Although The White Lotus fans were concerned for what was going to happen to Portia after she was kidnapped, she was not harmed, but could not return to the hotel.
Portia was a new character introduced in the second season of The White Lotus and quickly became one of those characters that fans of the show love to hate.
Even though Portia was kidnapped by Jack near the end of the season, he just dropped her off near the airport and told her not to go back to the hotel.
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Why people love to hate Portia on the The White Lotus
It is painfully ironic that a character like Portia, has managed to become such a stand-out on a show where there are so many morally corrupt characters to choose from.
It is important to note that fans of the show do not exactly “hate” Haley Lu Richardson’s character, but rather that they were just frustrated by Portia’s incredibly frazzled and naïve personality and fashion-sense.
It seems as though Portia’s character has managed to make fans so angry, that the character has looped all the way back again, to become a fan-favourite.
The White Lotus: What was going to happen to Portia?
Portia was first introduced in the second season of The White Lotus as the young personal assistant to Jennifer Coolidge’s character, Tanya.
Tanya and Portia quickly became the focus of the second season of the show when Tanya was introduced to Quentin and his group of friends, not knowing that this friendship would ultimately result in a wild drug-filled party, a conspiracy to kill her and an eventual shoot-out on a yacht.
Portia met Quentin’s nephew Jack at one of their get-togethers and subsequently, struck up a relationship with him, early on in the season.
However, her idyllic Sicilian work-vacation quickly devolved when she was kidnapped by Jack, leaving fans to wonder what was going to happen to her and to Tanya.
Portia eventually uses Jack’s phone to call Tanya and together, they are able to piece together enough information to know that they are in big trouble.
Portia even tells Tanya “I just have this really weird feeling that something bad is going to happen”. Which is a natural reaction, given that she had no phone, was in a strange place, and had no idea what Jack’s intentions with her were.
Jack eventually ends up just dropping Portia at the side of the road near the airport and tells her to stay away from the hotel, but it is never revealed whether Quentin actually tasked Jack with killing her instead.
Fans will just have to wait for the third season of The White Lotus to see if more is revealed about Greg’s possible plot to have Tanya murdered and whether Portia told anyone about what had happened.
Did Jack have feelings for Portia?
We will probably never have clarity about how much of Jack’s relationship with Portia was just part of an act and what his true feelings for Portia were. It is also not very clear whether his assignment was to kill Portia, or just to keep her away from Tanya.
Either way, it seems as though Jack did have a some kind of fondness for Portia, as he warns her not to go back to the The White Lotus, to protect her from the “powerful people” that could be out to get her there.
What happened to Tanya?
Unfortunately, this season of The White Lotus did not end as well for Tanya as it did for Portia. Once Tanya got off the phone with Portia, she went off the rails.
She even shot Quentin, Didier, and Niccoló all while hysterically crying, before seemingly tripping and hitting her head on the side of the yacht.
At the end of season finale, Portia is seen at the airport, listening to all of the other The White Lotus guests talk about Tanya’s body which had washed ashore.
Will Portia return for season 3 of The White Lotus?
The White Lotus has already been renewed for a third season and even though Tanya will not be returning, many fans hope that Mike White, the creator of the show, will dive deeper into her death in the next season of the show.
After all, there are so many questions still up in the air, including whether Greg truly constructed a plot with Quentin to murder Tanya so that they could run away with her inheritance, or whether Portia planned to confront Greg about what happened, or even go to the authorities with what she knows.
However, The White Lotus is also notorious for starting each new season with a completely new cast of characters and it is entirely possible that Portia will never be on the show again.
