Here’s Why The White Lotus Season 3 Is So Obsessed With Snakes

The White Lotus Season 3 has been absolutely filled to the brim with motifs and imagery so far. The monkeys, the tsunami, and now the snakes! Here’s everything you need to know about what the snakes actually mean in The White Lotus Season 3.

What Do the Snakes Mean in The White Lotus Season 3?

Rick put it best in the third episode of The White Lotus Season 3, The Meaning of Dreams. Snakes are seen as evil, or at the very least beings that do bad things. The entire snake show sequence in that episode also makes it abundantly clear: snakes need to be locked up, or you could risk getting poisoned by them.

Simply put, they’re bad news, and you should stay away from them. So in the context of the show, if we see someone associated with that snake imagery, we can probably safely assume that they’re an antagonist of some sort, or that they’re up to no good.

Chelsea and the Snake Choker

In the second episode, titled Special Treatments, we see that the hotel lobby store gets robbed. Chelsea pays special attention to a beautiful, gold snake choker, and that eventually gets taken by the robbers.

Why was Chelsea drawn to the snake choker, though? It’s pretty, yes, but I think a more likely connection that the show wants you to make is that she’s here with Rick, who’s seen as a snake himself. She’s fascinated by the imagery of the snake choker, and it’s meant to represent her relationship with Rick.

Rick and the Snake Show

Most prominently, however, is the fact that Rick releases all of the snakes in the shop when he’s high on weed. He sees himself as a snake, as someone who does bad things. However, he also believes that even evil people deserve a chance. Maybe getting locked up is what’s making these people be evil. In a desperate move, he frees the snakes. Rick sees himself as a bad person, but he also longs for acceptance.

That comes with consequences, though, as Chelsea gets bitten by a snake in that same scene. It suggests that if Chelsea hangs around Rick for too long, she could end up getting herself hurt. In trying to reconcile the sides of him that are evil and want longing, Rick ends up hurting the people closest to him.

Valentin’s Friends

Now I’m sure this will get confirmed in the next couple episodes, but Valentin’s friends are so damn sus and they’re probably the ones who robbed the store in the first place and stole that snake choker. Think about it. Valentin was talking to Gaitok when the robbers drove through. Could he have been in on the scheme?

Not only do these friends look shady as hell, but guess what? One of them even has a freaking snake tattoo. The show is just beating us over the head with the whole “snakes are bad” message at this point.

Also consider the fact that Valentin has been putting Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie in these silly situations to make fun of them, and you kinda get the sense that Valentin isn’t a fan of these women either. Who would be? They’re obnoxious foreigners who literally just called Valentin their butler and dragged him out of his workplace while he was working. So what’s the next step? Maybe Valentin wants his snake friends to charm them, and then pull some sort of scam on them. That’s certainly in the realm of possibility.

So there you have it. With the exception of Rick, who still very much has a good shot at redemption, snakes are bad news in The White Lotus Season 3. Keep an eye out for them going forward. I’m sure there’s still plenty of foreboding snake imagery to come.