How Greg's First White Lotus Season 1 Scene Foreshadowed His Twist
Rewatching the whole series his totally eye-opening now.
One of the most surprising twists in Season 2 of The White Lotus wasn’t necessarily surrounding who got murdered or who cheated on whom, but rather which character turned out to be the polar opposite of what fans thought. In the first season, Greg seemed like a sweetheart who fell for Tanya on a chance meeting in Hawaii, but he showed his true colors in Season 2. And now, looking back, those initial scenes are much darker than they first appeared. Even Greg’s very first scene in Season 1 of The White Lotus seems to foreshadow his evil twist.
It didn’t take long for Greg to become the most hated character in The White Lotus Season 2. The first few episodes saw a complete personality shift in him — he was shaming Tanya’s eating, demanding she get rid of her assistant, and hiding secret shady phone calls. As the season progressed, fans realized Greg was working with Quentin to murder Tanya and take all her money, and it sure didn’t seem like this something he made up on the spot after being married to her for a while. In fact, going back to Season 1, there are certain clues that Greg was targeting Tanya all along.
Greg was introduced in Season 1, Episode 4, when Tanya found him trying to get into her hotel room. When she questioned him, Greg said he mixed up his room number with hers. At first, the situation felt like a sweet meet-cute, but now it kinda looks like Greg was trying to break into Tanya’s room to suss out her wealth and just made up an excuse when she caught him. Or maybe he staged the whole act as a way to introduce himself to his next victim.
And that’s only the first red flag. Suspiciously, Greg’s first question to Tanya was whether she had any family or a husband, which now seems like his way of determining if he could be the sole inheritor of her estate. Right after she responded that she’s alone, Greg asked her to dinner.
Greg also mentioned he was on one of his annual fishing trips with his buddies, who are “a good group of guys.” But these buddies were never actually seen. Could it be that they were actually the “high-end gays” Tanya met in Sicily?
Plus, much like the hushed phone calls Greg had in Season 2, Tanya caught Greg making a shady phone call right after she met him. He was heard telling the person on the other line that he hasn’t “dealt with” something just yet, and then seemed to hastily make up the name Bob when he saw Tanya listening in.
Greg’s coughing fits also seem faked upon a second viewing. They only really came at times when Greg wanted to distance himself from Tanya, first after they slept together, and then after Tanya proposed that she buy a home in Aspen near Greg. He claimed that he could “drop dead” at any moment because of his health issues, but was still somehow able to consistently swim laps in the pool.
And the last dark tidbit about Greg in Season 1 is something creator Mike White himself pointed out. After the Season 2 finale, White pointed out Tanya’s line at the end of Season 1 that “death is the last immersive experience [she hasn’t] tried.” She said that to Greg, and he received it with a suspiciously large smile. It’s as if that statement set the wheels in motion for Greg to go pedal-to-the-metal on his murder scheme.
The White Lotus Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on HBO Max.
