SPOILER ALERT: This piece discusses plot points from the seventh episode of The White Lotus. 

The White Lotus is entering its violence era and things are getting “tense” at Greg/Gary’s fancy party.

The penultimate episode is dark with various threats of violence from Walton Goggins’ considering ending the man who killed his father to Jason Isaacs’ Timothy Ratliff continuing to fantasize about killing himself, his wife and his son and Tayme Thapthimthong’s Gaitok figuring out who was behind the armed robbery at the hotel, while attending a Muay Thai boxing match with his crush, Lalisa Manobal’s Mook.

Then there’s the nice house above the posh resort, where tensions are running high.

Jon Gries’ Greg/Gary, who planned to have his wife Tanya McQuoid, played by Jennifer Coolidge, killed in season two, before she drowned fending off her killers, and his sugar baby Chloe, played by Charlotte Le Bon, are throwing an “opulent” bash at their “dope” house with many of the guests of The White Lotus attending.

There’s Patrick Schwarzenegger’s Saxon, still dealing with what he did to his brother in the previous episode, refusing to go along with Gary/Greg’s dark, incestual sexual fantasy of walking in on him having sex with Chloe.

But it’s Greg/Gary’s offer to Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda – $100,000 to essentially keep quiet about his whereabouts – that really gets things going.

“We know that she knows but then she knows that he knows she knows. That’s when it gets kind of tense. It goes from this secret that Belinda has to a problem that needs to be dealt with and she realizes she’s the problem that he has to deal with,” says Rothwell in the post-show featurette.

“In order to understand where this goes, you sort of have to dig into your darkest nature,” adds Gries. “I believe he just wants to uncomplicate his life as much as possible and that’s all that it’s about, just smoothing everything out. When Zion arrives, it’s a surprise for Greg.”

Zion, played by Nicholas Duvernay, is a now a “chess piece” that “could be in the crossfire”, according to Rothwell.

“Her willingness to play ball is by in large due to her son, him wanting the money is him coming from a place of wanting to alleviate the financial stress that she’s under. Belinda feels the obligation to be a moral example but it could compromise her and her son’s life,” she adds.

While The White Lotus is not a traditional murder mystery, viewers are still clamoring for answers as to exactly who was shot, as seen in the opening episode. The monkeys aren’t to blame, says Michelle Monaghan.

But there are a number of other possible suspects and victims.

There’s Timothy Ratcliff, either as killer or victim of his own hand, as alluded to the “suicide tree” in the show’s teaser for the season three finale.

Gaitok, who is ostensibly being told by Mook to man up (“You have to be strong, that’s part of the job”), finally discovers who robbed the hotel: the Russians. He figures this out at the boxing when he sees Valentin, the Russian health mentor played by Lithuanian actor Arnas Fedaravicius, and his friends, Vlad, played by Russian actor Yuri Kolokolnikov, and Aleksei, played by Bulgarian actor Julian Kostov.

The episode ends with Timothy, still clad in his Duke gear, realizing that someone (Gaitok, in this case) has stolen the gun that he himself stole.

Elsewhere, Carrie Coon’s Laurie also ends up at the boxing with the Russians after falling out with her friends – Leslie Bibb’s Kate and Monaghan’s Jaclyn. The “blond blob” are out for dinner but it doesn’t go well after Laurie confronts Jaclyn about being caught cheating on her husband with Valentin.

The penultimate episode of the HBO drama kicks off with Sam Rockwell’s Frank accompanying Goggins’ Rick to Lek Patravadi’s Sritala Hollinger’s home, pretending to be a director looking to cast her, so Rick can confront the source of his childhood trauma.

This is when Jim Hollinger, owner of The White Lotus in Thailand, played by Scott Glenn shows up properly for the first time (if you really squint you can see him at the end of episode six).

Frank, previously sober, starts drinking after making up quite the resume of movies that he pretends to have helmed: The Enforcer, The Executor, The Notary. Rick finally gets Jim alone and after some small talk, reveals who he is, even if Hollinger still doesn’t really know. However, instead of shooting him, he just pushes him off his chair and leaves (getting that “huge monkey off his back”) before going into the Bangkok night with Rockwell’s Frank to celebrate and get drunk.

Elsewhere, Sam Nivola’s Lochlan Ratliff and his sister Piper, played by Sarah Catherine Hook, are staying at the Buddhist temple (“It’s a cuuult,” says Posey’s Victoria) after Lochlan’s weird night with his brother and Aimee Lou Wood’s Chelsea and Charlotte Le Bon’s Chloe.

“The beauty of the characters that Mike writes is that no one is 100% right and no one is 100% wrong, there’s a lot of ambiguity at play,” says Rothwell.

“Greg always has a plan b,” adds Gries.