The One Thing Jennifer Coolidge Hopes To See In The White Lotus Season 3

Jennifer Coolidge was, without question, the best part of the first two seasons of "The White Lotus" — and I'm not being hyperbolic, considering that she won two Emmys for the role. Her character, the eccentric and often selfish heiress Tanya McQuoid, visits both the Maui and Siciliy locations of the fictional hotel The White Lotus. Tanya eventually meets her untimely demise aboard a boat in Italy ... which is ironic, considering that she shoots her way out of an apparent murder plot and then dies by falling off said boat trying to jump into a dinghy. 

Ever since Tanya died in the season 2 finale, fans of "The White Lotus" have speculated that Tanya's wayward husband Greg (Jon Gries) was somehow responsible for the initial murder plot, which involved Tom Hollander's Quentin and a boat full of, to paraphrase Tanya, "gays trying to kill her." Apparently, Coolidge herself agrees!

In an interview with Deadline about the anthology show's third season, which brings Gries' character back and is set in Thailand, Coolidge said she's watching just like any other viewer. "I don't have a take on this. No one is giving me any information about how this is gonna go down," she explained. "I mean, I'm praying there's some justice for Tanya. You know, Greg was a creep. He needs to go down. But I just think it continues to be really interesting, really dark and then we all have to talk about it afterwards. I think it's a really good sign."

"I was just saying to someone today that Mike White continues to surprise me, and all this stuff that's happened so far — I won't spoil it, I know people are catching up, so I won't spoil it — Mike White has no apologies, he goes for what he wants to do," Coolidge continued, praising her former showrunner's work. "He doesn't check with anyone else. He writes a story that he wants to tell, and I just think he's a genius."

So, why does Jennifer Coolidge want Jon Gries' Greg to face justice for what he did to Tanya? Well, in the show's first season, the two meet at The White Lotus in Maui and immediately hit it off ... or so it seems. Greg manages to distract Tanya so much, in fact, that she completely bails on the hotel's spa manager Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and their entire business plan. Indeed, Tanya initially offers to help bankroll a wellness center run by Belinda, only to back out when she becomes infatuated with Greg.

By season 2, however, the now-married couple arrives in Sicily and are clearly in dire straits. Greg is mad at Tanya over just about everything, especially the idea that she brought her assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) on the trip. (Tanya handles this by telling Portia to just, uh, hide from Greg all the time.) Early on in the season, he also tells her he has to go back to Denver. We get two major clues about Greg throughout the season: Tanya overhears him on the phone having a conversation that certainly seems like it's with a lover, and while she's in Quentin's massive palazzo, she spots a photo that definitely seems like it's one of Quentin and a much-younger Greg.

That's when the boat trip — aboard Quentin's boat, specifically — takes a turn. Tanya, alone with a group of Quentin's friends, finds a gun and a rope hidden on the boat and basically shoots her way through it, killing everyone on board. It definitely seems like she's going to survive, but when Tanya misjudges the jump into the dinghy, she hits her head and dies. Later, Meghann Fahy's fellow White Lotus guest, Daphne, discovers her body in the water near the hotel.

I should note here that, in a 2022 interview with The New York Times after the season 2 finale, Coolidge did do her very best to remain on the show. "You can't talk Mike White out of anything, really," she said of her character's death. "But whenever Mike was in a really good mood, and laughing about something, I'd go, like, 'I don't have to die, right?'" White confirmed this, saying, "Even when we were shooting the scene in the ocean where Daphne finds her body. She was like, 'Should we just do one take where I pull myself up on the shore? Just one?'" This is just to say that, if Coolidge had gotten her way, we wouldn't need to get justice for Tanya. She could have just flown to Thailand and dealt with Greg herself. Alas.

The reason Jennifer Coolidge thinks that season 3 of "The White Lotus" might finally bring down her evil on-screen husband Greg Hunt is because Greg, now masquerading as a guy named "Gary," shows up unexpectedly in the show's third installment. Before the first episode ends, we meet Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon), a gregarious young woman who befriends a lonely Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) at the hotel bar, and the two commiserate over dating grumpy older men. After Chelsea explains that her paramour Rick (Walton Goggins) is losing his patience with her, Chloe says that her boyfriend Gary — who owns a house nearby — is the same way, pointing at the guy the audience knows is Greg Hunt.

Greg, it seems, has inherited Tanya's massive wealth, based on his palatial Thailand estate and matching yacht ... and unfortunately for him, Belinda is also at the White Lotus in Thailand and knows that his name isn't Gary at all. Worse still, she knows about his previous connection to Tanya — and while Chloe says Greg has discussed his "ex-wife" with her, her deceptive boyfriend painted a very different picture of Tanya's fate compared to what actually went down. So, hopefully, Coolidge will get her wish about Greg/Gary's comeuppance; after two seasons of being a completely odious jerk who maybe killed his wife for her money, he has it coming.

"The White Lotus" airs new episodes on Sundays at 9 P.M. EST on HBO and Max, with two episodes left in season 3.