It’s finally happened, the finale of The White Lotus season three is out and viewers are reeling over what may well be the most tragic ending so far.
As the dust settles (and we mourn the fact that there won’t be another season for at least a year), The White Lotus’ stars will be breathing a sigh of relief now they no longer have to keep the shocks and surprises of the last episode secret.
However, they’ve also had plenty to say about it. Here’s our roundup of who’s been spilling the beans.
Walton Goggins (Rick Hatchett)
It was all going so well for Rick – he was finding happiness with Chelsea and had walked away from avenging his father’s death – right up until it wasn’t. Jim rocked up again at the hotel in the finale and it was never going to go well.
Walton Goggins has broken his silence about the last episode after watching it alone as part of his goodbye to Rick. He told Vulture the story of Rick and Jim and the experience of grief aligned closely with a trip he took to South Asia after his first wife died by suicide.
“I went to Thailand 18 years ago after a trauma in my life, looking for peace, looking for some resolution that was not so dissimilar from what Rick was looking for” he said. “The circumstances were dramatically different. I was a year into a relationship with my now-wife, and I was as lost as Rick is lost. I had nothing for my partner. I understood, intimately, Rick’s frame of mind.”
Goggins opened up about his own relationship to spirituality, saying that learning to forgive himself and his circumstances and love himself was a crucial part of his ethos.
“The filming of this whole sequence was really, really personal,” he revealed. “A lot of it was really just in my head, except for that first scene where I come up and ask for help, and then I was just alone on the bench. I asked that no other actors come and watch.” He also opened up about the walk that Rick takes down the beach, with Chelsea in his arms.
“We talked at length about this walk. I said, “Rick is going to walk with her until he dies. He’s going to walk with her across the fucking Earth. He won’t stop walking with Chelsea in his arms.” The very thing that he had been looking for his whole life was staring him in the face. That’s the irony, and that’s the fucking tragedy.
Aimee Lou Wood (Chelsea)
Chelsea’s tragic death will have brought tears to many, and so might Aimee Lou Wood’s brief but touching tribute to the love story between Chelsea and Rick.
She posted a photo on Instagram of a graffiti that read: “I love you. R + C forever.” She explained in her caption: “I only went home once whilst filming White Lotus. This is what I saw on the first day back there. R and C forever.”
She told attendees at an early screening at the Four Seasons resort in Westlake Village, California what she took away from the ending.
“Do you know what I loved about that last episode is that I feel like there was a lot of hope in it.”
Jason Isaacs (Timothy Ratliff)
Timothy and his family’s outcome in the finale was all to play for right up until the end, and Isaacs spoke out about his character’s arc. What other character almost goes from murdering his entire family (by poisonous fruit smoothie, no less) to having one of his sons nearly die, to leaving the island ready to face his fate? His fate, in this instance, being all the FBI agents waiting to pounce over his dodgy business practices.
“Ironically, of all the characters that Mike throws into this mix, [Timothy’s] the one that actually, genuinely finds real spiritual enlightenment” he said. “He’s content with allowing fate to take him where he goes and has some new-found faith in his family that he doubted before, that they will be okay.”
Sam Nivola (Lochlan)
It will be hard for fans to forget the moment of realisation Timothy goes through when he realises that his son (whom he initially decided to spare) eats the poisoned fruit Tim was going to use to kill the rest of his family. One of the episode’s most shocking moments finds him collapsed outside, and while he’s ultimately revived, it does seem to be a wake-up call for Tim.
Speaking about filming this moment, Nivola told Variety: “Weirdly, it was fun. I’ve never gotten the chance to die in a show. And it’s an interesting thing because obviously it’s something that I’ve never experienced in real life.”
“It was bittersweet because over the course of that shoot, Jason really felt like my father. He’s one of my best friends,” he added.
Patrick Schwarzenegger (Saxon)
Nobody will be forgetting Saxon that scene in a hurry, and Schwarzenegger told attendees at the screening that he was worried that his character would be a sort of “one-note, kind of surface-level douche.” He said once he’d read episode five, he asked himself what he had signed up for – although Saxon does seem to go through some sort of epiphany by the end and leaves the island reading one of Chelsea’s books on spirituality.
“I think the reason why people root for Saxon is because Patrick’s goodness shines through,” Aimee Lou Wood told Vanity Fair about the ending. “He listens and I don’t think she can handle it. I actually think that she wants to be the seer and not the seen, and he’s trying to see her and he wants to be seen by her. Saxon is reading the book on the boat at the end. He’s still reading it. So, Mike does have faith that Saxon actually might become a better person from this. If Chelsea’s done that, she would love that. “
“I’m so emotional watching the end of that, because I chose not to read the [other parts of the] scripts. It’s a surreal experience spending so much time with these cast members and then watching someone die,” he said.
The White Lotus Season 3 is streaming on NOW
