Critical response
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 90% for the first season of The White Lotus based on 97 critic reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Though its true intentions can get a bit murky, gorgeous vistas, twisty drama, and a pitch perfect cast make The White Lotus a compelling—if uncomfortable—viewing destination." [30] On Metacritic, the season has a score of 82 out of 100 based on 39 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [31]
Matthew Jacobs of TV Guide rated it 4.5 out of 5 and wrote that it was "some of the year's best television thus far." [32] Rolling Stone 's Alan Sepinwall graded it 3.5 out of 5 stars and called it "frequently uncomfortable, sometimes poetic, occasionally hilarious, and deeply idiosyncratic throughout." [33] White's attention to character detail was praised, with Naomi Fry of The New Yorker lauding his "affection for his characters, who never feel like caricatures", and Judy Berman of Time calling him "uniquely attuned to characters' internal conflicts as well as their varying level of self-awareness." [34] The New York Times 's James Poniewozik commended White's balance of "sardonic and sincere" tones and his "ear for how people can weaponize idealism", but also said the writing "sometimes strains to be topical, with its culture-war Mad Libs references to triggering and cucking, canceling and doxxing." [35]
The performances of the ensemble cast were widely praised, with Roxana Hadadi of RogerEbert.com giving the season four stars out of four and writing that it has a "combination of performances that are nearly universally enthralling." [36] Of the character Armond, Poniewozik wrote Bartlett shows "the invisible gymnastics that go into this job" and plays him like "a coiled spring". [35] Hadadi lauded Rothwell's "nuanced, elastic work" with a "haunting" final onscreen moment. [36] Berman said Coolidge was poised to be the series' breakout but also praised Zahn, Bartlett, Rothwell, Lacy, Sweeney, and Daddario. [34]
Some critics lamented that the nonwhite, native Hawaiian characters who work at the resort, such as Lani and Kai, received little screen time and were the least developed characters. In this way, critics argued the show did not sufficiently engage the issue it seemed poised to critique—the privileges of the affluent, white upper class. [35] [37] [38] Poniewozik felt the show "could use more attention to the downstairs half of its upstairs-downstairs story; it flicks at, but doesn't really explore, the lives of the native Hawaiian staff busing tables and performing dinnertime rituals" for the guests. [35] Mitchell Kuga of Vox wrote, "scraping at imperialism, The White Lotus mimes a moral center but never engages the topic beyond mere gesture...how successful can a piece of satire be if it replicates the very power structures it purports to satirize?" [38] White has said the intention of giving native characters less screen time was to show how "interchangeable" the workers appear to the more privileged. [39]
Inkoo Kang of The Washington Post said the characters and performances "make for a twisty, queasy, sweatily claustrophobic drama" but that next to other popular TV shows centered on white, affluent people, such as Succession , Big Little Lies , The Undoing , and The Crown , The White Lotus had nothing new "to observe about the trail of casual destruction the moneyed and connected can leave in their unhappy wake." [40] In The Observer , Kyle Turner wrote, "as someone who is very fond of White's usually tender, deft hand at balancing tone", he had hoped the show would have "more precision in its aimed poisoned arrows." [41] Turner added that the show was "too broad to be a good satire, too pointedly critical to be a straight tragedy, too invested in its melodrama to be a broad comedy, until it becomes ouroborosian in its indecision on tone and ethos. It's not that these genres and tropes can't coexist. It's that here, they float adrift, devoid of alchemical balance." [41]
Critics were divided about the season one finale, with Kang saying the "swerve late in the series disappointingly sails the story toward calmer waters. Once the turbulence is over, only froth remains." [40] [42] Other critics, such as Emily St. James of Vox, argued that what they considered the anticlimactic ending was precisely the point of the show and underscored White's commentary on the powerful and the privileged. [43] [44]
The season appeared in the top ten on numerous publications' "Best of 2021" lists, including first in The A.V. Club , The Globe and Mail , The Ringer , Slant Magazine , and The Sunday Times ; second in The Boston Globe , Decider , Exclaim! , The Guardian , The Independent , New York Daily News , San Antonio Express-News , Sioux City Journal , Time , and Vulture ; and third in Good Morning America , NME , and Uproxx , among others. [45]
