Is Jennifer Coolidge leaving The White Lotus? Is Tanya dead?
One of the things we legitimately thought entering this season was that Coolidge would be the constant for a rather long time. That wasn’t actually the case. Tanya drowned near the end of the episode after shooting at Quentin and his associates. The irony is that it was never made abundantly clear what Quentin’s actual plan was in regards to the character, or if he was doing everything on behalf of Greg.
The truth here is that it doesn’t matter and now, we venture into totally new territory for season 3. We saw Tanya’s body. She is gone. We’re going to need a while to process this, but we understand why creator Mike White did it: He knew what we all would assume. Given his affection for Coolidge, it would be so easy to just think that this character would be around forever. It was also so easy to assume that Harper, Cameron, and Ethan were the three people who died; or, that it was Albie, Dominic, and Bert. Those were the easy guesses, and he found a way to do something a little bit different.
Even if this is the end for Tanya, she’ll forever go down as one of the show’s most interesting characters. She did too many awful things to ever be considered a sympathetic figure, but there also haven’t been many characters like her on TV. She was so oblivious to much of the world around her and, at times, oblivious even to herself. We’re just glad we even had this character for two seasons; remember when it seemed in the early going like this whole show was just a one-off? We’re glad that turned out to not be the case!
One thing we can say
No doubt, Coolidge will be in Emmy consideration all over again.
Related – Score some other updates on The White Lotus, including when season 3 could premiere
Are you shocked that Tanya died within The White Lotus season 2 finale on HBO?
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