These 9 White Lotus Clues Revealed The Season 2 Finale’s Biggest Twists

Spoilers ahead for The White Lotus Season 2. Hindsight may be 20/20, but as it turns out, several clues about The White Lotus’ biggest Season 2 finale twists — including the shocking fate of Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya — were in front of our eyes the whole time. As the HBO series’ opening credits designers, Mark Bashore and Katrina Crawford, recently explained to Mashable, each time an actor’s name appears onscreen in the title sequence, the corresponding fresco reveals something about their character’s arc. “For each character, we came back with 10 storylines that would work,” Crawford said.

You might have been too distracted by the catchy opening theme song to notice the cherubs that appear alongside Daphne actor Meghann Fahy’s name. “Meghann Fahy gets the cherubs because they're like [Daphne's] babies who she's obsessed with, but they're also these cheeky creatures in mythology that are wreaking havoc and playing games, which is also sort of characteristic of her,” Crawford elaborated.

Some eagle-eyed viewers did pick up on the subtleties though. While one user tweeted that the title card for F. Murray Abraham, who plays Bert Di Grasso, was a perfect depiction of “a man who ruined lives by not noticing that his wife is aware of his infidelity,” another recalled a scene in which Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) compared Tanya to Peppa Pig, highlighting an image of a pig being killed in the opening sequence that might have foreshadowed her finale death.

There were plenty more Easter eggs hidden throughout The White Lotus Season 2, too. Here are nine more signs you might have missed.

This White Lotus Season 1 Line

In a post-finale featurette, series creator Mike White confirmed that Tanya’s death was foreshadowed during the first season of the HBO series. Before leaving the resort’s Hawaii location, she and Greg Greg (Jon Gries) discuss his ailing health, and she tells her future husband, “I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years. Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.” It doesn’t get more immersive than drowning.

Tanya’s Floral-Print Finale Dress

In Episode 3, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) joins the DiGrassos — Bert, Albie (Adam DiMarco), and Dominic (Michael Imperioli) — for a tour of one of the Sicilian filming locations for Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. The four lunched near the spot where Michael Corleone’s (Al Pacino) wife Apollonia (Simonetta Stefanelli) was mistakenly blown up by a car bomb meant to kill the mobster. In the replica of the parked car, Apollonia is represented by a mannequin, who’s wearing the same floral-print dress that Tanya had on in her death scene. “I was pretty surprised by the internet sleuths’ ability to put things together,” The White Lotus costume designer Alex Bovaird told Page Six Style.

Tanya’s Monica Vitti-Inspired Fantasy

Though Valentina guessed that Tanya was trying to emulate Peppa Pig before she and her husband, Greg, took off on a Vespa, her real muse was Italian film star Monica Vitti. As film buffs might already know, Vitti starred in 1960’s L'Avventura, which was partly filmed in Sicily and featured a storyline about a woman who disappears during a yachting getaway. Meanwhile, Valentina’s response was less subtle: “Monica Vitti's dead,” the White Lotus manager remarked.

Isola Bella’s Late Matriarch

After befriending Tanya in Episode 4, Quentin (Tom Hollander) tells her about the tiny island of Isola Bella, on which he says a rich Swedish family owned a palatial home. “The old matriarch was the last one living in it, and there were these powerful, local investors,” he says, implying mafia ties. When said matriarch wouldn’t cave to the “all kinds of offers” the investors made to purchase the house, “her body was found in a heap at the bottom of the rocks.” Some fans are convinced that he and his “gays” were the powerful investors who killed whoever stood in the way of their desires. It would also explain Tanya’s dissociative vision of men with “very effeminate hairstyles,” and Greg’s “shark eyes” in the Season 2 premiere.

Quentin’s Cowboy Photograph

After Quentin tells Tanya about an American cowboy he fell in love with decades ago — and for whom he’d still do anything — she stumbles upon a photograph of what she assumes is the two of them. As some viewers — and, later, Tanya — noticed, the mystery cowboy looks an awful lot like her husband, Greg. When she and Portia eventually uncover Quentin’s nefarious plot against her, it becomes clear that the resemblance was more than just a coincidence.

The Tarot Card Reader’s Untranslated Line

After Greg’s infidelity is also revealed by Tanya’s “very negative” tarot card reader, the local woman says something in Italian that the show didn’t include a subtitle translation. According to several Reddit users, the fortune teller was telling Tanya that her madness would drive her to suicide, foreshadowing her grim fate.

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly

Before Quentin takes Tanya to see a performance of Madama Butterfly in Episode 5, he tells her that he and his friends decided she was “like a tragic heroine in a Puccini opera.” As Tanya learns after watching the performance, the titular character, whose husband has left her, also kills herself in the show’s finale. Earlier, another Puccini tune was playing in the season premiere (and, again, in the finale) when Daphne discovers the body — later revealed to be Tanya — in the water.

Daphne and Harper’s Getaway

Tanya wasn’t the only one with a Vitti connection. As one TikTok user pointed out, Daphne and Harper’s (Aubrey Plaza) overnight getaway from their respective husbands, Cameron (Theo James) and Ethan (Will Sharpe), included several shots that mirror Vitti’s movements in L'avventura. Aside from the aforementioned plotline, the 1960 film also includes a woman having an affair with her missing best friend’s husband, potentially pointing to what happened between the couples off camera.

Alessio’s First Appearance

Though Albie didn’t see that Sicilian sex worker Lucia (Simona Tabasco) was scamming him all along, the signs might have been there from the beginning. Lucia ultimately preyed upon Albie’s self-described affinity for “wounded birds” by telling him she needed money to pay off her dangerous “pimp,” Alessio. While Albie witnessed their tense interaction in Episode 5, fans on Reddit noticed that Alessio first appeared in the Season 2 premiere, and given his pleasant interaction with Lucia and Mia (Beatrice Grannò), it seems he was simply part of her con, rather than the violent man she claimed.