Belinda's Big Break: Why White Lotus S4 Needs To Land in Africa
An entreaty to Mike White.
The following contains spoilers, read at your own risk.
Watching multi-millionaires implode in paradise might be my new favorite pastime. I binged all three seasons of White Lotus in two weeks — not only to escape the stress of the current chaotic landscape but also to delight in its sharp skewering of American privilege, one tropical meltdown at a time. If you’ve somehow missed the immense hype around this series, White Lotus revolves around ultra wealthy tourists fleeing to luxurious resorts in search of respite, only to discover their emotional baggage has checked in alongside their designer suitcases. After escapades in Hawaii, Sicily and Thailand, the White Lotus Season 3 finale leaves us asking the big question: where will the next privileged meltdown unfold? My enthusiastic vote: Africa.
Here’s why: Season 2, set in Sicily, surpasses the others because it humanizes the local characters in a way Seasons 1 and 3 fail to achieve. Central to this distinction is the Di Grasso family — three generations of Italian-American men traveling not simply for a vacation but for a homecoming. Bert (grandfather), Dominic (father) and Albie (son) arrive in Sicily seeking validation and genuine emotional bonds with the locals, which introduces a layer of depth entirely missing from the other seasons.
The Di Grassos’ earnest quest for connection creates narrative momentum and dramatic tension absent elsewhere in the series. Anticipating a warm hero’s welcome in their ancestral village, they instead experience a harsh rejection, with distant female relatives yelling at them to leave the property while hurling insults and curses. Parallel to this is Lucia, a clever local sex worker initially hired by Dominic but who is soon cast aside when he attempts to reconcile with his wife. Lucia masterfully flips the exploitation stereotype by seducing Dominic’s son Albie and manipulating Dominic into paying her €50,000, claiming she needs it to escape a violent pimp who is in reality her accomplice.
The interplay between the Di Grassos’ genuine desire for connection and how they get rejected and manipulated by the locals grippingly propels the narrative in a manner that is unmatched in the Hawaii or Thailand settings.
Improving plot momentum and thematic depth are exactly why the next White Lotus should be set in Africa—with Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda at its center. Belinda is first introduced in Season 1 as collateral damage of rich people behaving badly. A sincere and empathetic wellness therapist, Belinda becomes an emotional crutch for Tanya, a privileged and erratic guest. Tanya dangles the promise of funding Belinda’s wellness center in front of her to get more emotional support from Belinda — but by the end of the season abandons the idea when she is taken over by a romantic distraction, crushing Belinda’s dreams.
Belinda returns in Season 3, undergoing a striking transformation in the season finale. Now on work exchange from White Lotus Maui, she crosses paths with Tanya’s shady husband Greg — now going by Gary — who is wanted for questioning in Tanya’s murder. Greg/Gary attempts to buy her silence with a $100k bribe, weakly claiming, “That’s what Tanya would have wanted.” Initially hesitant, Belinda finally pivots in the last episode when her son Zion joins the negotiation and demands 5 million instead. Belinda storms out of the room in apparent outrage, but we soon learn that it’s a calculated performance. Outside, she instructs Zion to tell Greg that given her ethics, only a sum that substantial could persuade her to stay quiet. The tactic works: Greg deposits the 5 million dollars into Belinda’s account.
Belinda swiftly departs Thailand, turning down her Thai lover Pornchai’s offer to start a wellness center together — a rejection that directly mirrors her own earlier abandonment by Tanya. Season 3’s finale marks Belinda’s evolution from a pawn in someone else’s game to a formidable player navigating the rules on her own terms.
Given Belinda’s striking transformation from sidelined staff to powerful guest, placing her at the center of a White Lotus Season 4 would push the series’ treatment of privilege, identity and cultural friction to new heights. Imagining Belinda with potential familial or historical ties to Africa, complicated by the profound historical trauma of the transatlantic slave trade, would be electric. What if Belinda inadvertently — or even consciously — adopts a neo-colonial stance? Imagine the provocative image of her arrival on safari atop an elephant, powerfully symbolizing her new status and privilege. Such scenarios bely the potential for sharp social commentary that viewers adore about White Lotus.
Centering Belinda in Africa in Season 4 would allow White Lotus to recapture what made Season 2 so compelling: rich, humanized connections between guests and locals that drove narrative momentum. Season 1 and 3 feel noticeably slower in contrast, because local characters are largely reduced to background NPCs (non playable characters) instead of fully realized people. As Brendon Holder puts it, Season 3 is full of “lethargic scenes,” while Teddy Kim, writing for Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me calls this the “tiktokification of White Lotus” — a show you can half-watch while scrolling on your phone.
The underdevelopment of local characters — and their relegation to little more than scenic tapestry for the guests’ drama — is a key reason by Seasons 1 and 3 of White Lotus are so slow. In Season 1, the Hawaiian characters—Kai, the hunky bellhop and dancer and Lani, the trainee who unexpectedly goes into labor—function as flat comic level relief or surface-level critiques of colonialism, ultimately reinforcing rather than challenging existing power dynamics. As Mitchell Kuga aptly puts it, the season’s treatment of colonialism reveals that it is “as clueless about Native Hawaiians as its characters.”
Season 3 repeats the same pattern of flattening local culture, again treating local characters as little more than NPCs in the background for the guests’ existential drama. Piper Ratliff’s hollow attempt to reject her white Southern Catholic capitalist upbringing reduces Thai Buddhism to a hollow stereotype: the monk she idolizes is portrayed as an exoticized, one-dimensional Orientalist fantasy. Similarly, Iris (Yi Youn) Kim critiques the season for its “Asian girl problem,” noting that “as with Hawai’i, he [Mike White] relegates Thailand to nothing more than an exotic backdrop for the Westerners to have their Greek tragedy endings.
Positioning Belinda as the central figure of Season 4 set in Africa would offer a powerful counterpoint to the flattening of local characters which plagues the majority of White Lotus. As Rachel Weingarten points out, Season 3 has already subverted the “Magical Negro” trope that defined Belinda’s role in Season 1. Once a more stereotypically empty character who was relegated to supporting the white protagonists’s growth (or lack of), Belinda has evolved into someone with agency and means — capable of playing the same strategic games as the wealthy guests have once played with her.
Admittedly, White Lotus Seasons 1 and 3 don’t have the strongest track record when it comes to crafting multi-dimensional local characters. But this shortcoming could be addressed with bringing more diverse perspectives into the writers’ room. As Season 2 demonstrates, the show reaches a deeper level when there are guests who genuinely seek connection and recognition from the locals — rather than treating the setting and its people as a mere exotic backdrop for their privileged meltdowns.
So Mike White, if you’re reading: setting season 4 in Africa, with Belinda at the center—navigating newfound wealth and a complex sense of identity—could deliver the most electrifying season yet. Belinda has always been the emotional core of the series: empathetic, sincere and now a sharp, strategic player in her own right. Letting her story unfold in Africa opens the door to a rich, provocative exploration of privilege, power inequalities and transformation — taking us deeper into what makes White Lotus truly unforgettable. Just don’t kill Belinda off please.
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thanks for citing me :)
I rebuke this and want no such thing. WL hasn’t even been able to send a black or brown person/family on vacation to the WL. They don’t deserve to land in any country on the continent.