SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the Season 3 finale of HBO‘s The White Lotus.
It seems the Season 3 finale of The White Lotus has left its cast just as shell-shocked as the audience (and the guests at the ill-fated Thai resort).
“It’s really weird, and it looked exactly how it felt [to shoot], which was really strange,” a stunned Aimee Lou Wood told attendees at a discussion with her cast mates following a finale screening at the Four Seasons resort in Westlake Village, California on Sunday night. “It’s a lot, and it’s so clever, because at the end you want to hold the joy of the triumph…but you’re still there like ‘ehhh.’ It might just make you sit in that really achy place.”
Wood’s character Chelsea met her demise during the 90-minute finale, as did Walton Goggins’ Rick, along with several other key cast members.
Reflecting on the carnage and its aftermath, Wood also said: “Do you know what I loved about that last episode is that I feel like…there was a lot of hope in it. There was a lot of hope in it, and there was a lot of softness…I found it incredibly uncynical.”
Rightfully so, the cast was having a difficult time digesting the events that unfold in the final moments for these characters at The White Lotus Thailand, given it was the first time any of them had screened the finished episode as well.
“I don’t know how we’re supposed to talk about any of this,” joked Nicholas Duvernay, whose character Zion and mom Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) left the resort on perhaps the best terms of anyone. “We need some time to unpack that. There’s a lot to unpack there — 90 minutes of just chaos.”
Wood and Duvernay were joined at Sunday’s panel by Charlotte Le Bon, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sam Nivola, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Jon Gries, Leslie Bibb, and Tayme Thapthimthong. As difficult as it might have been, they did their best to make sense of the madness.
While everyone in the Ratliff family made it out alive, even after a near death experience for Lachlan thanks to a Lorazepam-induced murder-suicide plot gone wrong by dear old dad Timothy (Isaacs), they certainly aren’t leaving the resort on good terms, especially given what their about to find out about the patriarch.
Audiences will have to fill in the blanks about what happens to the family once they learn of Timothy’s money laundering scheme, but it’s safe to say that their money is gone and their lives are about to be much, much different. For better or worse? Well, that depends on who you ask.
“Ironically, of all the characters that Mike throws into this mix, [Timothy’s] the one that actually, genuinely finds real spiritual enlightenment,” Isaacs noted. “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, that they will they’ll find their way.”
Surprisingly enough, the Ratliff who might be the least able to handle the new way of life they’re about to be forced into is Piper. While she was the only one in the family who had set out to go on a spiritual journey to begin with, by the finale, all she’s learned is “she is her mother’s daughter,” as Hook put it.
“I actually love it though. I think it’s so brilliant. It’s so fun. So I’m like, ‘Oh, god, she’s just a little rich girl,” Hook continued. “I actually feel like she kind of did the reverse of everyone.”
The Season 3 finale certainly ties up a few big loose ends, but it also keeps many threads open, perhaps to be revisited in the upcoming fourth season, since the series has already been renewed. No word yet on where it will be set, or if anyone familiar faces will return, but creator Mike White did tease a bit about his idea in a featurette after the episode on Max.
As the only cast member to return for three consecutive seasons, Gries says that “every time I leave, I assume it’s over.” But, with Greg alive and $5 million poorer after Belinda and Zion’s scheming, the door appears to remain open for his character to return.
For now, all Gries can say is “you never know.”
