance between the two women quickly begins to weigh on Belinda.
When Tanya sets sail on a boat to spread her mother’s ashes at sea, Armond spitefully
tricks Shane and Rachel to accompany her under the guise of a romantic dinner date.
Instead, they are forced to comfort the eccentric Tanya.
Tanya then meets a fellow guest named Greg, who was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
As Tanya and Greg grow closer together, Tanya pays even less attention to Belinda.
Greg helps Tanya grieve the loss of her mother, and the two decide to start dating.
Meanwhile, Armond begins to crack under the pressure of catering to the every entitled
whim of the White Lotus’ guests.
Eventually, he breaks his sobriety and begins drinking and abusing the drugs he stole from
Olivia and Paula.
His exceedingly reckless behavior eventually leads him to supplying drugs to a younger
hotel employee named Dillon.
When Shane catches Armond and Dillon on drugs and having sex, he uses the opportunity to
blackmail Armond into finally giving him the Pineapple Suite.
When Shane hears about the Mossbacher robbery, he informs his travel agent of the various
problems that have plagued him throughout his stay at the White Lotus, leading Armond
to being fired.
After a final workday filled with heavy drinking and drug use, Armond sneaks into Shane’s
hotel room for revenge, defecating in Shane’s suitcase.
When Shane enters his room and detects an intruder, he arms himself with a knife and
inadvertently stabs Armond, killing him.
As the season comes to a close, Armond’s body is loaded onto the plane flying out of
Hawaii.
Tanya and Greg decide to continue their relationship.
Shane and Rachel reconcile and depart the island together.
The Mossbachers prepare to leave, finally united as a family, but Quinn decides to ditch
them all at the last second to stay on the island and join his new local friends as they
take their canoe out to sea.
And as for the staff of the White Lotus?
Armond is dead, Kai is caught by the authorities and arrested, and Belinda is given a large
stack of cash, but otherwise abandoned by Tanya, prompting Belinda to lose confidence
in her business plans.
The wealthy guests had come and gone, and it was the White Lotus staff who were left
behind to deal with the fallout.