This post contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of The White Lotus.
In the week leading up to Sunday night’s season finale of The White Lotus, theories abounded about who would wind up the dead bodies floating in the water that had been so tantalizingly teased in the first episode. Would it be the Ratliffs, the privileged family whose fortunes had unexpectedly changed without most of their knowledge? The three fabulous frenemies who had spent their luxurious Thailand vacation alternating between envying, pitying, and gossiping about each other? Belinda, the White Lotus employee from Hawaii, who found herself caught in a standoff with a dangerous man from seasons prior? Or any of the help, ranging from the hapless security guard to the beautiful dancer to the Russian wellness guru and his fellow criminals?
But the departed, it turns out, were none other than the season’s most tragic couple: Rick (Walton Goggins) and Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood).
Rick, the idiot that he is, returns to the White Lotus from Bangkok, where he failed to murder Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), the man who he believes killed his father. He appears to be a changed man, finally ready to commit to Chelsea. Their conversation at dinner smacks strongly of foreshadowing, containing equally tender and ominous exchanges about their future. Amor fati, explains Chelsea at one point, “means you have to embrace your fate, good or bad; whatever will be, will be.” She continues, “At this point, we’re linked, so if the bad thing happens to you, it happens to me,” followed by the even more worrying line, “I think we’re going to be together forever, don’t you?” (“That’s the plan,” Rick replies, all but sealing their fate.)
The next morning, Jim arrives at the resort, which he happens to own. He confronts Rick at breakfast, calling his mother “a drunk and a slut,” and “a liar” to boot. Rick’s father was “no saint,” he says with a well-earned certainty. “You didn’t miss out on much.”
Rick, returning to Chelsea, is visibly rattled. “How can I get over everything he’s taken from me? He took my whole fucking life,” he seethes, while Chelsea begs him to remember that he has her love, and she’s right here. But Rick seems not to hear her; he bolts, looking for the resort’s meditation teacher who helped ground him early on during their stay. She asks him to wait while she’s in a session. Unfortunately for everyone in the resort, during that ill-timed wait, Rick spots Jim, his wife Sritala (Lek Patravadi), and the three gal pals (Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, and Leslie Bibb) taking a photo—and his rage boils over. Brushing off Chelsea with an order to “get the fuck out of here,” Rick strides over to the group, seizes Jim’s gun, spits out a “fuck you,” and shoots twice, killing the man who—in a twist that any viewer with a shred of media literacy could see coming—turns out to be his father.
In the ensuing gunfight, there’s more carnage. Rick kills Sritala’s two bodyguards, but when he turns around, he finds Chelsea bleeding out on the ground, having been caught by a stray bullet. Thus dies this season’s most popular character, the object of much fan adoration, teeth admiration, and grisly speculation over the rule of threes. Rick, seemingly stunned, lifts Chelsea’s body and carries her toward the water—where he is shot in the back by security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong), ultimately fulfilling the pair’s promise that they would be together forever.
It’s a poetic ending for Rick and Chelsea, one of the only couples on The White Lotus whose love for each other was untainted by mistrust, jealousy, greed, or other base human vices that the series places front and center time and time again. The only thing that got in between them was Rick’s desire for vengeance, which ultimately proved to be their downfall. Chelsea, a romantic through and through, was so good at reading other people—like Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger)—but remained willfully blind to her own partner’s fatal flaw. Rick, despite his charms, was fundamentally weak, obsessed with the idea that he could assign blame for his life on someone he had never met. Together, they embodied the “tragic lovers” trope—and tragic lovers always have to die.
Charlotte Le Bon, who plays Chelsea’s new friend Chloe, was proven right: People really are going to hate Mike White for this.
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