One more time for the people in the back: This article, just like this one and this one too, is practically bursting at the seams with SPOILERS about the conclusion of The White Lotus’ third season. If you’re running behind on the latest from Mike White and HBO, then proceed with caution. And with that out of the way, I can say, while paraphrasing comments made by White himself, that the Season 3 finale nearly included a hookup between Piper Ratliff, played by fellow Alabama native Sarah Catherine Hook, and Zion Lindsey, played by Nicholas Duvernay.
In a recently released bonus episode of The Official White Lotus Podcast, White, writer/director/creator of the HBO franchise, spoke at length about the influence of Buddhism on the latest season. Zeroing in on this point, he pointed to Lochlan, the youngest sibling in the Ratliff family, as someone who had “two difference voices” in his ear thanks to Piper and Saxon, who, in White’s mind, each represented two polar opposites.
As viewers already know, Piper’s would-be embrace of a simpler lifestyle was ultimately not to be, a character development that at one point was set to include a sexual encounter with Zion, whose mother is returning character Belinda, played by Natasha Rothwell.
“The part that was cut too, which is very disappointing, is that she decides to lose her virginity in the script in the last episode,” White said, as heard above. “She actually has sex with Zion, which is Belinda’s son, so she’s like, you know, there’s a whole scene where she’s like, ’It’s true, Saxon was right about this one thing. I need to get this over with.’ And after she leaves the monastery, she’s like, ‘I need to have sex’ and she’s scoping the restaurant.”
Ultimately, per White, the length of the episode factored into his decision to scrap the scene as written, not to mention his belief that perhaps this avenue would have meant he was doing “too much” as a storyteller in an already crowded episode.
“It’s an hour and a half already and it would have added like 10 minutes to the thing,” he explained. “It had a little bit of a romantic, 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.”
Monday, HBO announced that The White Lotus Season 3 finale saw a 51 percent jump in viewership when compared to Season 2’s closer, with the final figure said to come in at just over six million cross-platform viewers in the States. A fourth season is confirmed to be on the way, meaning, in this writer's opinion, now's the time to give Kid Cudi a call about joining the cast.
Check out Complex's list of The Best TV Shows to Watch on HBO Max Right Now and see where The White Lotus ranks on our list of The Top 20 HBO Shows Of All Time, Ranked.