Warning! This article contains spoilers for The White Lotus season 2, episode 7. If you've yet to catch up with the show, then turn back now!
Just as the retrospective show's first chapter did, The White Lotus season 2 made us wait until the final moments of its last episode to reveal who was carted off in a body bag at the start of installment. And despite the danger she'd found herself in following her trip to Palermo, it was a still a shock to learn that it was Tanya, Jennifer Coolidge's fan favorite character. Now, creator Mike White has explained why this season's "victim" had to be her...
In the opener, Meghann Fahy's Daphne swam out into the ocean on the last day of her Sicilian holiday, only to discover a body floating in the water. Turns out, Tanya, having deduced that Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his seemingly charming pals were plotting to kill her (so that Tanya's husband Greg could pinch all of her money), stole Niccolo's gun and started shooting up Quentin's yacht on its way back to Taormina.
After offing most of the passengers, she slipped while trying to climb into a dinghy, however, and wound up drowning anyway. Her body, along with those from the boat, were all found the following morning.
In a new interview with TV Line, White made reference to the fact that Tanya described death as "the last immersive experience I haven't tried" back in season 1, and how that teed up her demise the second time around. "Not that I really wanted to kill Tanya, because I love her as a character and obviously love Jennifer, but I just felt like we’re going to Italy, [and] she's such a diva, a larger-than-life female archetype," he said. "It just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya's life and her story."
"It felt like she needed to give her best fight back, and that she, in a way, had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her. So it just made me laugh to think she would take out this whole cabal of killers and that, after she's successfully done that, she just dies this derp-y death. It just felt like, 'That's so Tanya.'"
During the chat, White was also asked about The White Lotus season 3, which has already been greenlit. While he didn't give away any specifics, he confirmed that it'll be "a kind of satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality. It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus." Asia, anyone?
The White Lotus is available to stream on HBO Max in the US and NOW and Sky Entertainment in the UK. For more, check out our list of the most exciting new TV shows coming our way throughout the rest of 2022 and beyond..
