Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The White Lotus Season 3, Episode 7.We’re just a day away from the supersized season finale of The White Lotus Season 3, with plenty of loose ends left to wrap up from the penultimate episode, especially for the Ratliff family. Throughout its three seasons, one area in which Mike White’s hit series has always excelled is its sound design, with composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer earning two Emmys for his work scoring the series and creating its now iconic theme song. Set in such idyllic locations, de Veer’s score has been essential in establishing a persistent sense of anxiety and dread throughout The White Lotus as it jumped from Hawaii to Italy to Thailand. The score and music cues have been particularly effective in Season 3, and its unique chorus of sounds are sometimes much more interesting than what’s actually happening on screen. As the season comes to an end, I feel like Saxon’s (Patrick Schwarzenegger) character has taken one of the most interesting turns, and in one scene from Episode 7 in which Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) propositions him with a twisted sexual fantasy, the show’s attention-grabbing sound design highlights Saxon’s psychological turmoil.
Sound Design Is an Essential Part of Mike White’s Storytelling in ‘The White Lotus’
Throughout all three seasons of The White Lotus, Tapia de Veer’s score and music cues have brought texture to the series, immersing us into the markedly different atmospheres of this ostensibly peaceful luxury hotel chain. With each season opening with a murder, there’s always a sense of danger looming as we try to piece together which character will wind up in the body bag, and much of that can be attributed to the score and how it’s employed. On the surface, The White Lotus is a show about a bunch of rich people on vacation, so a good chunk of the runtime is dedicated to scenes of guests lounging by the pool or chatting over breakfast/lunch/dinner that would otherwise be pretty banal but are made far more intriguing thanks to the score. I think this is especially true throughout the first half of Season 3 when not much actually happened, but we still got the sense that the show was building to something big and exciting.
Season 3 has put several characters in danger of being killed, and the music cues used throughout Episode 7, specifically, solidify the fact that we have an explosive season finale to look forward to. A conversation at dinner between Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb), and Laurie (Carrie Coon) feels like an epic showdown when the score kicks in after Jaclyn accuses Laurie of being the victim of her own bad decisions, coming to a crescendo when Laurie shares her true, unfiltered thoughts about her longtime friends. Later, the diegetic sounds of the Muay Thai fight are temporarily drowned out by the score as Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) realizes that he recognizes Valentin’s (Arnas Fedaravicius) friends as the men who robbed the hotel boutique back in Episode 2. And I think when Chloe comes to Saxon with an unusual sexual proposition, a well-placed and downright creepy music cue lets us know exactly how Saxon feels about it.
‘The White Lotus’ Musical Cues Add to Saxon’s Characterization in Episode 7
After his drug-fueled, incestuous sexual encounter with Chloe and Lochlan (Sam Nivola), Saxon is apprehensive about attending a party at Gary’s (Jon Gries) house, and rightfully so. Upon finding out about Chloe’s actions on the night of the Full Moon Party, instead of reacting with anger, Chloe reveals that Gary is interested in bringing Saxon into their sex life, telling her about his desire to be cuckolded. She relays this information to Saxon, citing Gary’s childhood memories of secretly watching his parents have sex as the source of his fetish, now wanting to recreate the scenario with Chloe and Saxon. Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), amused, doesn’t see it as such a big deal and encourages him to do it, but Saxon is horrified and completely put off by the idea. As she propositions Saxon, we can hear rhythmic, breathy moaning sounds in the background, which serve to heighten Saxon’s building anxiety at Chloe’s suggestion and the presumption by both Chloe and Chelsea that he would be open to it.
These moaning sounds, which get loud enough that they nearly drown out the sound of Chloe’s voice, call back to the sexual trauma Saxon experienced that completely upended his life and caused him to question his entire sense of self. They effectively put me in Saxon’s frenzied headspace. I interpreted them as a reflection of Saxon’s anxieties around sex or like the devil on his shoulder pushing him to do what these women expect from him. At the same time, internally, he tries to prove to himself and others that he’s not a deviant. Saxon’s alpha-male facade has totally crumbled after his disturbing sexual experience with this younger brother, but after the Full Moon Party, both Chloe and Chelsea walked away with the impression that if he hooked up with his brother, he’d be up for anything sexually. These sounds function as an auditory reminder of this horrifying memory weighing on Saxon’s conscience and his desperation to redefine himself and erase this twisted image Chloe and Chelsea have of him.
If, like me, you watch The White Lotus with the subtitles turned on, you’ll frequently see different captions, like (eerie music playing), (intriguing music playing), and, in the case of this particular scene, (sensual music playing). But to describe this music cue as “sensual” feels like a mischaracterization, as it’s more unsettling and overwhelming than anything else and a prime example of how the sound design adds to the sensory experience of watching The White Lotus.
The final episode of The White Lotus airs on Sunday on HBO and streams on Max in the U.S.
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