WARNING: Spoilers ahead!
Walton Goggins reacted to the action-packed season three finale of The White Lotus on Monday, telling CBS Mornings that “no one guessed” that ending.
“All of us, being out in in the world, had to listen to—had the good fortune to listen to—people tell us their version of the story out on the street, and I had my fair share,” he said. “I just listened to them the way that I listened to Sam Rockwell in episode five” during that shocking monologue, he continued, “without judgment and just nodding ‘Mhm.‘”
While “some of them got very close,” he added, “no one guessed” the ending.
It would have been a difficult one to guess, to Goggins’ point, as the death of Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and the (near) death of the youngest Ratliff weren’t obvious predictions—although Goggins’ Rick Hatchett was literally gunning for his own demise since his desire to confront his father’s killer was revealed early on in the season.
Goggins also shared his thoughts about Rick killing Jim Hollinger in the finale, only to find out that the resort owner was his real father.
“Reading it for the first time, understanding that that is where we were headed and that’s the Mount Everest that we were climbing,” he said. “I sympathize so greatly with Rick’s pain because his entire life story was defined by this event that he was told by his mother. The genius of Mike White in that revelation Rick only has a couple of seconds to register it before he is being fired at.”
Rick’s impulses ultimately lead to the death of his partner Chelsea, who he’d only just verbally confirmed his devotion to after three years together. “It is the first love story in The White Lotus,” he added.
Wood told E! News that her character’s fate made filming and watching the last episode back an emotional experience for her. “For about two weeks before we shot it, I felt super weird,” she said. “It was like this odd, ominous thing that was just hanging over us... Chelsea doesn’t know what’s gonna happen to her, but I know, so it’s this odd thing.”
“It looked exactly how it felt, which was really strange,” she continued, “Like that whole bit, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what it felt like.‘”
