‘Let’s just forget about it!’
Spoilers ahead for the sixth episode of “The White Lotus” Season 3.
They’re keeping it in the family.
“The White Lotus” Season 3 took a bizarre turn towards incest in the fifth episode, as brothers Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lochlan Ratliff (Sam Nivola) shared a kiss last week. They were drinking, doing drugs and partying with Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon).
The sixth episode revealed that their night didn’t end there — and neither did the incest.
The next morning, both brothers keep remembering it in fragments, which made Saxon recoil: Lochlan had sex with Chloe while Saxon was on the bed next to them. During the act, Lochlan reached over and stimulated Saxon with his hand.
Later in the episode, Saxon, Chelsea and Chloe have a conversation about it. They discuss whether or not they’ve had “a threesome,” and Chloe says, “What about last night?”
“That was my little brother,” Saxon argues. “That was a joke. You guys forced us,” he adds, referring to how Chloe and Chelsea kissed before Chloe gestured that the brothers should kiss too.
Chloe responds, “I didn’t force him to jerk you off.”
A flustered and embarrassed Saxon snaps, “That never happened!”
Chelsea says, “I don’t think there’s a drug in the world that would make me get with my brother.”
Attempting to calm an agitated Saxon down, Chloe says, “Everyone has their thing. It’s fine.”
Saxon says, “It’s not a thing. Let’s just forget about it, please!”
During a preseason interview, “The White Lotus” executive producer David Bernad revealed if there was any behind-the-scenes discussion about whether an incest plot was going too far.
“No, in terms of that — that’s all [creator Mike White]. Mike is brilliant, and I think those big story turns are not just for shock,” he exclusively told The Post.
Bernad added, “There’s a specific reason in terms of the narrative storytelling, and the larger thematic idea Mike is trying to get across.”
He explained, “As the season wraps up, you’ll see the purpose of that story turn. The show goes there for a larger thematic idea. I love that family storyline, especially the brother story — and, it culminates in a very satisfying way.”
Schwarzenegger didn’t appear to feel the same way, as Le Bon told Vulture: “I think for Patrick it was really difficult. For Sam, he was kind of like, ‘It’s whatever, let’s just do it well one time and it will be over.’ You know? Because if you don’t do it well the first time, then you have to do it over and over again.”
“But Patrick’s reaction in the episode is his genuine reaction,” she said. “We all thought he was going to throw up.”
In an interview with The New Yorker in February, White said Season 3 had a gay plotline that is “truly Satanic.”
He told the outlet that he likes depicting “gay life” as transgressive or perverted to connect it to human sexuality in general.
“It’s not all harmless,” he said. “But it’s not inherently harmful. It’s inherently very natural. We’re animals.”
Each season of the Emmy-winning HBO dramedy follows a different cast of unhappy rich people on vacation at a branch of the fictional “White Lotus” resort.
In Season 3, which is set in Thailand, Saxon is a frat boy/finance bro type who is on a quest for vacation sex. Lochlan is his younger brother, who is about to go to college and is trying to figure out his own identity and what he wants from sex.
Their sister, Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), is more spiritual. Meanwhile, their mother, Victoria (Parker Posey), is frequently on pills, and their father, Timothy (Jason Isaacs), is lost in his own world because he is under investigation for a white-collar crime and is spiraling, but is hiding this information from his family.
Rounding out Season 3 is troubled Rick (Walton Goggins) and his much younger girlfriend, Chelsea (Wood), and a trio of fortysomething women on a girls trip — Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon).
During a preseason HBO press conference, Schwarzenegger teased that his real-life family — including famous dad, Arnold, mom, Maria Shriver, and brother-in-law, Chris Pratt — were “super excited” to watch him in “The White Lotus” and “don’t know anything” about what was in store, including the incest plot.
Schwarzenegger also spoke to “Today” about White’s intent. “He wants to leave that up to the interpretation of the audience of what is happening,” he said.
“Was a power shift happening? Is there a different power dynamic between him and Lochy? Is Lochy coming on to him? Is it the drugs? Is it the girls pressuring him? What is it? So, I think he leaves that open-ended for the audience to try to decipher,” Schwarzenegger said.
Nivola, 21, revealed to GQ that the scene was shot “a few different ways,” adding, “We talked about it a lot.”
“I think at the end of the day, it was supposed to just be like they’re all really f–ked up, and, of course, kissing your brother is incredibly wrong and weird and gross.”
Nivola has said that he believes Lochlan’s “an incredibly insecure guy” and “a real people pleaser who needs something from the people.”
“He’s not very self-sufficient, he needs love and support from the people around him in his life, and I think he’s willing to go to all the lengths to find the people he loves,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“There’s a push and pull between sex, and then Piper trying to control his future. But for me? I don’t think Lochlan really gives a s–t which path he goes down. I think it’s more that he’s going to choose whichever path feels like it’s with the person who loves him the most,” Nivola added.
“The White Lotus” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO and Max.
Source link