- Warning: There are major spoilers ahead for season two of the HBO drama "The White Lotus."
- A major character was killed off during Sunday night's season two finale.
"The White Lotus" creator and showrunner unpacked the season two finale's big murder and revealed why it felt like an appropriate end for the character.
"I just think her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic," White said about the death of Tanya McQuoid (played by Jennifer Coolidge) on Sunday night's finale in a post-episode featurette.
Coolidge's wealthy and ditsy character and her husband Greg (Jon Gries) were first introduced on season one of the Emmy-winning anthology series, which premiered on HBO in 2021 and was set at the titular resort's Hawaii location.
Tanya and Greg were the only characters from the first installment to return for season two, which was set at the White Lotus resort in Sicily.
Among the new cast members was Haley Lu Richardson as Tanya's young assistant named Portia and a mysterious man named Quentin (Tom Hollander) who, with his group of friends, swiftly befriended Tanya and showed her the opulence that Italy had to offer.
Quentin's friendship with Tanya seemed too good to be true, and that was confirmed as the season progressed. By the finale, Quentin, his friends, and his "nephew" Jack (Leo Woodall) separated Tanya and Portia from each other in order to kill Tanya.
Her death, per their prenup, would result in Tanya's cheating husband Greg (who, it's heavily implied, had a relationship with Quentin a long time ago), getting her fortune. That also explains why Greg was frustrated by Tanya bringing along her assistant to their vacation.
Tanya figured out Quentin's plan while on the phone with Portia, later telling the captain of the yacht "these gays, they're trying to murder me."
In an effort to buy some time while on a yacht headed back to the resort with Quentin, she grabbed the bag belonging to one of his associates, Niccoló (Stefano Gianino), and ran into a room. Her suspicions about their plan were confirmed when she found rope, duct tape, and a gun in the bag.
As Quentin and the other men managed to break open the door, a hysterical Tanya fired the gun multiple times, killing Quentin, Stefano Gianino, and Didier (Bruno Gouery), while one man jumped overboard to swim away and another ran.
Tanya, free from their threat, figured she could get back to shore via a small boat attached to the yacht.
Because of the distance between her and the boat, Tanya thought she wouldn't be able to get off the yacht. She gave herself a pep talk, saying, "You got this," but slipped while trying to get over the rail of the yacht, falling to her death. Her body floated to the surface and was found the following day by Daphne Sullivan (Meghann Fahy) while swimming.
In the HBO featurette, White said that the idea to kill off Tanya, despite his adoration for Emmy winner Coolidge, came about from a moment in the season one finale.
"In the end of last season, Tanya is sitting with Greg in the last episode and he's talking about his health issues and she says, 'I've had every kind of treatment over the years, death is the last immersive experience I haven't tried,' and 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, the journey to death," White said.
He continued: "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 just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya's life and story."
White also explained why he didn't want Tanya to be murdered by another character.
"Her dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic," he said. "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 that she would take out this cabal of killers and that after she successfully does that, she just dies this derpy death. And it just felt like, that's just so Tanya."