Spoilers ahead for the Season 3 finale of The White Lotus.
HBO is known for its acclaimed television, and that includes water cooler programming like The White Lotus. The dark comedy (which is streaming with a Max subscription) just wrapped up its third season on the air, which had wild moments include an incest storyline with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola. The latter actor spoke about his perception of that viral story, as well as his character Lochlan's devastating finale sequence.
While fans figure out how to watch The White Lotus Season 3, super fans like myself are still recovering from the wild finale. Fans freaked out about The Ratliff brothers kissing, and it only got crazier when their threesome was revealed. But how do the actors feel? Nivola spoke to Deadline about bringing that viral moment to life, saying:
He’s a people pleaser. His brother’s whole thing is, I’m the sex guy, I’m really into sex, one of my passions in life is sex and money, basically, and working out. The reason Lochlan wants to get laid is because he wants to do what his brother wants him to do, he just wants approval from him because he looks up to his brother, and so then the whole sex act is just a really fucked up, extreme way of trying to make him happy and proud.
Rather than harboring deep sexual feelings for his brother, Nivola maintains that Saxon was mostly just trying to get his brother's approval during their threesome with Chloe on the yacht.
The story revolving around the Ratliffs and incest was something fans caught early in Season 3, thanks to the brothers sharing a room and Jason Isaacs' nude scene. But the actor doesn't think that Lachlan is actually sexually attracted to his older brother. In Nivola's words:
I don’t think he’s sexually attracted to his brother. To me, that wasn’t something I was thinking about, like he’s gay or straight or whatever he is. I don’t think it really matters for his purposes, or for my purposes as an actor because I think his whole struggle isn’t about sex, and it’s not about love, and it’s not about sexuality. It’s more about just people and his relationship to people, whether they’d be male or female or anything in between.
Despite how viral this plot line was, The White Lotus's Season 3 finale also took a bold swing when it came to Lochlan. Namely, by nearly killing the youngest of the Ratliff kids off.
Lochlan's Near-Death Experience Could Have Beeen More Scary.
After Isaacs' Timothy nearly killed the entire family (except for Lochlan), the poisonous seeds from the suicide tree nearly killed the youngest kid. He made a shake with the remnants, and the show illustrated his near-death by putting him underwater just like Tanya, Chelsea, and Rick. In the same interview, Nivola shared how this sequence could have gone down, offering:
We filmed that fully underwater. It was really scary, It was kind of amazing. I was down there, probably 10 feet underwater, with scuba divers all around me giving me their oxygen masks. I couldn’t see, obviously, because I didn’t have goggles on. We shot it all day, and we did a couple versions of it where I was in a body bag and crawling out of a body bag in my dream. And that was so scary, because I had to be zipped in a body bag with no air, and then unzip myself. Of course, it was all safe. They wouldn’t have put me in a in a unsafe situation but it was really scary in a fun way.
Yikes. Seeing Lachlan almost die was already an emotional experience as an audience member, and it would have been even more upsetting if he was in a body bag. And it sounds like filming that was terrifying in its own right.
In the end the body bag wasn't used in the final cut, and it seems like the scene didn't need it. Seeing Timothy find his son was already emotionally devastating, and I'm relieved that the character didn't end up actually dying. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for fan favorites Chelsea and Rick.
The first three season of The White Lotus are streaming in their entirety on Max now. Unfortunately, we shouldn't expect any more episodes as part of the 2025 TV premiere list.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
