Review: Things Stay Steamy as 'The White Lotus' Travels to Thailand for Season 3

"The White Lotus" arrives at a new locale and introduces a whole new cadre of good-looking guests with first-world problems and clothes that come off easily – but there's at least one familiar face.

Let's start there. Season One's Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), still dreaming of owning her own spa, makes the trip from Hawaii to learn some new rejuvenating techniques. But once she's there she starts to make connections that could open the way to romance... or danger.

Belinda's not the only one facing such disparate destinies. As with the previous seasons, this one starts off with the introduction of a body before ushering us on to meet a roster of potential victims (and perpetrators). There's the chaotic Ratliff family, a squabbling brood presided over by a compromised businessman Timothy (Jason Isaacs) and his clueless, pill-popping wife, Victoria (Parker Posey). Timothy can't disconnect from his phone calls to the office, which are growing increasingly frantic as colleagues alert him to a growing crisis. Victoria, meantime, is too busy booking sessions of pampering to figure out in which country, exactly, the resort is located.

Their kids range from late teens through mid-twenties, with eldest son Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) – a horny, self-professed workaholic – set to follow in his father's footsteps. (In true "White Lotus" style, it's not long before Saxon is wandering around in the buff.)

Saxon teases his younger siblings for what he sees as their success-stunting sexual shyness, but sister Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) has different, and more spiritual, priorities, while youngest child Lochlan (Sam Nivola), at eighteen, is ready and willing to hook up... if, that is, he can find his way forward and admit to what he really wants.

Then there's a trio of longtime girlfriends, Laurie, Jaclyn, and Kate (played by the magnificent Carrie Coon, in the company of Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb, equally magnificent), who have come to the resort to reconnect and take a break. Their lives and careers are busy, glamorous, and maybe not all they are cracked up to be. In fact, if anything is cracking up, it might be them; each wrestles with personal problems that, as younger women, the three would probably have been all too eager to hear about and to help with. But now? A need to cling to youth and project a glossy facade of success and contentment overrides a yearning for solace.

As the three old friends strive for some fresh youthful adventures (hello, pool party! Hi there, slate of handsome Russian guys!), young love begins to blossom for resort workers Mook (Lalisa Manobal) and Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong). Their families are close, but is romance right for them? Gaitok certainly thinks so, and in order to elevate his standing at the resort and improve his circumstances he's willing to serve as a bodyguard for Sritala, the resort's owner (Lek Patravadi), who also happens to be a famous entertainer. But Gaitok's own mild nature might disqualify him from the job, which only sharpens the possibility that he might have more bite in him than anybody suspects.

Another couple arrive in the form of Rick (Walton Goggins) and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood). He's overwrought and uptight; she's playful and determined to get him to relax. As it turns out, The White Lotus is the last place Rick can relax, since he has some long-standing business with Sritala and her husband – business that dip ever so slightly into the other side of Thailand, with its myriad of sexual and gender possibilities.

That's fitting. Questions of attachment, identity, and suffering as part of the human experience are key to this season's storylines (with the show being set where it is this time around, how could they not be?), and Rick's dilemmas are directly plugged into those issues.

Digital detox and ancient philosophies intersect, as do criminal intentions, spiritual leanings, carnal hunger, and the most pressing question of identity of all: Just who is gonna get rubbed out this time?

Season Three feels in many ways like a repeat of Season One, but that's all right. Creator/writer/director Mike White has hit on a winning formula, and he's far from mining it to exhaustion. (Good thing, too, sine Season 4 has already been announced.) There might or might not be enlightenment within reach of those willing to forsake the chaotic world of noisy human affairs, but for the rest of us it's a relief that "The White Lotus" will once again be a weekly refuge.

"The White Lotus" Season Three premieres Feb. 16 on Max.