Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Chris Revelle | TV | October 17, 2025
In the second season finale of AppleTV+’s series Loot, Molly (Maya Rudolph) confessed her love to Arthur (Nat Faxon) and then ran away in a defensive panic with her assistant Nicholas (Joel Kim Booster) on a plane. Season three picks up in the aftermath to continue the dizzy, goofy adventures of the third-wealthiest woman in the world and the employees she lovingly terrorizes. Since its premiere, Loot has been a pleasant but middling sitcom that reaches for zaniness, but doesn’t always have the jokes to carry it off. The third season premiere is a fizzy confection that features Henry Winkler as a daffy nudist and deals with the fallout of Molly’s love confession, but there’s a shadow cast over the proceedings. Being a show about outlandish wealth and one person’s faltering attempts to do good with it resonates differently in 2025, as we see our world consumed by billionaires. It’s a grim part of our reality that’s hard to ignore. Loot prompts the question: Is there a place for a sitcom about a “good billionaire” in this world?
The third season begins with Molly washing up on a tropical island and learning from Nicholas that their plane crashed into the Indian Ocean. One shelter-and-foraging montage later, we learn that Nicholas has landed them near one of Molly’s mansions on an island she shares with Gerald Canning (Winkler). Canning is an eccentric with a nudist colony that Loot mines for goofy hijinks. The man loves himself some coconut oil and has some very nitpicky rules about who can use his ferry. Though Nicholas tries to maintain Molly’s “bye-bye mode,” where she can recover from her kiss with Arthur and last season’s drama with the other billionaires, it’s only a matter of time before Molly pulls the rest of the Wells Foundation onto the island with her. Sofia (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez) remains the stern voice of reason, even when she’s joined by her chaotic sister Destiny (X Mayo). Howard (Ron Funches), Ainsley (Stephanie Styles), and Rhonda (Meagan Fay) are also in tow with their various co-worker character games that keep the “light workplace sitcom” vibes flowing.
In the past, Loot proved itself to be an amusing, light-hearted experience that didn’t exactly inspire belly-laughs, but the writing is definitely more joke-forward this season. The series gives its talented cast more to work with, so on that front, Loot is growing nicely. When viewed in a vacuum, the series is an amiable way to spend 25-ish minutes with the national treasure, Maya Rudolph. The trouble comes when Loot marries this fun sitcom sensibility with the increasingly bleak reality of billionaires.
The series is proudly inspired by the story of MacKenzie Scott, the woman who took her absurd wealth after divorcing Jeff Bezos and committed huge chunks of money to great causes. It’s one of the more ethical uses for money you don’t need. Loot is keenly aware of the corrosive effects of wealth and even devoted its second season to how billionaires largely don’t care for anything but the accumulation of further wealth, at any cost. The series is telling a story about outlandish wealth, how those who have it typically horde it, and what the ethical thing to do with all that money is. Molly’s not a saint; she flubs and gaffes her way through life, sheltered by her wealth, but trying valiantly to do right with it. That’s a fine set-up for a sitcom, but when told in the billionaire-ravaged world of 2025, it loses some luster. A story about a good billionaire, no matter how well-made or well-acted, feels awkward and dubious when presented in a world where a “good billionaire” is more myth than reality.
Loot operates with the disadvantage of being a sitcom about something so current, raw, and depressing. There might have been a time when a story about the super-rich would’ve felt lighter, but today we are surrounded by horror stories about what the wealthy have wrought. So Loot ends up inviting questions that can really inhibit the laughs, such as who does a show about a good billionaire serve and what are the ethics of philanthropy? These are heavy, uncomfortable questions without easy answers. A sitcom doesn’t need to be purely escapist, but when your material connects so directly to the grim outside world, it can be hard to laugh quite as much.
Ultimately, whether someone wants a show that suggests maybe a billionaire can be good right now is going to come down to personal opinion. This places Loot in a similar position to English Teacher, albeit for very different reasons. To me, the world is so nastily warped by the super-rich that Loot, as funny, well-cast, and enjoyable as it is, just isn’t airing at the right time. The taste in the mouth is too bitter to laugh all that much. Loot’s heart is in the right place, and it’s a wonderful excuse to bask in the glories of Maya Rudolph, but I’m not sure there’s a great place for it in today’s world.
