The White Lotus: Big clue we all missed in season two finale

This article contains spoilers from the season finale.

After weeks of musing over who among The White Lotus’ elite guests would wash up in the waters of Sicily, season two’s finale saw one major character meet an untimely end.

While Jennifer Coolidge’s hopeful, glamorous, dullard of an heiress, Tanya McQuoid, successfully shot up her conspiring friends, she met her fate just moments later with an unfortunate fall from the side of their yacht, clipping her skull on the tender moored alongside it.

The end of McQuoid, who also starred in season one, may have come as a surprise to those who had the likes of roommates turned feuding husbands Cameron and E, or the kindly, naïve teen Albie pipped for a drowning.

But it appears there was a clear sartorial clue that pointed to McQuoid eventually being revealed as the body found floating in the waters in front of the resort in the very first episode.

Alerted by American writer Evan Ross Katz on Twitter, McQuiod’s finale dress bears a striking resemblance to another doomed character from The Godfather - the scene of which appears in The White Lotus.

In episode three, a Godfather sightseeing tour taken by Lotus characters Bert, Dominic and Albie features.

The tour recreates the moment from the Italian masterpiece when Michael Corleone’s wife Apollonia is killed with a car bomb intended for her husband. It uses a mannequin - sporting an undeniably similar dress to the one McQuoid wears throughout her last ever episode - who meets a fake fiery death in a homage to the scenes shot for the film in Sicily.

The clue was the work of The White Lotus’ costume designer Alex Bovaird who told Page Six Style they were impressed fans were able to put the two together.

“I was pretty surprised by the internet sleuths’ ability to put things together,” Bovaird said.

“When I saw the Evan Ross Katz tweet showing Tanya’s death dress on the Godfather dummy, I was very impressed.”

Bovaird also revealed the dress connection “almost didn’t happen,” because the dress intended for Coolidge’s character was sent off set accidentally.

“We were towards the end of the show, and it got sent back to Rome the previous night by mistake. Somebody had to catch a plane with it back in the early morning and it made it to camera,” she said.

“Just your typical costume department mayhem.”

The White Lotus has been confirmed as returning for a third season and, according to The Telegraph, attracts around 9.5 million viewers per episode, a 60 per cent increase on the viewership in season one.