All Hail Daphne, ‘White Lotus’ Low-Key MVP
She's the Elle Woods of White Lotus.
Get Daphne another masseuse immediately: her back must be breaking from carrying this entire season of White Lotus on her own.
Yep, HBO drew its highest viewership of The White Lotus season yesterday, with 4.1 million US viewers tuning in for the final episode of White Lotus Season 2. And what a finale.
We had Tanya’s frantic shooting spree; Ethan’s sleeper build; Albie and Portia sharing a single brain-cell; and Lucia and Mia’s victory lap.
But the standout moment was undeniably that scene between Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Ethan (Will Sharpe). It almost feels silly to bother mentioning Ethan actually; all eyes were on Daphne as she processed Ethan’s suspicions about Harper and Cameron during that close up.
Meghann Fahy is SUCH a good actor. these 30 seconds of Daphne processing her husband’s affair (and then calculating how she’s gonna get back at him) are perfection#TheWhiteLotus pic.twitter.com/razdMtDu5G
— Spencer Althouse (@SpencerAlthouse) December 12, 2022
You could literally see her heart sink. But as she flicked her gaze back up to Ethan, then out at the ocean, the wheels started turning. She drops some serious existential facts about how you can never really know someone, but you can love them anyway — all encased in her usual bouncy demeanour. Bravo, Daphne, bravo!
Between the speech, those perfectly-timed nose twitches and subtle eyebrow raises, I’m certain the entire world fell in love with Meghann Fahy right there and then.
But what to make of Daphne’s reaction? Some viewers saw it as Daphne choosing to get back at Cameron for cheating on her (par for the course at this point). Others saw her disappointment as something more genuine: Daphne feeling the sting from Harper’s betrayal after she had been honest with her about her marriage with Cam. Either way, I think it’s pretty clear what she and Ethan got up to on that little island to “not feel like a victim of life”.
Daphne’s arc from forgettable ditz to cunning tactician is what cemented me as a full-time Meghann Fahy stan. She’s the Elle Woods of White Lotus, revelling in her femininity and perpetual optimism, but never at the cost of her own pride or intelligence. She plays the part of happy loving wife and mother, but with her own rules. Dare I even mention the whole reverse Lannister-Baratheon situation with non-blonde Cam and his very blonde kids?!
To be fair, we should have known Daphne would rise. From the opening scene of Episode One, it was clear that she had it all figured out. Yes, we all witnessed just what the quarrelsome foursome got up to but in the end, she thrived. She also had the best one-liner of the season: Italy is “so romantic, you’re gonna die”.
Daphne knows how to live her best life with the cards she was dealt. Give Meghann Fahy her damn Emmy already.