Who dies in ‘The White Lotus’ season two finale?

The White Lotus season two finale has finally revealed its central mystery – the identity of those washed-up bodies at the hotel resort in Sicily, teased during episode one.

Created by Mike White, the HBO comedy drama has received critical acclaim in its first two seasons, including a Primetime Emmy win for Outstanding Limited Or Anthology Series in 2021.

• READ MORE: ‘The White Lotus’ season two review: the guests are still awful, the show still utterly addictive

The second season largely swapped out its ensemble cast, with Michael Imperioli, Aubrey Plaza, Theo James, F. Murray Abraham, Adam DiMarco, Meghann Fahy, Will Sharpe and Haley Lu Richardson leading the pack alongside returning cast members Jennifer Coolidge and Jon Gries.

The seven-episode season concluded on last night (December 11), where we finally discovered who was killed during their stay.

Who died in The White Lotus season two?

Surprisingly, The White Lotus killed off its biggest character – but not without a fight. After she discovers Quentin (Tom Hollander) and his friends were plotting to kill her, Tanya McQuoid-Hunt (Jennifer Coolidge) steals Niccolo’s (Stefano Gianino) gun and shoots both him and Quentin dead aboard the yacht, along with a couple of his other friends.

As Tanya attempts to climb off the yacht into a small boat, she stumbles, bashes her head against the side, and drowns in the sea.

Speaking in the Unpacking S2 E7 clip at the end of the finale (via TVLine), White explained his decision to kill off Tanya.

“In the end of the last season, Tanya is sitting with Greg in the last episode and he’s talking about his health issues,” White said. “And she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years, death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.’”

He added: “I was thinking, it’d be so fun to bring Tanya back because she’s such a great character, but maybe that’s the journey for her, a journey to death. 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, she’s such a diva – a larger than life female archetype – it felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story.”

White didn’t want Tanya dying “at the hands of someone else” though, explaining that would be too “tragic”. “[She] needed to give her best fight back [so] that she, in a way, had some kind of victory over whoever was conspiring to get rid of her.”

He added: “It just made me laugh to think she would like take out this cabal of killers and, after she successfully does that, she just dies this derpy death, and it just felt like that’s just so Tanya.”

HBO renewed The White Lotus for a third season back in November, which will take place in a new location.

In a five-star review of the second season, NME wrote: “This isn’t a show you second-guess too much, but White drops hints that future episodes could explore issues of sexual content and sexual experimentation as well as white (and white-passing) privilege. One thing that’s not in doubt: The White Lotus is still laugh-out-loud funny.”

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