Did The White Lotus Season Finale Underserve Aubrey Plaza?

This post contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of "The White Lotus."

Of all the new characters on season 2 of "The White Lotus," Harper (Aubrey Plaza) was the most important. At least, that's how it felt in the beginning: right off the bat, she was skeptical of Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne (Meghann Fahy), and frustrated with her husband Ethan (Will Sharpe) for not taking her concerns more seriously. 

There's never been a voice of reason character in this show, nor has their ever been a main character exactly, but early season 2 Harper is the closest thing to it. The other three people she spends her time with are enigmas to the audience — What are Cam and Daphne up to? Why is Ethan constantly avoiding sex? — but the show always felt like it wanted us to understand on an emotional level why Harper, at least, was acting the way she was. 

This all changes early in the penultimate episode of the season, "Abductions," in which Harper walks in on Ethan talking to the two sex workers he swore to her he never slept with. We the audience know Ethan didn't sleep with them, but Ethan didn't do himself any favors by trying to hide the whole situation from her even after she found the condom wrapper on their couch. This is one of the last moments where we get things from Harper's perspective; as much as we know that Ethan's (mostly) innocent, everything about the way the scene is filmed is designed to make us feel her sense of betrayal and paranoia. But for everything about the way the rest of her scenes are filmed? Harper's a mystery.

Shortly after Harper confronts Ethan about seeing him with Lucia and Mia, we get a sequence of mysterious events told entirely from Ethan's point of view. First, Harper goes off to the bar alone with Cam. From a distance where Ethan can see them, it certainly looks like the two are flirting, but we never get to hear any of the actual dialogue. Ethan goes for a swim, only to come back and find that Harper's gone to their room for a hat. He goes back to their room, finds that the door's been latched, and that the connecting doors between their room and Cam/Daphne's has been opened.

It all seems incredibly suspicious, and now we find ourselves watching a reverse of the dynamic of the previous episodes. This time it's Ethan suspecting Harper of cheating, and this time we the audience don't actually know what the truth of things are. In the finale, Harper confesses that Cam kissed her a little, but Ethan still suspects that more happened. But as for the exact details? We never find out for sure. 

In a way, it all feels like karma for Ethan. Harper saying all that happened was a kiss reminds us of how Ethan himself was kissed by Mia the other night. The difference is that Ethan, for all his current indignation about having told Harper the truth, never actually mentioned the kiss to Harper, even as he confessed all the other details. If Harper is telling the truth here — a big assumption — then she's currently being more honest than Ethan ever was.

When Harper tells Ethan, "The real issue is that you're not attracted to me anyway," she's not wrong. Yes, she probably said this at least partly as a way to get the heat off her, but this is a problem we've seen with the couple long before Harper's fidelity was ever thrown into question. 

That's why, in a messy sort of way, it works for the show to suddenly switch protagonists in this particular storyline. In the first half of the season, Harper was the one dealing with the growing realization that her husband didn't seem to be attracted to her anymore, that their marriage was passionless. Ethan was an incredibly passive character throughout the first early episodes as Harper actively tried to reach out to him. The first five episodes of the season is Harper trying in vain to recapture the sparks of their early marriage, to no avail.

But with her maybe-affair with Cam, Harper throws the ball firmly back into Ethan's court. In her own messed-up way, with an ambiguous level of conscious decision-making, Harper has forced Ethan to reckon with the fact that his lack of passion with his wife is not without consequences. She's reminded him that this marriage is not above falling apart completely. If he wants to hold onto her, he'll have to be more pro-active. If that involves maybe-sleeping with Daphne to balance the scales, so be it.

While it makes sense for the focus to switch to Ethan, one still can't help but miss the episodes where Harper gets to be one of the most prominent characters. It's not a coincidence that the internet loves Aubrey Plaza, after all: she's given an another amazing performance this season, most notably in episode five's "That's Amore" where she's drinking too much and stirring up trouble. That episode was Harper at her most compelling; no longer content to wait for her husband to tell her what happened the other night, she starts actively trying to get to the bottom of things, making for some truly riveting TV. It's a version of Harper that gets lost in the chaos of these final two episodes.

Maybe the real culprit for Harper's downgrading at the end of the season is the episode count. The season's only had seven episodes, and much like plenty of other HBO shows with their short six-to-10 episode seasons, it feels like there was definitely room there for one more hour of television. One more episode could've given the show some extra room to breathe, and maybe it would've allowed time to give Aubrey some material that was a little more substantial than what she got in this finale. Although for the most part season 2 was fun, surprising, and relatively well-paced, its with the short-changing of Plaza's character where it feels like the most potential was missed.