The brilliance of The White Lotus, Mike White's Hawaii-set comedy drama that broke the internet last summer, came in its opening minutes. Set seven days after the series kicks off proper, we see a body bag being loaded onto a plane, Jake Lacy's Shane Patton watching on with a face like thunder. But whose body?
It's an exciting setup, putting a novel twist on your usual murder mystery: less whodunnit, more who's-it-been-dun-to. Chuck in a bunch of deeply unlikeable rich people brimming with dark secrets and a conspicuous contempt for everyone below their station, and you've got a formula for some cracking conflict.
Transporting the action to the luxury chain's resort in Sicily, season two of The White Lotus raises the stakes even further in its prologue. While we see one cadaver floating around in the sea, presumably drowned, and then hotel staffer Rocco (Federico Ferrante) implies that, this time, there are corpses plural.
As the season is close to wrapping up, who could be on the chopping block? Well, we can confidently rule out Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), the aforementioned Rocco and Meghann Fahy's Daphne Sullivan, given we see them all alive and well in those opening moments. Six episodes deep into the season, there are several key contenders for those bodies. Read on to find out who might not make it out of Sicily.
10 - Tanya Hunt
Portrayed by: Jennifer Coolidge
Killing Coolidge, the anointed franchise mascot and meme machine, would be like offing Daniel Craig in the Knives Out franchise. Not happening.
9 - Lucia
Portrayed by: Simona Tabasco
To kill off a sex worker in a series focused on the balance of power between men and women would be the obvious choice. Though sometimes a little murky, The White Lotus has demonstrated enough nuance on the page so far to suggest that Mike White is well aware of this. We don't think he'd be so boring.
8 - Albie Di Grasso
Portrayed by: Adam DiMarco
Now who could kill sweet, cardboard Albie? His three personality traits so far are “son of absentee father,” “nepotism baby Stanford grad” and “bad with women,” any of which – and most certainly the confluence thereof — make him an unlikely candidate for the blade.
7 - Dominic Di Grasso
Portrayed by: Michael Imperioli
Big-wig Hollywood producer Dominic has barely done anything this trip other than lie to his son and feel sorry for himself. With his ex seemingly still in LA — voiced by Laura Dern, by the way — we're yet to see who might have him in their crosshairs.
6 - Greg
Portrayed by: Jon Gries
Greg is a dick. He's also been absent for a huge portion of his and Tanya's Sicily break, and when he was there, was engaged in elicit phone calls that screamed: I'm doing something bad. It seems unlikely Greg will die, but he could be the cause of someone else's death if you believe the fan theories.
5 - Bert Di Grasso
Portrayed by: F. Murray Abraham
Lively flirt (read: old man with a deeply outdated understanding of gender etiquette) so he might be, Bert would be a left-field choice for death but that's how Mike White operates. He's already had one brush with fate vis-a-vis his fall midway through the series opener, he's farting like Daniel Radcliffe's corpse in Swiss Army Man, and everyone in his immediate orbit is constantly on edge as to when he'll keel over.
4 - Mia
Portrayed by: Beatrice Grannò
Mia. Lovely, well-intentioned Mia. There's no clear reason why she could die right now, but we're going on the assumption Mike White pulls the rug from under viewers. Could her desire to have a singing career push her to put herself in jeopardy? She already nearly killed the piano player!
3 - Ethan Spiller
Portrayed by: Will Sharpe
Ethan's paranoid rage is palpable. At this point, his looks at college-friend Cam are deathly as they come. Once mild-mannered, a stay at The White Lotus has broken him, and if he doesn't murder first, it's easy to believe his spiralling mental state could lead him straight to his own death.
2 - Cameron Sullivan
Portrayed by: Theo James
It was the hog drop that brought the world to its knees! Okay, fine, Twitter. Dick silhouette aside, Cameron carries an air of arsehollery similar to Greg, albeit of the muscle tech bro variety. It's unlikely Daphne came across his body in the sea as she didn't scream in the way you'd associate with someone finding their murdered partner, but there are seemingly multiple deaths don't forget.
Also, remember those statues around the hotel? Ethan asks about a recurring piece of décor in episode one and finds out they're called teste di moro. “The story is, a Moor came here a long time ago and seduced a local girl. But then she found out that he had a wife and children back home. So because he lied to her, she cut his head off,” a hotel worker says. Could Cam's cheating and failure to pay Lucia land him in trouble? Don't forget wife Daphne declared she's “no victim” and boasts about getting her own back.
1 - Portia
Portrayed by: Haley Lu Richardson
Gen-Z caricature Portia has found herself in a sticky situation. At the end of episode 6, she took a break from moaning, and began to realise all was not as it seems in Palermo and new-beau Jack all but confirmed a plot was underway. We predict she'll make a play to stop whatever is happening but misjudge everything, and find herself in the crossfire as a result.