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Mike White just did that, and we're here to explain!
Walton Goggins; underwater arm and hand; Jason Isaacs on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBO
Editor's note: This article contains major spoilers about the grand finale of The White Lotus season 3.
Mike White has done it again: The White Lotus season 3 finale delivered a shocking and frightening ending to the story that left viewers feeling gagged, gooped, and gathered across the board.
With ratings reaching an all-time high for the Emmy Award-winning HBO series, fans spent several weeks discussing all possible angles, theories, and rumors regarding which characters could potentially die at The White Lotus finale. Ultimately, no singular theory was totally accurate because many of them were pointing to the right ending.
Here's everything you need to know about the tragic, poetic, and deadly grand finale of The White Lotus season 3.
Timothy used poisonous fruits to make deadly smoothies for the Ratliff family.
Jason Isaacs on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBO
The speculation around Timothy not being able to live with himself as the patriarch of the Ratliff family if he could no longer provide for them — fearing that his financial and legal woes would be too much for wife and kids to bear — turned out to partially accurate.
As many rumors suggested, Timothy did indeed set in motion a plan for him and his entire family to die in order to avoid going back home and facing their new financial problems. Victoria spelled it out for her husband that she didn't have the will to keep living a life that wasn't going to be comfortable. Saxon also warned his father that his entire social standing (and identity) was attached to Timothy's success.
At the finale, Piper begrudgingly confessed that life in the monastery wasn't the Buddhism dreams that she anticipated. Though she was embarrassed to admit it, Piper explained that she couldn't do a full year of sleeping in the monastery, eating the food available to them there, and being away from the comforts of her home.
A blender on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBOTimothy's reaction to those confessions resulted in him spending most of The White Lotus finale gathering the deadly fruit from the pong pong tree (Cerbera odollam) poisonous plant introduced to the Ratliff family in the very first episode. As explained by the National Geographic, "The effects of [this] deadly fruit are so notorious in Southeast Asia that it has earned the morbid nickname 'the suicide tree.'"
While enjoying their last dinner in Thailand as a family on vacation, Timothy declared that he would make smoothies for all of them upon returning to their hotel suite. And that's precisely what he did: Alcoholic smoothies (casually referring to it as a piña colada) using the deadly fruit as the base ingredient.
However, to the surprise of many viewers, Timothy did establish one exception.
Lochlan wasn't allowed to drink one of the smoothies made with the deadly fruit.
Sam Nivola on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBO
Victoria, Saxon, and Piper all talked about struggling with the idea of living an uncomfortable life — that was the entire Ratliff clan except for Lochlan, who never said such a thing to Timothy or anyone else. In fact, unbeknownst to the rest of the family, Lochlan was even entertaining the idea of staying in Thailand with Piper and living with her in the monastery.
Seemingly for that reason, Timothy prohibited Lochlan from drinking one of the smoothies made with the deadly poisonous fruit, arguing that Lochlan wasn't old enough to drink alcohol yet. An odd excuse for a father who didn't have any issues with Lochlan drinking alcohol this entire trip, but everyone just shrugged and went along with it.
Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBO
Timothy carefully collected the deadly fruits, mixed them into alcoholic smoothies, served them into four very full glasses, and distributed them to Victoria, Saxon, and Piper… saving one for himself, and telling Lochlan to drink some soda instead. But it didn't take long for Timothy to regret this wild decision he had just made.
After fantasizing about terminating his own life — and the lives of his loved ones — in a few dream montages, Timothy wasn't able to actually handle watching his oblivious family members drinking these glasses of deadly smoothies right in front of him.
From one second to the next, Timothy snapped out of it and took the drinks away from them, disposing all of the contents from their cups on the sink… And officially gave up on the insane, desperate plan to avoid facing the consequences of his irresponsible actions.
Lochlan used the same blender to make another drink the next day, ingesting contents of the deadly fruit.
A neck on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBO
Depending on where you stood with the Ratliff family, watching them all be spared of dying from drinking a smoothie felt relieving… or annoying!
The following day, Lochlan woke up and made himself a protein smoothie using the same blender that mixed the deadly drinks, meaning that his smoothie was absolutely contaminated through no fault of his own. And unlike the night before, Lochlan drank that entire cup by himself while slowly making his way outside of their resort suite.
It didn't take long for Lochlan to be fully paralyzed, on the floor, after drinking what he assumed was a protein shake of sorts. The character was even shown in a dream sequence of himself underwater, trying to swim to the surface but being unable to, and seeing the silhouette of four monks staring down at him drowning.
Sam Nivola and Jason Isaacs on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBO
Of all people who could've found Lochlan slowly dying from drinking the smoothie, Timothy somehow managed to get to his son first. As Lochlan seemed to drift away into his metaphorical (but also literal) death, Timothy held his son, and shook his body, and called out his name.
Watching this final episode, it's not hard to imagine viewers being fully convinced that the ultimate tragedy among the Ratliffs was that they'd all be forced to deal with the emotional baggage that came with Lochlan's death. At a certain point, however, Lochlan actually woke up, and then threw up the smoothie, and was actually alive.
Rick told Chelsea that he was now thinking of a life with her after this trip.
Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBO
The entire thesis of Rick Hatchett as a character on The White Lotus was his singular focus on finding the man who had killed his father: Jim Hollinger, who co-owned The White Lotus resort in Thailand with his wife, Sritala Hollinger.
Over the course of that week, however, Rick actually opened up to Chelsea in ways he had never done before. He even had therapy sessions where he expressed his lifelong anger over the murder of his dad. Through this process, Rick actually fell in love with Chelsea, learned a thing or two from her optimistic viewpoints, and started to get a clear picture of the life they could build together after Thailand.
Jim Hollinger paid a visit to the resort for a hostile confrontation with Rick.
Scott Glenn on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBO
Episode 7 culminated into Rick finally coming face-to-face with Jim Hollinger, the man he had been chasing all along, fully believing that Jim was responsible for killing his dad. However, when he had the chance to fulfill that revenge and kill Jim in the comfort of his own home, Rick somehow made peace with the situation and didn't go through with the plan.
At the finale, Jim — who had felt incredibly disrespected by Rick making up a story to visit his home with the intention of murdering him — went out of his way to confront Rick at The White Lotus resort. Despite actually feeling that this chapter in his life had come to an end, Rick's ire came back up swinging as Jim called his mother a "slut" and declared that Rick "didn't miss out on much" from not having met his father.
It didn't take long for Rick to locate his gun, confront Jim one last time, and actually shoot him to death. As Jim fell to the ground and died, his wife, Sritala, delivered a full Empire Strikes Back moment as she yelled at Rick that Jim was his actual father.
As Rick processed that shocking piece of information and tried to find his balance, he turned around and realized that the worst thing that could've possibly happen, did: Chelsea, who was running toward Rick to understand what happened, got shot by one of Jim's security guards.
Rick carried Chelsea's dead body toward the end of his own life.
Tayme Thapthimthong, Walton Goggins, and Aimee Lou Wood on The White Lotus season 3 finale.
HBO
The last few moments of Rick and Chelsea on The White Lotus were tragically poetic. Chelsea's superstitious premonition that bad things happen in threes came true: After almost dying from an armed robbery and almost dying from a snake bite, now she did die from walking into a gunfire shooting between Rick and Jim's security staff. That premonition was then true yet again as three deaths — Jim's, Chelsea's, and Rick's — within the main cast of characters of the show took place back to back.
Surprisingly, the speculated face-off between Gaitok and Valentin never materialized into anything. And yet, the season-long storyline of Gaitok having to toughen up and do his job — which could sometimes involve protecting the resort by shooting a gun — still came to a head as Gaitok aimed his gun at Rick, heard Sritala yelling at him to shoot, and ultimately did fire the weapon.
Rick, who carried Chelsea on his arms and walked aimlessly by the water, got shot on his back — prompting the unlikely couple to fall and descend under water… together.
In the end, not only was Chelsea's premonition realized, but Rick's recent vow to her was also kept: Rick did spend the rest of his life, albeit a brief one, with Chelsea.
HBO's The White Lotus season 3 is now streaming on Max.
