Laurie’s Last Religion: Why She Won’t Leave Her Toxic Friends

I had my own issues with the show’s attempt to haphazardly wrap up numerous storylines in a single 1.5-hour episode that was initially supposed to be 2.5 hours. Still, I can’t deny the compelling power of Mike White’s writing. 

His poignant style of social and class criticism, as told through hyper-specific interpersonal relationships, remains unmatched. While the show may not have landed on its feet as neatly and cohesively as past seasons, season three’s exploration of spirituality, narcissism, and identity fragmentation are perhaps the most compelling themes of the series yet. There are a lot of characters this season—families, couples, friend groups, and curious oddities like Fabian, the hotel worker who likens himself as a temporarily embarrassed celebrity.

But one of the most compelling subplots of this season has been the unraveling of social dynamics between a particularly toxic trio of aging friends who have orbited each other since High School. Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie are reuniting after years of drifting apart at The White Lotus on Jaclyn’s dime. Their constant gossiping symbolizes this as they catch up on each other's lives and shockingly discover Kate’s political evolution, as though it’s contradictory to their ideas about who they knew Kate to be growing up. 

Their friendship is the personification of arrested development. It’s like having an exclusive “where are they now” sneak peek of that particularly toxic group of high school mean girls. Friends since they were nine years old, they’ve become set in their ways. Their place in the social hierarchy is no secret. Jaclyn is the alpha female of the group, the one who was always “the face,” as Kate resentfully recalls. Jaclyn is an aging actress with the most money, power, influence, and social capital. She’s a celebrity desperately clinging to her relevance and sex appeal. 

Her insecurity about aging and her suspicions that her much younger newlywed husband might be cheating on her with a younger woman expose her narcissism—her need to be validated through vanity, male attention, and her place atop the hierarchy of their female pecking order. Her friends orbit around her like she’s the sun: Kate is the most placating towards her, and her closer proximity to her social class posits them as having a stronger connection. She’s a stay-at-home conservative mom living in Austin and wealthy enough to invest in cosmetic enhancements, like Jaclyn. Laurie, however, is the odd man out in the group. 

This is foreshadowed by her title card depicting a giant, somber elephant being taunted by jackals, and a pair of cherubs hovering off in the distance (we’ll come back to that later). Laurie is a divorced mother of a rebellious teenager and a corporate lawyer whose career seems to have stalled. Her appearance takes on a less fussy, unkempt disposition compared to her poised friends. Laurie speaks her mind when everyone else is too scared to say what they mean, even her wardrobe visually primes us to perceive her as out-of-place. She’s the elephant in the room.

This female group of friends takes on a socially stunted, immature, passive-aggressive dynamic, featuring constant triangulation, gossiping about each other behind their backs, petty remarks, and an implicit social order that presents Laurie as lacking. Things heat up when Jaclyn’s insecurity in her looks, age, and infidelity of her husband reach a head: Valentin has sent them to a nearby resort for retirees, her husband isn’t answering her texts, and younger women are side-eyeing her in the club like she shouldn’t be there. 

After episode upon episode of Jaclyn encouraging Laurie, the only single member of the group, to pursue Valentin, once Laurie finally does hit it off with him at the club they dance at, Jaclyn opportunistically sabotages her. After the Russians leave their hotel room, she secretly invites Valentin back to have sex with him, and the implication is that she’s only interested because she built him up as an object of desire for Laurie. Hijacking him from her makes her feel powerful, desirable, and, once again, on top.

Laurie only discovers this information through the facade-obsessed Kate, who gossips about it at breakfast, only to act self-righteous once Laurie confronts Jaclyn about it in the open. As a refresher, two major themes in this season are narcissism and spirituality. In this friend dynamic, Jaclyn is unambiguously a narcissist (who feeds off of constant admiration, has a need to create competition, and plays power games that not only leave Laurie hurt but also gaslight afterward.) She tells Laurie she had every opportunity to pursue Valentin but failed to take it. 

Laurie remarks about this behavior being so typical of Jaclyn—that no one ever changes, suggesting this has been a lifelong pattern. In their confrontation, Kate fails to back Laurie up and even seems aggrieved that she would dare vocalize it, despite her being the one who told Laurie in the first place. Kate continues to play the peacekeeper with a tinge of moral superiority.

Later that night, they have a dinner that digs the knife even deeper. Laurie refuses to play along with their toxic positivity and phony platitudes. Jaclyn continues to dismiss Laurie’s feelings and refuses to take ownership for doing something messed up. It’s all masterfully flipped on Laurie and turns into a pile-on, condemning her poor life decisions and accusing her of projecting her unhappiness in her life onto Jaclyn. 

She unloads on Laurie, accusing her of being a perpetual victim of circumstances—choosing to stay at that company, choosing to marry Brian. “You always choose the short stick; is it bad luck? Are you life’s victim? Or are you doing it to yourself?” Kate joins in, endorsing Jaclyn’s dismal view of Laurie’s life, “It’s like the source of your disappointment changes, but the constant is you’re always disappointed.”

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

If Jaclyn’s a narcissist, then Kate is her enabler, and Laurie is the scapegoat. This is a familiar pattern they seem to have played out throughout their entire lives. It’s unambiguously toxic, and we naturally identify and empathize most with Laurie, the group’s most vulnerable—the only one willing to say it like it is. So, when Laurie suddenly does a 180 in the series finale, most critics argued it was “unearned.” We get subtle apologies between Jaclyn and Laurie before this outpouring of vulnerability occurs at dinner in a final powerful monologue. 

Laurie again breaks through the disingenuous facade and confesses that, unlike Kate and Jaclyn, who describe this trip as their “garden being in bloom” or “being on cloud nine all week,” she’s just been sad. She word-vomits her true feelings from the soul: as you get older, you feel like you need to justify your life and your choices, and when she looks at them, it becomes transparent what her choices were—her mistakes. 

“I have no belief system. And I… Well, I mean I’ve had a lot of them, but… I mean, work was my religion for forever, but I definitely lost my belief there. And then — And then I tried love, and that was just a painful religion, just made everything worse. And then, even for me, just, like, being a mother, that didn’t save me either. But I had this epiphany today. I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning because time gives it meaning.” Her friends’ steely exteriors soften, and they appear more receptive. 

She continues, “We started this life together. I mean, we’re going through it apart, but we’re still together, and I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful. And I can’t explain it, but even when we’re just sitting around the pool talking about whatever inane shit, it still feels very fucking deep.” She acknowledges where each of them is in life, expressing gratitude that Jaclyn has a “beautiful face” and that Kate has a “beautiful life,” resigning herself just to be happy to have a seat at the table. It’s a sincere expression of emotion that brings them all to tears as they all exchange supposedly heartfelt ‘I love you's.’ 

The widespread criticism is understandable, considering how much Laurie’s heartfelt monologue resonated with people. The overwhelming response was to retcon any toxicity before this point and recontextualize it with the knowledge that they all seemed to have reached an understanding and decided to outgrow old dynamics that weren’t serving them. The internet was celebrating this trio as a triumph over old toxic habits.

Here’s the problem: they didn’t do that. Laurie’s monologue is delusion that wants to be sincere, but it’s more spiritual preservation than anything. She confesses that she’s subscribed to a lot of belief systems that have left her unfulfilled—work, love, motherhood. None of them filled the void. People are right to clock that the monologue is unearned but isn’t unintentional. It’s a great tragedy. Laurie is so desperate to mythologize her suffering as a means of self-preservation. To admit that she’s sunk years of her life into an unfulfilling, toxic friendship that only takes from her would mean being emotionally humiliated yet again. 

Her friendship becomes sacred out of necessity because the alternative is too painful. We see this all the time with victims of narcissistic parents, for example—a desperation to validate that there was some value and meaning in the way they were treated. She’s in denial. And we almost want to validate her delusion, because we feel like Laurie deserves a respite from her constant suffering. But Laurie has felt comfortable being the martyr of her life for far too long to break the narrative now, so she continues the cycle and grants herself pseudo-agency in the process. 

The most devastating scene concluding their narrative arc is the final shot of them on the boat, departing from the hotel after the shooting. Even after that heartfelt exchange over dinner, nothing’s changed. They’ve all experienced a traumatic event, yet their dynamic hasn’t changed. Kate and Laurie are soothing Jaclyn as if she is uniquely distressed. It’s all about her, once again. As they tend to her emotions, Kate looks off into the distance and sighs. It’s the first honest expression of emotion we’ve seen from her the entire season. The queen of social facades, of maintaining social harmony, of having “good manners,” is disillusioned by her confrontation of reality—that they’re repeating the cycle. It’s reminiscent of Rachel’s shocking decision in season one to stay with Shane. 

As for those cherubs hovering over Carrie Coon’s title card? That’s confirmation for me that this friendship is just another one of Laurie’s failed religions and is in line with the season’s running theme about spirituality in modern society. In the absence of God, we naturally mythologize other things to fill the void. But the show also explores other concepts—the trap of identity as a root of suffering and relationships overstaying their welcome because we’re beholden to nostalgic sentimentality and sunk opportunity cost.