White Lotus: Mike White reveals cut scene between Piper and Zion

Mike White has revealed that the season finale of The White Lotus season 3 almost had even more twists and turns.

Sign up for the Out Newsletter to keep up with what's new in LGBTQ+ culture and entertainment — delivered three times a week straight (well…) to your inbox!

White, who created and writes the show, was on the White Lotus Official Season 3 Podcast when he said that even though the latest finale was 87 minutes long – half an hour longer than a usual episode – he did have to cut some things.

One major plot he cut was a hookup between Piper Ratliff and Belinda's son Zion. The scene, White said, would have come after Piper spent the night in a Buddhist monastery and realized that the simple life is not for her.

"[Piper] decides to lose her virginity in the script in the last episode And she actually has sex with Zion," White said on the podcast, per Deadline. "There's this whole scene where she's like, 'It's true. Saxon (her brother, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger) is right about this one thing. I need to get this over with.' And you know how after she leaves the monastery she’s just like, 'I need to have sex.'"

Unfortunately, the scene didn't fit with the pacing of the episode.

"It would have added 10 minutes to the thing," White said. "And it had a little bit of a rom-com vibe in the middle of trying to kill the family with the pong pong fruits. It just felt like I was trying to do too much narratively."

In the end, while Piper didn't lose her virginity, she did figure out who she really is, saying she's a "princess who needs things to be a certain way" and can't move to the monastery like she planned, much to her mother's delight.

The season 3 finale had 6.2 million viewers, the biggest ever same-day audience for the show, per Deadline.