SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details on The White Lotus Season 3, Episode 6. Patrick Schwarzenegger‘s Saxon and Sam Nivola‘s Lochlan shared more than just a kiss on The White Lotus, and the vibes between the Ratliff brothers have entirely shifted. The Ratliff brothers starred in one of the most shocking scenes of the latest season of the HBO drama as it takes on the taboo subject of incest and has the fictional characters questioning their decisions.
In the featurette following Episode 6, Nivola notes that although the series is set at a resort “focused on mindfulness,” on the flip side, the characters question “whether or not you can make peace with yourself and your demons.” And it’s those demons that Saxon and Lochlan are fighting with on the morning after their sexual encounter.
As the characters recuperate from the night of partying, they remember they shared more than a kiss. In the shocking moment of the night, Saxon recalls that his younger brother multi-tasked during a threesome and pleasured him while being with Charlotte Le Bon’s Chloe. “On the boat, Lochlan is leaning into the Saxon ethos,” Nivola says, while Schwarzenegger adds, “Lochlan is flowing in a different way that is all building to a moment of him getting more and more confident.”
“Then we have this moment of us two in bed — it’s just this heightened collapse,” Schwarzenegger says. The morning after the incident, Saxon and Lochlan have trouble talking to each other after everything that happened. “For Saxon what I’m feeling that morning is total confusion and disgust of myself and just like curiosity of what that means for everything that I stand for,” Schwarzenegger explains. “Overall, it definitely changes the dynamic.”
Nivola adds that Lochlan is “confused because I thought that would be something that would make you happy. But now suddenly he doesn’t even want to talk to me or look at me. And I’m just desperate for any kind of affirmation that I’m normal, but I’m not, and none of us are. We did a weird thing.”
Schwarzenegger says that his character is usually “the more dominant one,” but following the incident, he felt “insecure.” This is noticeable in the scene with Chloe and Aimee Lou Wood’s Chelsea, where they “bully” him, recalling the moment with his brother when Saxon acts like he didn’t remember. “It just destroys Saxon,” Schwarzenegger says. “It’s the first time you see Saxon not being able to speak and getting all flustered.” In the scene, Chelsea tells Saxon, “I don’t think there’s a drug in the world that would make me get with my brother.” Social media was abuzz dissecting every scene of The White Lotus, and they noticed that the Ratliff brothers were wearing each other’s swim shorts the next day.
Patrick Schwarzenegger opens up about the unsettling incest plotline, claiming there’s more than what just meets the eye. He explained to The Hollywood Reporter, “There’s some sensationalism, but then there’s also the stuff behind the wall of the character and what he’s dealing with in the conflict of what just happened. What is that going to do to who he thinks he is? His thoughts on, what is it like to be a man? What is a man? What makes all these different things that he thought he stood for in the episode and the days before?”
Speaking about writer-director Mike White’s vision for the series, Patrick added, “Mike does a great job with my character with that scene, but also in past seasons of always bringing something that is really fun and outrageous and sparks a conversation that gets people talking, but also has to do a lot with the pilgrimage of the characters’ story and where he’s going. And here, especially with the relationship Saxon has with his little brother. There’s always more than what just meets the eye of the shock value on the screen.”
However, Patrick’s co-star Sam Nivola admitted that the cast and crew were “unsettled” while filming the sequence. He said, “We really trusted Mike because there’s always a very shocking, crazy, intense moment in every season. It’s never just for the sake of being shocking, it always serves the story. And that [incest] scene is really the inciting incident for where our relationship goes next. It’s a great storytelling tactic.”
This isn’t the first time White has written transgressive queer characters. In Season 1, he wrote the character of a gay hotel manager who sexually harasses an employee. In Season 2, he shows a group of wealthy, dangerous gay men conspire to kill the fan-favourite character of Tanya (played by Jennifer Coolidge).
The White Lotus Season 3 consists of eight episodes. It premiered on February 16, with a new episode released weekly. Dexterous storytelling challenges social norms and deftly opens conversations about morality and human connections, making the shocking scene between Saxon and Lochlan a poignant commentary.
