In a show full of unlikable people, it takes a special character to be the absolute, no-contest worst of the bunch. On White Lotus’s season three, it’s without a doubt Greg (Jon Gries) a.k.a. Gary a.k.a. the not-so-grieving widower of season one and two’s Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge).
In a bit of a twist, Greg is the only character to appear on all three seasons of White Lotus, as he was reintroduced to viewers in the first episode of season three. Technically, he’s not a guest at the resort. Having inherited Tanya’s giant fortune, Greg now owns a luxurious house steps away from the White Lotus in Thailand. He’s also dating a model named Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) who slightly resents him, and is dating him for his wealth — not unlike his own relationship to Tanya. He’s also going by the alias Gary, presumably because law enforcement is looking at Greg as a suspicious person in Tanya’s death.
White Lotus is an anthology series, following a different group of appalling rich people around a different lavish resort each season for a vacation that inevitably ends in someone’s death. Although the show has seen some characters return — namely Tanya and Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), the saintly White Lotus Hawaii staffer who Tanya plied with promises of her own spa in season one — it hasn’t seemed to have (or been billed as having) a throughline narrative, until now.
The problem for “Gary” is that Belinda just so happens to be at the Thai resort as part of an exchange program. She finally recognized Greg in episode three, but while she knew that he distracted their mutual patron from funding Belinda’s dream of owning her own business, she didn’t yet know about Tanya’s untimely demise — or Greg’s role in it. (Quick refresh: Greg employed a coterie of scamming homosexuals to have his wife killed, but ultimately she smacked her own head on the side of a boat while trying to jump to safety.) He denied they’d ever met (he’s Gary after all), but in the season’s fourth episode, Belinda is up to speed thanks to a quick Google, and terrified. So is Greg. If Belinda exchanges enough information with authorities, she could shatter everything he worked to hide!
Episode four picks up after Greg and Belinda’s face-to-face. He has a boat party to begrudgingly host, and she’s preparing for her son’s arrival. But they can’t stop thinking of each other (negatively) and seem to be on a collision course. Now it seems more and more likely that the man who appeared to be nothing more than a side character/love interest in season one has, this whole time, been taking White Lotus fans on the familiar arc of a true crime romance scammer: seduction, violence, and the desperate struggle to not get caught.
The customary White Lotus boat trip
As certain that the sun will rise tomorrow, the characters on White Lotus will get on a boat and have an awful time. In season one, Tanya scattered her mother’s ashes in the Pacific Ocean (or attempted to) with newlyweds Rachel (Alexandra D’Addario) and Shane (Jake Lacy) along for the ride. In season two, Tanya again found herself on a ship in the Mediterranean where she accidentally died after killing the rich gay guys who were trying to murder her. And, in season three, episode four, the White Lotus Thailand’s guests are at sea once more.
With (presumably) Tanya’s money, Greg has procured a yacht, and at Chloe’s behest invited the Ratliff family — parents, children, and lorazepam stash — as well as Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and Rick (Walton Goggins) all spend a day aboard.
Technically they’re all Greg’s guests. But most everyone, including Greg, seems a bit miserable.
The ship is full of older men and their much younger female company. As Chloe says, these old bald guys are all the same. Even on open water with champagne flowing, tension — missing pills, inappropriate flirting, wrong-headed revenge plots, and some previous antipathy between the Ratliffs and the incredibly nervy Rick — is unavoidable. It all goes back to the idea that no matter how rich you are and how many things you buy to throw at your problems, you can still absolutely hate the life you have.
At the bar, Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs), the rapidly unspooling South Carolina businessman loaded on his wife’s lorazepam and many, many midday drinks, wants to know about Greg’s life in Thailand. When Tim asks if he likes it, Greg tells him, “I never want to leave.” That could be true, but with the police on the lookout, he also never can.
“Just heard someone say that anyone who moves to Thailand is either looking for something or hiding for something,” Tim slurs.
“Neither,” Greg tells him, “I just got sick of the rat race.”
Greg is in a race of his own now, though. Finding him sitting alone on the upper deck, Chloe asks if she can take the boat to a different island to celebrate an upcoming full moon party. The man she calls Gary tells her she can take the boat without him, and she doesn’t seem to care when he tells her, “There’s something I gotta deal with at home.”
The “something” is Belinda.
Back on land, Belinda spots Greg talking to the hotel’s grinning manager. From the look in his eye, she can’t help but assume it’s her. She and Greg make brief eye contact. Later, in the sleek home Tanya’s fortune bought, Greg looks at Belinda’s Instagram, examining pictures of her and her son.
Given what we know about Greg’s history of grifting and Tanya’s eventual demise, it certainly can’t be good for Belinda to be in his crosshairs.
Is Greg going to kill Belinda?
With Belinda knowing who Greg is and Greg knowing that Belinda knows about him and Tanya, it raises a very obvious question: Is Greg going to kill Belinda? And further, is Belinda the mystery person who dies in episode one?
Many signs point to yes. Belinda seems to be the only person in Thailand who knows that Greg isn’t Gary. Even if Belinda is intent on keeping quiet, Greg doesn’t know that. It would seem like this man, who has no qualms about grifting and murder-for-hire, wouldn’t think twice about finding a way to silence Belinda for good. That’s as clear a motive as we see on the show.
But there’s one absolutely huge reason why he’s not the killer stalking the resort in the season opener — shooting and killing Belinda wouldn’t be his MO or beneficial to his endgame.
The murder that we get a glimpse of in the beginning of the season is just too blatant for Greg to be the killer. The man is wanted in Italy, and the last thing he wants to do is draw even more attention himself. You know what draws attention? Repeatedly and wildly firing a gun at a luxury resort full of the richest people on earth. There’s a higher chance of Belinda using the gun in some kind of self-defense than Greg shooting her.
Greg has also proven himself to be the type of guy who would not do the murdering himself. Back in season two when he went to Italy with Tanya, Greg actually left Tanya and let the “evil gays” (one of whom Greg had a previous relationship with) toy around with her. If Greg is going to off Belinda, he’s going to figure out a way to do it without being directly involved.
No doubt, the tension between Belinda and Greg is going to drive the rest of the season. She’s going to be cautious around him. He’s going to want to keep her close, close enough to sniff out how much she knows and whether or not she’ll snitch.
What’s fascinating here is what a turn this is for the show, which usually tells contained stories.
White Lotus has always been a work made up of closely observed character study (please see this season’s three quietly warring white women who have been friends since childhood). Since his first appearance in season one, though, Greg has been more than a bit of a cipher. He’s taciturn, he’s reserved. Yes, he’s angry, as he proved in season two when Tanya brought her assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) along on vacation, but he’s fairly unknowable. We think he likes fly-fishing, and we’re pretty sure he worked at the Bureau of Land Management. What exactly was his relationship with Quentin (Tom Hollander)? Did he ever really have cancer, as he claimed when he met Tanya in Maui?
Greg also doesn’t neatly fit into the show’s class criticism. So many characters on the show are cartoonish, exaggerated versions of the one percent. They get away with spoiled entitlement, and impose themselves on places where common people are shut out. Greg’s grift feels slightly different, but maybe more egregious — here’s a thief who is worse than the rich he’s stealing from. Arranging Tanya’s death and getting away with her fortune feels unjust.
White Lotus is a show about personal unravelings, what these affluent people really look like when their money can’t buy what they really need. But Greg is wound tight. He may be more desperate than ever, but there is no true sense of who this man is.
It’s only slowly and methodically, over years, that this show can let us into a character like Greg: a man who doesn’t go on vacation to let go, who isn’t there to relax or make friends, who is moving like a shark toward some longer-term, darker goal. Unlike the rest of our travelers, he doesn’t indulge in self-exploration. Greg knows who he is. It’s his job to make sure that no one else does.