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The White Lotus Characters, Ranked from Pure to Pure Evil

With a mysterious box of human remains, an eclectic troupe of morally questionable characters and an idyllic hotel so expensive you’ll want to cry, “The White Lotus” proposes a variety of interesting questions but doesn’t spoon-feed the answers.

While the HBO series centers around privileged hotel guests and their distressed staff counterparts, creator, director and writer Mike White doesn’t quite lay out who the heroes and the villains of the story are. As star Fred Hechinger told Variety, “He lets them be surprising and sees their failures without trying to sugarcoat them, and he lets you be aware of their hopes and aspirations.”

Others have taken stabs at assigning “White Lotus” characters to moral alignment charts, but no categorization or list can accurately portray the complexity of White’s creations. For example, labeling Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda as lawfully good is a given, but pinning down the ethics of Brittany O’Grady’s well-intentioned yet impetuous Paula or Murray Bartlett’s charismatic yet conniving Armond… not so easy.

That being said, as this season comes to an unsettling close and viewers celebrate the series’ recently announced second installment (set at another White Lotus property with a new cast), Variety attempts to rank “The White Lotus” characters from best to worst, or from pure to pure evil.

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read if you haven’t finished “The White Lotus,” available on HBO and HBO Max.

  • Belinda

    Caught in the wake of Tanya’s (Jennifer Coolidge) grief, Belinda’s dreams are quickly ignited and then ultimately extinguished when the distraught heiress dangles a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity before the spa manager’s eyes. Ironically, the kindness and love Belinda gives to Tanya comes around to bite her in the ass, making the rich hotel guest realize she doesn’t need “another transactional relationship.” When Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) burdens her with more White Women Tears, Belinda refuses to be another caretaker. Yes, Belinda! (Not to mention, she’s also the only character in the show who looks after Armond and tries to keep him sober.)

  • Quinn

    If “The White Lotus” were a game, Quinn (Hechinger) would win it. Successfully breaking free from his materialistic — to use a generous term — family to join the canoers for their Hōkūleʻa, Quinn is perhaps the only character in the show who ends up better off than he started. When his electronics get pulled into the tide, he experiences an awakening and embraces nature. With an actual interest in and appreciation for Hawaiian culture, he chooses not to be a “parasite on the Earth” and live more simply. Doing all that while not strangling his devilish sister to death in the process is quite admirable.

  • Greg

    He may not be a part of Black Lives Matter, but Greg (Jon Gries) is one of the most genuine guests at The White Lotus. A simple guy who enjoys swimming and fishing, he embraces Tanya without judgment (“I still want to fuck you”) and lives life to the fullest — even when he’s on the verge of death.

  • Dillon

    Tangled in Armond’s destructive downward spiral, Dillon (Lukas Gage) seems like a genuinely good guy who is maybe a little too easily persuaded. Whether he’s cleaning up broken glass on the patio, facilitating Tanya’s nautical ash-scattering or opening his asscheeks for his boss’ face, he does what he’s told and doesn’t really complain.

  • Lani

    A character whose sudden childbirth sets “The White Lotus” in motion and jumpstarts the decline of Armond’s sanity, Lani’s (Jolene Purdy) only crime is starting a job nine months pregnant.

  • Rachel

    Not confident in her journalism career and scared of becoming Shane’s (Jake Lacy) trophy wife, Rachel is truly a lost soul. She seeks friendship from Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and Paula and advice from Nicole (Connie Britton) before realizing she is truly alone on this island, with her new husband spending more time sabotaging the hotel manager than enjoying their honeymoon. It’s Shane’s charm (???) that sucks Rachel into his gravitational pull in the first place, and it is fear that keeps her in his orbit. Rachel is understandably disturbed by her new hubby and mother-in-law’s obsession with money; she just can’t muster the courage to jump ship.

  • Kai

    Poor Kai (Kekoa Scott Kekumano). A character whose backstory sheds light on the tragic effects of American colonization and tourism, he begins as Paula’s charming moonlight fling and ends as a violent burglar. Disturbed and saddened by his affliction, Paula finagles the code to the Mossbachers’ safe and convinces Kai (whose family was displaced from their land by the hotel) to take back what was stolen from him in the form of Nicole’s $150,000 bracelets and hire a good lawyer. (Neither of them consider that pawning stolen jewelry is a horrible idea.) A mostly innocent character motivated by his family’s struggle, Kai pays the ultimate price, inadvertently fueling Paula’s guilt and healing Mark (Steve Zahn) and Nicole’s marriage.

  • Nicole

    She’s not quite Putin, but Nicole has flaws of her own. Leading an international conglomerate that — according to her daughter, Olivia — “is a part of the unraveling of the social fabric,” Mrs. Mossbacher is the ultimate girlboss of the resort. Money hungry? Check. Rude to journalists? Check. Hillary supporter? *Gasps!* When it comes down to it, Nicole is forgiving of her husband and cares deeply for her kids, and that counts for something, right?

  • Paula

    Oh, Paula… While her heart may be in the right place, her convincing Kai to steal Nicole’s jewelry ends up ruining the guy’s life. Paula has to put up with a lot of Mossbacher bullshit — from Nicole’s pity party for “straight white men” to Mark’s general creepiness — but she’s also pretty mean to Quinn for no good reason. While there’s little information about Paula’s socioeconomic background, it’s clear she’s caught between two worlds — the wealthy hotel guests and the people who dance for them. While she, too, lounges by the serenity pool with books she’ll never read, it’d be a bit extreme to call Paula complicit in the colonial destruction of Kai’s native Hawai’i. However, it’d also be unfair to strip her of agency — after all, she chose to join the Mossbachers in tropical paradise. Olivia uses her as a “prop,” and she uses Olivia for a free luxury vacation. Seems like a fair trade?

  • Mark

    It’s easy to have a soft spot for Mark. Maybe he’s slightly odd and a little bit misguided, but all he truly wants is his family’s respect (and to know what it feels like “being fucked up the ass”). Though while Mark strives to be the hero of the story, his motivation seems mostly self-interested and, as Nicole’s bracelets remind us, he hasn’t been the most faithful husband.

  • Kitty

    Money, money, money, money! With a lot less screen time than Shane, Kitty (Molly Shannon) is less insufferable than her son, but she is every bit as gross. Lacking all self-awareness, she crashes her son’s honeymoon and encourages Rachel to give up her career and accept her place as a trophy wife. She coddles Shane like the “baby man” he is, and she fuels his obsession with the Pineapple Suite by giving him her travel agent’s number to further terrorize Armond. While nothing Kitty does is particularly egregious, isn’t raising Shane crime enough? Ultimately, it’s Dr. Frankenstein’s fault for creating the monster.

  • Tanya

    “The White Lotus” is full of hotel guests messing up the lives of staffers (Shane tyrannizing Armond; Paula corrupting Kai), but the most crushing example is Tanya and Belinda. It’s not only that Tanya burdens Belinda with her problems; she forges a friendship and offers her a life-changing business opportunity that she ultimately reneges, leaving a destructive path in the wake of her healing journey. With more money than she knows what to do with, Tanya is supremely oblivious to her effect on Belinda for most of the vacation, and even when she realizes her transactional relationships are problematic, her solution is to hand the spa manager an envelope full of cash. (Sorry I used you as an emotional crutch and disposed of you when something better came along — here’s some pocket change.)

  • Olivia

    Keenly aware of her own advantages in the world yet making no effort to help others or even be a good person, Olivia is privileged in the worst way. She poses as “woke” but wears her Black friend like an accessory, insists she’s not like her parents but similarly believes everything belongs to her, and exudes a (albeit questionable) compassion for marginalized people but not her own family. Though her relationship with Paula is “tricky,” Olivia’s only sign of empathy is that she protects her fructose-intolerant frenemy after it all, silently hugging her as Paula chokes on her guilt.

  • Shane

    If one thing is clear from “The White Lotus,” it’s that we’re supposed to hate Shane. With his dumb, smug smile and hilariously accurate Cornell hat, he’s either hunting down Armond to complain about his suite or prancing around the resort plotting his revenge on the fated hotel manager. Watching him sabotage his own honeymoon, dismiss his wife’s dreams and dote on his unbearable mother is delightfully infuriating. However, while it’s hard to find a single redeeming quality in Shane, there is still one person at the titular hotel whose actions are less justifiable…

  • Armond

    Armond is a tragic character, an antihero of sorts. We empathize with and relate to him as he deals with the awful hotel guests and a major sobriety slip, but Armond is far from a saint himself. Flipping “the customer is always right” upside down, he spends most of the week seeking revenge on (and gaslighting) hotel guests instead of owning up to his mistakes. He steals Olivia and Paula’s contraband and runs the hotel while drunk and high; he takes a deuce in Shane’s open suitcase; and worst of all, he sexually coerces his employee by offering free drugs and flexible shifts.

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