Did Belinda Make the Right Choice in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Finale? -

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The White Lotus Season 3 finale.What would you do for five million bucks? That’s one of the moral conundrums presented by The White Lotus Season 3 to its audience. Would you sell out a friend? Would you allow said friend’s alleged murderer to get away with his crime? What if said friend wasn’t even actually a real friend to begin with? In the final episode of the HBO hit thriller show’s newest season, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) decided that, yes, the cash was worth it. With the help of her son, Zion (Nicholas Duvernay), she got Greg (Jon Gries) to wire $5 million to her bank account — a lot more than the $100 thousand that he had initially offered her to keep her mouth shut about his secret life in Thailand. All of this money is being put to good use: Belinda’s plan is to invest it on the spa she has always dreamed about opening (eventually), the very same spa that Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), Greg’s deceased ex-wife, once promised to help her out with.

Now, of course, we are all happy for Belinda! She more than deserves her happy ending after everything she’s been through with Tanya. However, narratively speaking, we should still consider the fact that she has sacrificed her integrity for some cash in her pocket — something, we should add, that is not unheard of in the world of The White Lotus, what with Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) giving up on her journalistic dreams in order to become Shane’s (Jake Lacy) trophy wife in Season 1. Still, Belinda’s case is a little bit more serious. Knowing that a woman that she once knew died under mysterious circumstances abroad, she elected to allow her husband to walk away scot-free. What should happen to her character from now on? And, most importantly, has she really made the right choice?

Yes, Belinda Made the Right Choice in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3

Jon Gries as Gary or Greg looking forlorn, sitting across from someone in The White Lotus. — Image via HBO

Honestly? Yes. Belinda was more than right in taking Greg/Gary’s money. First and foremost, because it is something that should have belonged to her ever since Season 1. In The White Lotus‘ first run, Tanya promises to invest in Belinda’s own wellness center, and then gets distracted by Greg until she finally has the worst epiphany ever, at least for Belinda: it’s time to stop trying to buy friends with her money. Then, in Season 2, Tanya dies in some very suspicious circumstances, and Greg ends up inheriting all of her fortune. So, in a way, Greg snatched the money from Belinda and then did it all over again with Tanya, albeit in a more bloody manner. Considering all the effort that Belinda put into her business proposal to Tanya and all the vain promises that were made over deceitful dinners, she really deserves to finally have the cash to open her own business on her account.

Secondly, while Greg is basically paying her for her silence, there is nothing stopping Belinda from taking the money and running straight to the Italian police with an anonymous tip about his whereabouts. Sure, it could be dangerous for her, but she has her own means of disappearing off to some far corner of the world now. And if Greg really wanted to kill her, well, he could have done so by now. Belinda is in a very privileged position in which she can have her cake and eat it too. But the problem is: should she? Because, let’s face it, the Italian police have no authority over Thailand, and given Fabian’s (Christian Friedel) throwaway line about the number of guests with colorful pasts, there seems to be a very slim chance that Greg will get extradited. Belinda’s choice, in that matter, simply wouldn’t make a difference, so why not take the money anyway?

Jason Isaacs looking worried against a toxic warning sign in The White Lotus

That Poisonous Fruit in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Is Very Real — and It Means More Than You Think

The toxic seeds have been used for some very dark purposes.

Finally, there is something that Belinda doesn’t know but that we, the audience, do: in the end, it wasn’t Greg who killed Tanya. Sure, he may have plotted it all with Quentin (Tom Hollander), Didier (Bruno Gouery), and Niccolò (Stefano Gianino), but Tanya managed to escape her assassination attempt. Instead of getting killed, she died while trying to get off a boat in the middle of the night, hitting her head and subsequently drowning. Sure, there is still a conspiracy to murder going on there, but the police would be hard-pressed to get Greg in for anything. So, basically, Belinda just got paid for not telling anyone about something that the guy who was paying her to keep her mouth shut didn’t do.

Belinda’s Decision Still Needs To Have Consequences

If all of this sounds somewhat like a Belinda apology, that’s because it is. We have seen this woman suffer so much in Season 1; she just deserves her happy ending. Besides, everyone in The White Lotus gets to be extremely corrupt. Why does Belinda have to be the last bastion of morality anyway? Still, her decision to take Greg’s hush money does need to affect the plot in some way. After all, Tanya’s story is the common thread tying all three seasons of The White Lotus together, so it wouldn’t feel right to simply disappear in Season 4. First, we saw Tanya meeting Greg and Belinda, then Tanya having her falling out with Greg, and then Greg and Belinda meeting each other in Thailand. Now, viewers need to know what will happen to Belinda going forward.

This doesn’t mean Belinda has to suffer for what she did. But selling out like that has its consequences, even if they don’t come in the form of the FBI knocking at your door. Season 4 could feature a Belinda who is still having a crisis of consciousness and thus has trouble maintaining her good relationship with her son or a Belinda who has just become another awful White Lotus guest. Or maybe we could have the FBI plot, but with Belinda escaping them in the end, please! What matters is that, while Tanya is no longer in The White Lotus, her ghost hasn’t left the show. It lives on through the characters that keep her story going. The main character in this plot right now is Belinda. And a main character needs her own plot.

All episodes of Season 3 of The White Lotus are available to stream on Max in the U.S.