Fans have suspected it for some time, but in Episode 7 of Season 3 of The White Lotus, we finally got confirmation that Valentin and his two Russian friends, Aleksei and Vlad, robbed the hotel.
Clues were seeded earlier in the season: Valentin suspiciously parked his motorcycle under the arm barrier and distracted Gaitok while the van carrying the robbers drove onto the White Lotus property in Episode 2. That didn’t look like a coincidence.
When attending the muay thai fight in Episode 7, Gaitok spots Valentin with his two friends and something about the trio jogs his memory. He notices that Vlad is bald and then flashes back to watching a bald man exit the drivers’ side of the getaway car. The flashback is long and accompanied by foreboding music. Gaitok is fairly certain he has identified the thieves.
Later in the episode, Laurie goes home with Aleksei, having passed up her chance with Valentin a couple episodes back, leaving Jaclyn an opening with the hunky wellness professional. After the two have sex, Aleksei pushes Laurie for $10,000 to help bring his (supposedly) sick mother to Thailand from Russia. When she says she simply does not have that cash, he suggests Venmo or PayPal. (Apparently he has not watched enough TV about sketchy deals to know those apps have pretty strict limits on individual payments to avoid this exact circumstance.)
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Aleksei’s angry girlfriend interrupts that conversation, and Laurie runs to hide in Aleksei’s closet. Inside, she sees a pile of jewelry, including the serpent choker that Chelsea was examining right before the robbery took place. The masked thief had grabbed that gold necklace along with many other expensive items.
Laurie probably doesn’t know what, exactly, was stolen from the hotel. But she can guess that a man who was just pressuring her…
