The White Lotus season 3 has just come to a close with a fiery and emotional ending. However, creator Mike White has revealed that the last episode was actually supposed to include a romantic side storyline between two young characters who never actually meet in the series, Piper and Belinda’s son Zion.
"There’s this whole scene where she’s like, ‘It’s true. Saxon is right about this one thing. I need to get this over with.’ And you know how after she leaves the monastery she’s just like, ‘I need to have sex,'" said White to Variety. "That part was cut, which is very disappointing."
A storyline that runs through the whole of season 3 is the fact that Piper is very lost in her life in terms of what she wants to do as a career, what religion she should follow, and her struggles with belonging to a very rich family. Another factor, which she is teased for by her hyper-sexual older brothers, is the fact that she is a virgin.
At the end of the season, we see Piper free of all these issues when she realizes she is not right for the Buddhist lifestyle she is seeking, and instead, accepts her fate as a privileged rich girl. In this regard, losing her virginity too would have made sense. However, due to season 3 episode 8’s runtime already going well over the length of a normal episode, it sounds like White had to trim the fat.
"In the end, it was one of these things where it was like, it’s already an hour and a half. It would have added 10 minutes to the thing," said White. "And it had a little bit of a rom-com vibe in the middle of trying to kill the family with the pong pong fruits. It just felt like I was trying to do too much narratively."
The rest of the finale saw more or less each vacationer leave Thailand completely changed, and in true White Lotus fashion, some characters met their demise. But that's not the end of the anthology series, and The White Lotus season 4 has already been confirmed, with White suggesting that next season won’t be taking place by the beach. Could we finally be getting the White Lotus ski chalet we have been waiting for?
The White Lotus is available to watch in full on Max in the US, and on Now in the UK. For more, check out our guide to the best shows on Max, or keep up with upcoming shows.
