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The White Lotus's finale was "a classic theme of Greek tragedy," says showrunner
Turns out, if we'd been properly paying attention in season 3 of The White Lotus, we could have seen it coming
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Spoilers follow for the season finale for HBO’s The White Lotus. Keep reading at your own risk, really.
Well, now we know who didn’t make it out of the third season of The White Lotus alive… and, for once, it was multiple characters. For the third season, not one but three characters died in the finale — but according to series creator Mike White, we should have seen it coming all along.
“It’s a classic theme of Greek tragedy — someone killing the thing they love while trying to get some revenge,” White said of the deaths of Rick and Chelsea on the official White Lotus podcast. “Chelsea has this kind of romantic fatalism about their relationship, and you want to buy into it.”
It’s worth noting that Chelsea herself called it earlier this season; after two near-death experiences, she told Rick and the audience that things happened in threes, and that she didn’t think she’d survive the next one. Little did she expect that Rick and his estranged nemesis-and-actual-father, Jim (although maybe a generation raised on Star Wars saw that twist coming) were also going to end up dying in the same shoot out.
White also teased the idea that, despite everything, Rick and Chelsea’s death isn’t necessarily only tragic.
“I like the idea of giving [Chelsea] a lot of prattle that seems like nonsense, but that ultimately, you’re like, ‘oh, maybe,’ and at the end, she talks about the groups working divine goal, so, whether I believe all that, it’s nice to have a voice of that because she has this deep sense of belief, ‘amor fati,’ and that things happen for a reason. Maybe somehow that takes off the edge of the sadness of her death in some way because it feels like she has some kind of higher power to what happens next.”
All eight episodes of HBO’s The White Lotus season 3 are now available to revisit on Max.
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