Season 3: A Final Goodbye with Aimee Lou Wood

Speaker 1 This is Marshawn Beast Mode Lynch. Prize Pick is making sports season even more fun.
On Prize Picks, whether you're a football fan, a basketball fan, it always feels good to be right.

Speaker 1 And right now, new users get $50 instantly in lineups when you play your first $5. The app is simple to use.
Pick two or more players, pick more or less on their stat projections.

Speaker 1 Anything from touchdown to threes, and if you're right, you can win big mix and match players from any sport on PrizePicks, Prize America's number one daily fantasy sports app.

Speaker 1 PrizePicks is available in 40-plus states, including California, Texas, Florida, and Georgia. Most importantly, all the transactions on the app are fast, safe, and secure.

Speaker 2 Download the PrizePicks app today and use code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

Speaker 2 PrizePicks, it's good to be right. Must be present in a certain six.
Visit PrizePicks.com for restrictions and details.

Speaker 3 I didn't think the pain from the shingles rash would affect simple, everyday tasks like bathing, getting dressed, or even walking around. I was wrong.

Speaker 3 Though not everyone at risk will develop it, 99% of people over the age of 50 already have the virus that causes shingles, and it could reactivate at any time.

Speaker 3 I developed it, and the blistering rash lasted for weeks. Don't learn the hard way, like I did.
Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. Sponsored by GSK.

Speaker 4 But you know, I was never too worried.

Speaker 4 Because I'm more fatty.

Speaker 4 You know what that means?

Speaker 3 I don't know what that means.

Speaker 4 It means you have to embrace your fate, good or bad. Whatever will be, will be.

Speaker 4 And at this point, we're linked, so if a bad thing happens to you, it happens to me.

Speaker 4 I think we're going to be together forever, don't you?

Speaker 5 Hello, and welcome to the White Lotus Official Podcast Companion to Season 3. I'm Gia Talentino.

Speaker 6 And I'm Josh Bearman.

Speaker 5 And welcome to the last hurrah, the bonus episode for our season three companion podcast. We'll be talking to Mamie Lou Wood later on.

Speaker 5 But first, like, we're just going to be talking about the big things of this season. What the fuck was this all about?

Speaker 6 My big question actually is like, are these seasons each about something different? Or are they all about sort of some version of the same thing?

Speaker 6 We started off early on talking about my whole kind of like my special private thesis about season one, which is that it wasn't about wealth or money or privilege, that it was actually this story that essentially explored Buddhist ideas of suffering and happiness.

Speaker 6 And then, of course, now

Speaker 6 that's the explicit exploration here.

Speaker 5 It's interesting because people, I think people will have said,

Speaker 5 like everyone liked to be like, first season is about money, second season is about sex, third season, it's about spirituality, it's about life and death.

Speaker 5 But all of these things are the same idea to me. Like, does that make sense to you? Like, it's like, The condition of being human is to live in a state of identity and desire.

Speaker 5 And these are the things that cause, that cause you to self-imprison. These are the things that cause your suffering.
The things that we desire tend to be money and sex. Right.

Speaker 5 So it's like, it's the same. It's always going to be the same mess of themes to me.
I mean, there's an aesthetic tilt towards one thing over the other. Like season two is so like hot, Sicilian.

Speaker 5 It's a very bodily season, et cetera. And this,

Speaker 5 there's lots of eternal return. There's a lot of bouncing droplets.
There's, you know, there's a lot of, you don't know what time it is of the day because it's this golden Thailand hazy.

Speaker 6 It's always magic hour.

Speaker 5 It's always magic hour. It's 10 a.m.
It's magic hour. 3 p.m., magic hour.
Middle of the night, somehow still magic hour. But you know what I mean? Like, I think your theory is correct.

Speaker 5 And I think it's also, yeah, I think it's every single story.

Speaker 5 And I think that there's no real difference between the prison of identity and the prison of desire for money, the prison of desire for sex that you can't have or even sex that you can.

Speaker 5 Like, it feels like the same exact question to me.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, I was thinking about your your response to kind of the Buddhist treatise about season one. You're like, well, all stories are in some way about needs.

Speaker 6 But I think what's actually different in this case, the point is, in fact, that all those needs are irrelevant, right?

Speaker 6 So that, because if the whole idea is like laying down this kind of Buddhist foundation for the story, it's like all the care, everything else that everybody is saying is basically irrelevant.

Speaker 6 And only what's relevant is how you look past all those needs and sort of discover something.

Speaker 6 Because in a traditional storytelling, you'd have the needs set something into motion, and then it gets the plot gets resolved.

Speaker 6 And then, as we see now in season three, the resolution of season three entails this kind of overture with the monk saying the attempt for resolution is also causing you suffering.

Speaker 6 So, what if there is no resolution?

Speaker 6 And what if the story doesn't need to be resolved and it doesn't, and you don't need to have anxiety seeking resolution all the time? Right.

Speaker 6 And season two, it does feel like pretty distinct because it is this bedroom farce where it's about how how to actually manage your needs in daily life with the transformation of the sexual politics of the foursome.

Speaker 6 And there's sort of like a trade of insight and wisdom in that process. And so, in that case, those characters are learning how to manage theirselves and their identity in their daily life.

Speaker 6 Whereas season one and three were about sort of escaping the needs of your daily life. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think that one of the things that this season is asking overtly, and that the other seasons were not, is like, do you have a soul?

Speaker 5 Do you have, like, simply, do you have a soul? Which of these characters has a soul? What would remain of you if your life changed drastically?

Speaker 5 Like, what, what is there actually to you underneath whatever? And that to me, it's like.

Speaker 5 It's like Lachlan is the one kind of with the claim on it because he's not, he's the one that is not clinging to a belief structure yet.

Speaker 5 And he's the one that kind of has an intact soul almost as a result, you know? Like there's something where,

Speaker 5 like I was going to ask you,

Speaker 5 which of these characters' belief system sort of stands the test of this week at the White Lotus, you know? Like, I think kind of Chelsea's kind of does.

Speaker 5 Chelsea is a whackadoo. Like, hey, let me read this book about how we're all sorted into groups one through 12.
And if we're in, you know, and we're both in group seven.

Speaker 5 And so that means we're something to each other. Like, but she's, she's right.
Like, Chelsea has a belief in something beyond the visible and given, and it's an extremely open-ended one.

Speaker 5 It's one that does not seek to establish or control anything. It's, it's just her entire belief system is that there's something beyond this and there's something we can do with that.

Speaker 5 And that I think she's kind of probably objectively correct in that she's kind of vindicated.

Speaker 5 And the other ones that I think like the belief system, like they're ones that obviously don't, the rat, like most of the rat lifts, their whole belief belief system is going down the tubes.

Speaker 6 Although Lachlan basically develops a belief system along the way, that I mean, he's the one that almost intuits the message when he says to Saxon,

Speaker 6 What if life is just a test to see if you can become a better person?

Speaker 5 Yeah, right. And again, it's a belief system that does not, it doesn't seek to establish a rigidity of like, this is how you should be, this is how you shouldn't.

Speaker 5 Like, Lachlan is like, it's the motion of it. So, it's Lachlan and it's Chelsea, and I think it's Lori, too.
You know, like

Speaker 5 I think what she says at dinner is really nice. It's like, then I realize that perhaps the meeting is just simply that I have existed and so have you.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 It's interesting also because then, I mean, I would say.

Speaker 6 We don't know where Saxon's belief system is going to wind up, but he's now sort of primed to have a belief system.

Speaker 6 And of course, he is who Lachlan is reacting against when he's trying to impress on him his idea of alpha male manhood and dominance, all of which we now suspect that's actually not his true identity yeah and i want sexton to come back because i want to see what that actual where his belief system takes him yeah but yeah chelsea strong belief system that permeates the whole show i would say

Speaker 5 there's something in here about whose sense of self is capacious enough to accommodate multiplicity.

Speaker 5 Like the people whose sense of self and sense of identity fails are the ones who understand their identity to be one of

Speaker 5 it's the most rigid ones, right? It's like Victoria. It's like probably Jacqueline and Kate, you know, that their sense of self and identity is just very firmly in a bounded, checkmarked, good,

Speaker 5 admirable. visible, you know, and that is me and everything else is folded into that narrative.
And the people whose senses of self don't trap them, but

Speaker 5 ground them and free them or whatever are the people, it seems to me, whose senses of self are firm insofar as they are open-ended.

Speaker 5 Perhaps all the way to Frank, who seems to be able to accommodate a 45-hour crack binge or whatever.

Speaker 5 And he's just like, Yeah, I'm in my underwear stabbing this mannequin, and tomorrow I'll be doing my ablutions at the temple or whatever.

Speaker 6 Frank is like,

Speaker 6 he's achieved some kind of like supersatory state of like, I exist at all identities simultaneously. I'm a kaleidoscopic identity.
I'm all these different ones in my weird role play and in life.

Speaker 6 And so he's completely, he snaps back to being at peace instantaneously, which I mean, we're kind of joking, but also because that was such a bombshell and almost probably the weirdest thing that anybody will see on TV

Speaker 6 this year. And then, but also quite profound, right?

Speaker 5 a shockingly surprisingly profound too and then where he winds up even though he's a side character i think is quite meaningful you kind of get the the impression with frank you know who's like okay here's my meth and my knife

Speaker 5 and and shift five of hookers from nightclub downstairs or whatever and you know the next day i'll be back at the temple like I don't know if this is my personal projection onto this character, but I

Speaker 5 I get it. Yeah, I do get it.

Speaker 5 Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Well, I don't think that Frank experiences anything as inherently better than the other.

Speaker 5 Like I think he probably understands sobriety as something that is a necessary structure for his life to be clear about himself and his flaws and his the danger zones.

Speaker 5 And but I don't think he's beating himself up at the temple. the next day as he's bowing.
I think he's just like, wow, the great wheel of life contains multitudes. And that was me.
And this is me.

Speaker 5 And I'm a terrible person. And I am a transcended person.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 6 I like how we've decided that Frank is the most enlightened being in the entire season.

Speaker 5 He is under zero illusions about who he is. You know, like he is, he is not, he is not bullshitting himself.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 5 He's scrubbed out all of his bullshit. And I don't know, there's something to be said for that.

Speaker 5 Like there's obviously a hard limit to where self-knowledge will get you morally, but within the framework of the people we've been presented with this season, there is like a profound freedom he has and this absolute self-knowledge of his failures and his freedoms kind of.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 There's something interesting about how Piper and Saxon almost switch places. Like it's like there's a symmetry in the way that like they begin the season and Saxon is like, I'm American psycho.

Speaker 5 I'm a man of the world. I'm about money.
I'm about conquest. I'm about sex.
Piper is like, I'm wearing a white nightgown. I have pure thoughts.
I transcend my position.

Speaker 5 Like, I merely wish to be a beautiful flower floating on the wind, directing my thoughts towards peace or whatever.

Speaker 5 And then by the end, Piper is like, hmm, like, I'm going to text my girlfriends and set up cocktail night or whatever, you know? It's like, like, perhaps she comes back down to earth.

Speaker 6 She floats back down gently.

Speaker 5 Yeah, she floats back down to earth. She's, she's like, okay, what if actually I just stay rich and volunteer bi-weekly? And like, perhaps that's like the version of life that I.

Speaker 5 And Saxon is like, what if

Speaker 5 everything I've ever believed is wrong and I need to find love and a soul?

Speaker 5 And that's fascinating. They switch.

Speaker 6 I feel like the other,

Speaker 6 this is more subtle, but the other character who escapes the prison, as it were, is Lori.

Speaker 6 And then by extension, she offers some of that to Kate and Jacqueline by virtue of her little speech that like resets their whole relationship, right?

Speaker 6 At the beginning, we realize that she's the unhappy one. They're on the victory tour, but she's unhappy.
And then at the end, though, she has some kind of, we don't actually even see it. It's funny.

Speaker 6 It's interesting because it's like her.

Speaker 6 big epiphany comes from having gone to the fights out of frustration, fooling around with Alexi, climbing out the window, running sort of walk of shame, you know, with her ass hanging out.

Speaker 6 And then she just awakes up the next morning with a whole new thought, which is like, in fact, none of this matters. None of what we're saying matters.
All of our frustrations don't matter.

Speaker 6 Whatever my failures are, all my beliefs, nothing did anything for me other than time. The things that happen that unfold in our lives together make us who we are.

Speaker 6 There's no sort of overarching thing. It's its own sort of like Zen meditative kind of mode of of thinking.
And then she just kind of lays that on everybody.

Speaker 6 And it's like a, it's like a magic, it's like a spell, right? She, it's like she makes an incantation and their whole, their lives together are completely changed. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think, I mean, really specifically within the dynamic of female friendship that these ladies have been, you know, playing out this entire season, it's extremely important that the way she does that is by, by instantly unlatching them from the mandatory happiness, which is the main thing that has caused all of the characters to deceive themselves.

Speaker 5 The sort of layered, mirrored, reflecting self-consciousness and self-righteousness kind of builds into this nuclear arms race of just perpetual escalation of like, no, I'm happy and I've done it right.

Speaker 5 And this is actually what I've always hated about you or whatever.

Speaker 5 There are lots of different versions of the life you have, but you've chosen very specifically some relationship to the things that Lori says she's placed her religion in, right?

Speaker 5 In work, in love, in motherhood, in their beauty.

Speaker 5 They have chosen a particular relationship and they have to defend that to themselves as the correct one and objectively the correct one or something and that it has made them happy.

Speaker 5 There's this way in which that like completely false structure of thinking becomes almost ingrained as a natural slash mandatory one for women, particularly when you approach or hit that age.

Speaker 5 And the incantation that she utters is like, but what if I didn't have to pretend that I did it right or that I was happy? And then suddenly they are all actually happy.

Speaker 5 And she says, and I'm just happy to be sitting at this table.

Speaker 7 I'm glad you have a beautiful face.

Speaker 7 And I'm glad that you have a beautiful life.

Speaker 7 And I'm just happy to be at the table.

Speaker 5 That I found really...

Speaker 5 Really well written that that's the magic spell, her just being like, yeah, I'm actually unhappy, but I'm really glad to be here. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And I guess the thing that it unlocks in them isn't, it's not happiness as they configure it.

Speaker 5 It's not happiness as they configured it at the beginning, which is something that's visible, that you can photograph, that you can prove.

Speaker 5 Like, I think it's the kind of happiness that comes from being at peace and honest. But to me, I'm like, that actually is what I think of as what being happy means.
And I do think they are there.

Speaker 6 It's an internal happiness.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's like they don't, as you say, that was a nice way of putting it, like the mandatory happiness that's expected in general in life and sort of like comparatively in social circles and so on.

Speaker 6 When somebody really opens up to you suddenly and is like, I've been unhappy, unhappy, there's a real chance that one of your friends will like recoil and never speak to you again.

Speaker 6 Like, it's hard, you know, people sometimes don't want to be around that.

Speaker 6 And so, for them to be able to accept that, in fact, they might all have their different unhappinesses and they don't have to be on a victory tour and they can sit there together is very nice.

Speaker 6 And there's this additional kind of layer of what you're saying, maybe, in that what she says, what she attributes to it to is time.

Speaker 6 And so, for women in middle age, we're also part of their self-doubt is like the pending invisibility, right, of older womanhood. And time is your foe, right, in that case.

Speaker 6 But then she's like, no, maybe time is actually a gift that we've been given. And we have now time, you know, under our belt.

Speaker 6 And that's what allows us to be able to sit here with whatever our emotions are and have that happiness be internal. Youth is wasted on the young.

Speaker 6 It's the most, the pithiest statement about all of the human condition.

Speaker 5 Rick and Chelsea, it's not. We were really sad watching it.

Speaker 6 Like, it's not what I want for them. It's not rewriting it in my mind.

Speaker 3 How can I get over everything he's taken from me? He took my whole fucking

Speaker 3 life.

Speaker 7 Stop worrying about the love you didn't get.

Speaker 4 Think about the love you have.

Speaker 6 I love you.

Speaker 6 I'm right here.

Speaker 5 It's no consolation that they die together.

Speaker 5 It really does not mean anything in actuality. They should have

Speaker 5 just

Speaker 5 continued to

Speaker 5 move on from the place that they were in at the dinner when he was like, okay, we're going to be together forever.

Speaker 5 Like Chelsea was right about what would happen to them, but she ends her life in utter horror at what her beloved is doing to himself and thus to her.

Speaker 5 Like she ends the show knowing that the snake is out of the cage and coming for her calf and she's going to actually die this time or whatever. And we hate that for them.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think it's also maybe a little kind of tragic that she's face down in the water. He's face up.

Speaker 6 He gets a little bit of a sort of like beatific moment there, but should they have been together, would it be like too obvious and super weird? Yeah.

Speaker 6 Or just kind of like a human version of like those sea otters that float together, like holding hands at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Speaker 5 Yeah, except dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Except like fully dead, except like bleeding out. Yeah.
Chelsea is too pure and she couldn't last in this world.

Speaker 6 I wonder now, so let's say that they are together in the next life, as she says, but she was in the final moments of this life, confused and annoyed. Like, what's Rick doing?

Speaker 6 So is it going to be like in the next life, they'll be like

Speaker 6 in Beetlejuice? Well, she'll be like, what were you thinking? Like, she'll be haranguing him when they're in the waiting room to get to be go be turtles or whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 6 She's going to be like, come on, dude. We were just, why did we even come back?

Speaker 5 And he'll be like, I know, I know.

Speaker 6 We shouldn't have even been at breakfast.

Speaker 5 Do you think, Muka, what do you think about Guy Talk?

Speaker 6 Well, she's happy. She's happy.
She's like, yeah, I got my guy.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he's making his way up the ranks. He's got his shades on, but you see that he has succeeded, but now has to live with himself as a person he didn't want to be for the rest of his life.

Speaker 6 So he did not get a happy ending. He's actually...

Speaker 6 He's created a new kind of prison of identity for himself.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and when he's 55, he will remember the Guy Talk of Yor that didn't believe in violence, violence, that hadn't yet taken so many people out.

Speaker 5 And he'll and he'll look at his beautiful wife and think, God damn it, I did it all for you.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 5 well, it's funny, like, he experiences his evolution into cosmopolitan bodyguard and successful killer as a compromise and a degradation of some truth about him.

Speaker 6 I would definitely say that in general,

Speaker 6 the season is positing a philosophical statement about the gap between, like, identity is a projection, right, of what you think you're supposed to be, but who are you actually, right?

Speaker 6 What are your values, and what do you, what are, like, you are your deeds, right? And your values, basically.

Speaker 6 All the things that people think you are, or you think you are, like, I'm a successful lawyer, or I'm this, or I'm a mother, or I'm an Asian woman who wants to get railed by these, by like a series of men from the internet.

Speaker 6 Like, that's actually what's so profound about Frank's insane monologue is because he has closed the gap on his, like, himself and like ideas about projected identity.

Speaker 6 And there's like, he's, as you just pointed out, like, he is completely at peace and at home with that. And he has no internal friction about who he is.
And he knows exactly.

Speaker 6 And he's unafraid to even to say it, right? There's There's no fear of who he is. And whereas everybody else like has some fear, right? And so then it's a question of

Speaker 6 to what degree do people overcome the fears about their identity? To what degree do they even like heave that identity overboard and kind of start anew like Saxon?

Speaker 5 I think there's also, if I were to try to posit what this season thought

Speaker 5 some

Speaker 5 teleological idea to aspire towards is,

Speaker 5 it's like the people that also make it out are the people that understand themselves to be works in progress, like constantly failing works in progress. But it's like, you know, Frank does, certainly.

Speaker 5 Chelsea does, certainly.

Speaker 5 Lori does, right?

Speaker 5 And like Lachlan now, like he says it explicitly, like maybe it's just a test to see if you can become a better person day by day, year by year, whatever it is, white lotus trip to white lotus trip.

Speaker 5 And I think there's, I don't know, like, I do think that that stands up and the belief system that very clearly fails you in every possible way, narratively, spiritually, emotionally, in terms of your various happy endings, is like, you know, you know, and you've got it, and you're good.

Speaker 5 Every single person that thinks that will fail. Yeah.

Speaker 6 The idea of like your identity is not any of the things that you think it is when all of our characters enter the white lotus for the week, right?

Speaker 6 They would list all the things that actually are not who you are.

Speaker 5 Right. It's your instincts.
It's your instincts about like, I don't know, yeah, like fixity and change or trying.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And now we get to talk to Amy Lou Wood.

Speaker 6 Welcome, Amy Lou Wood, to the bonus episode of the White Lotus Official Podcast. Hi.

Speaker 6 Hello. Nice to see you.

Speaker 4 It feels like my funeral.

Speaker 6 Well, I mean, in a way it is. It is.

Speaker 3 I didn't think the pain from the shingles rash would affect simple, everyday tasks like bathing, getting dressed, or even walking around. I was wrong.

Speaker 3 Though not everyone at risk will develop it, 99% of people over the age of 50 already have the virus that causes shingles, and it could reactivate at any time.

Speaker 3 I developed it, and the blistering rash lasted for weeks. Don't learn the hard way, like I did.
Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. Sponsored by GSK.

Speaker 8 At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments, it's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Speaker 8 Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

Speaker 8 From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows. Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Speaker 8 Black Friday deals are going on all month long. Save up to 45% off site-wide, plus an additional 10% off every order right now at blinds.com.

Speaker 3 Rules and restrictions apply.

Speaker 6 So we're hearing this after the finale is aired. Do you know what happens? Can I spoil it for you?

Speaker 4 I do know what happens. I do know what happens.
However, I remember on the call sheet for that day, Mike did put fake things

Speaker 4 on the shooting schedule so that if anyone in the hotel, for example, found some of our

Speaker 6 paper trail.

Speaker 4 Paper trail,

Speaker 4 then they would think that it was a different ending. So he actually put on the

Speaker 4 schedule that it was, it said Belinda dies.

Speaker 4 And so anyone who leaked it would have been leaking the wrong thing,

Speaker 4 which I thought was very smart.

Speaker 6 But who for a season four should shoot like multiple endings, like the Clue movie?

Speaker 4 Well, then I started going, what if this is a double, what if this is a kind of Russian doll vibe and he's actually given us the false ending and that's the real ending.

Speaker 4 So I started being like, that would be so Mike that actually this is the this is the real ending, and that we've been under false pretense like the whole time.

Speaker 6 That would be characteristically diabolical for Mike, it would, exactly, exactly. Well, at what point did you find out? So, obviously, this is you're talking about the final you know, shooting day.

Speaker 6 I don't know if you shot this on the last day, but uh, when did you find out that you were going to be one of the bodies?

Speaker 4 So, when I did my call back

Speaker 4 for when I met Mike for the first time, um, we did this scene. I did the scene where Chelsea says to Rick, I think we're going to be together forever, don't you?

Speaker 4 And he says, that's the plan or whatever he says. And Chelsea's like, is it? It's,

Speaker 4 we did that.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 4 I kind of sensed, like, when I read that scene, I thought,

Speaker 6 oh my God, it's them. It's them.

Speaker 4 It's them.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 Mike said to me at the end of that callback, he essentially said, I feel like you were picking up on the fact that maybe these two have the tragic ending. And they do.
And he told me

Speaker 4 in the callback.

Speaker 6 And that's when I thought, oh my God, if I haven't got that part, you must be in.

Speaker 4 I have. And then I thought,

Speaker 4 I didn't want to be cocky, but I was like, I feel like he wouldn't have told me that if I didn't get the part. But so I knew, but I didn't know.

Speaker 4 obviously how it got there and the story until the scripts got sent. And I was really surprised that, you know, they sent all the scripts.

Speaker 4 We got all eight episodes and we could read them all from the beginning of shooting. I thought they would do a kind of, you know, two at a time vibe or something.

Speaker 4 But it would, no, we got all eight in our inbox and the pressure of that, the responsibility of that, when I got that email and it was all eight episodes, I was all of a sudden so scared of hacking.

Speaker 4 I was like, someone's going to find them and it's going to be me and it's going to be, this is from Amy Wood's account and we've got all the information and because it's so, it's so, you know, important to people.

Speaker 4 And people don't want the story to be spoiled. And they don't want, you know, they want that.
They think they do.

Speaker 4 Like on the street, people will think, they'll be like, just tell me, just tell me, just tell me. Like, I've been getting it so much this week where they're like, just tell me, is it you? Is it you?

Speaker 4 And I'm like, please, guys, seriously, you don't want to know because for this instant gratification right now, you're going to ruin. You've been invested for eight weeks.

Speaker 4 You're going to ruin it for yourselves. Just don't push me.

Speaker 4 But now I'm so ready for everyone to know. And I'm so ready for it to just be, because that is a, I said, you know, I got told that secret at 29 years old.
I'm now 31. My God.

Speaker 4 I have been holding this.

Speaker 6 The spycraft involved.

Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly. I have felt like a full-blown spy.

Speaker 6 And I think. You're living a double life.

Speaker 4 I know. It feels like that.
And also, it's so.

Speaker 6 Secrets corrupt. I know.

Speaker 4 You're only as sick as your secrets.

Speaker 4 You know, it's like a, it's, it's a relief that it's coming out. And I also think that it's odd.
It's an odd thing to know that

Speaker 4 you're the, like, you're the sacrificial lamb, especially when there's people coming over being like, you know, as long as it's you that doesn't die, as long as it's not Chelsea, I don't mind who it is, as long as it's not Chelsea.

Speaker 4 And I'm like,

Speaker 6 I can live my life if Chelsea lives. She must go on.

Speaker 4 The people coming over and just saying that, and I'm trying not to move my mouth or move my face in any way. And they're like, it's just, just, it's been a lot of pressure.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Well, to that point, I mean, there's that kind of nice little

Speaker 6 kind of small soliloquy and Chelsea says, like, well, I'm Hope and he's Darkness and one of us will win. It's a battle.
But then Darkness won. And I was sad about that.
That made me genuinely sad.

Speaker 4 I know.

Speaker 4 And the thing is that Mike is, because as I've said a lot, you know, he, I think people think he's probably quite cynical as a person because his writing is so searing and so scathing and so acerbic.

Speaker 4 But he is an optimist. He is so playful.
He is so mischievous. He's so like Chelsea.

Speaker 4 And I would watch him on set, you know, running about and his laugh just floating through the wind, that like majestic laugh. And you just feel so great when you hear Mike laughing.

Speaker 4 And it's he's, he's joy. He's very joyful.
And I saw a lot of Chelsea. Obviously, he's in all the characters.

Speaker 4 It's, it's the white lotus but it's like you know it i saw so much chelsea and then i thought

Speaker 4 and of course

Speaker 4 of course you're gonna kill hope mike it's like you're gonna give you

Speaker 4 the show this warm kind of you know optimistic person

Speaker 4 for kind of the first time in a way like someone that purely optimistic and that purely um

Speaker 4 you know romantic and you're gonna of course of course of course you have to kill her of course mike white has to kill her of course he has to kill hope because it's like he can allow it to be in the show but then he also has to be like but it's still the white lotus it's still the white lotus um and i think it is tragic but i think in a really kind of macabre way she does get what she wants oh so that's my okay so that was one of my questions because i was wondering like oh well wait did i have it like misunderstood?

Speaker 6 Was Rick a lost cause and she should have left? Right. That was one of my questions.
And I wonder if you contemplated that.

Speaker 4 Well, I think that Chelsea, you know, I had such Chelsea goggles on the whole time. So I was just in her,

Speaker 4 in that frame of mind of this is my soulmate, this is cosmic, this is, I had to believe what Chelsea was saying and not really analyze it too much and just be there.

Speaker 4 And then as time's gone on and I've separated from her, I've been able to see it in a more kind of complex way and a more objective way and i'm going you know she is incredible at deflecting so she's saying one finger pointing three pointing back the whole time she's like rick you're so mysterious you're so secretive you're so this you're so that she is she is so mysterious and i think that she

Speaker 4 She said, you know, it's that kind of,

Speaker 4 he's the avoidant one, right?

Speaker 4 She's avoidant in her own way because she knows that pouring all of her energy into this tunnel vision mission of saving Rick means that she doesn't have to look at herself.

Speaker 4 She doesn't have to be seen. So, you know, she wants to be the seer.
She doesn't want to be the seen.

Speaker 4 And I think that's what, you know, that is avoidant in her own way, but it's more, and actually, Rick and Chelsea are very similar in the sense that they both think that they're choiceless.

Speaker 4 So like, Rick is like, I don't have a choice here. I have to do this.
I have to seek revenge because that man decided my life for me. He decided my fate for me.
And I, and now it's written.

Speaker 4 It's determined. Since I was a baby, this has been determined.
This was what was going to happen. And Chelsea's like, but you don't have to buy into that.
You can just be here with me.

Speaker 4 But at the same time, she's going, this is determined. It's written.
I have no choice. Rick is my soulmate.
I have to be with him. There's nothing I can do about it.

Speaker 4 So both of them have like a very stubborn kind of commitment to this idea of fate and determinism and the fact that it's all written and that they don't really have choice they don't have free will and i think that's kind of

Speaker 4 saxon and chelsea is so interesting because i feel like on the bed

Speaker 4 when you know i think it's such a great image that she throws the books about spirituality at him to block him you know that's her block it's very clever because she's speaking about something that seems very vulnerable and intimate but it's actually what she uses to not be seen You know, she's, she's all these external things like horoscopes and Enneagrams and zodiac

Speaker 4 and books about thing, but don't actually look at me for two, don't see into, you know, it's intimacy, into me see, as my teacher used to say.

Speaker 4 And she doesn't, she wants to be the one looking out at Rick, tunnel vision. She doesn't really want much of that.
Reciprocal, right? And I think she thinks she does,

Speaker 4 but I don't know if she would truly know how to hold that.

Speaker 4 I think that there's something she's, she's running away from something in the same way that Rick is, and that that's where they're very similar.

Speaker 6 To that point, I think also

Speaker 6 it's interesting because

Speaker 6 the moment with Saxon, I had sort of thought like, well, she could see where that there is a possibility here, but then is afraid of it because of just loyalty to Rick.

Speaker 6 But your sort of emotional explanation is interesting that she was not even sure that she would know how to sort of enter into what Saxon is ready for.

Speaker 6 And that's this kind kind of strange irony that Saxon is suddenly now they're ready to receive her message and Rick isn't.

Speaker 6 And so they could have had like in some way her, her light and energy might have found more fertile ground with Saxon.

Speaker 4 Well, look at the way that he takes everything she says on

Speaker 4 pretty much immediately. Like he's, he's like, I can be better.
I can change. I can do that.
And she's like, well, you should then. And he's like, okay, show me.
Like it's the, it is the antithesis.

Speaker 4 It's like, he's there going, show me, tell me, teach me your ways, let me have it, let me have it. And she's kind of like,

Speaker 4 doesn't want to give it like she's kind of like, oh, okay, no.

Speaker 4 And then, you know, so I think it is, I think it's highly,

Speaker 4 you know, these, these attachment styles that everyone talks about, anxious, attached, anxious, avoidant, all this stuff.

Speaker 4 Anxious, attached is also avoidant because a lot of anxious, attached people go for avoidant people so that they don't have to have true intimacy. They have a mission.
They have a,

Speaker 4 you know, Chelsea's got a rescue complex. She has got, she wants to rescue.
And

Speaker 4 if he's okay, then she can't do that. So, you know, she is lovely and it is annoying and sad when Rick's mean to her.
But she is choosing.

Speaker 4 She does have choice and she is choosing him and she is choosing that. And I think that that's where

Speaker 4 she doesn't understand that she's choosing, you know, in the way that she says to Rick, no, you are choosing to pursue this revenge. You are choosing to mess up your life.
You are self-sabotaging.

Speaker 4 This is a choice. This is not destiny.
Stop. She can't apply the same rules to herself.
She's like, but you're my sort. They're the same.

Speaker 4 They're both blocked in their own ways and they've both got tunnel vision in their own ways.

Speaker 4 And this is the kind of, you know, it's where they are kindred spirits because they are both, they both have this grim determination and this death drive.

Speaker 4 I think it's this scorpionic death drive that they have. You know, Chelsea says it from the beginning.
She says, I will bring your joy back, even if it kills me.

Speaker 4 She says it the whole, it's like bad things come in threes.

Speaker 4 She's obsessed with, she's always, like, her proximity to death is, oh, it's there all the time. She's constantly talking about it.
She's constantly.

Speaker 4 And I think that when you see her on the boat with Chloe and she says, Why is it all about him? Why is it all about his feelings? Bad things have happened to me, too.

Speaker 4 And you don't see me walking around feeling sorry for myself.

Speaker 4 I think that's one of the most truthful moments you ever get of Chelsea is because she's present, she's with Chloe, she's not thinking about Rick, she's not, she's all of a sudden actually reveals something very true about herself.

Speaker 4 And it's a very rare moment for her. And I think that that's what she's scared of.

Speaker 4 When she stops focusing on him, these feelings come up, and whatever her past is comes up. And so she's created this incredible distraction from her own stuff, which is Rick.

Speaker 4 I think she is tricking herself into thinking she can save him. But actually, she's like, if he's going down, I'm going down with him.
Peace out, everyone. We're out of here.
We're birds of a feather.

Speaker 4 And I think that she's romanticized that. And I think that it is the whole Bonnie and Clyde of it all.
It's Butch Cassidy and the Sunnis. It's Thelma and Louise.
It's like she's,

Speaker 4 I think she's actually quite game for that. I think she is, you know,

Speaker 4 very impulsive and purely about passion and feeling. And I think that there's a part of her that knows in her gut that it could end badly.
And

Speaker 4 there's an almost quite scary fearlessness about that because at least she'll then get, you know, she says, we'll be together forever. Let's stay in Thailand.
You know, she is a mystic.

Speaker 4 And that was a lot of Mike's direction was like, Chelsea's weirdly calm. Like she's weirdly calm about this quite, this thing that she's saying.

Speaker 4 She's, she's almost, you know, resolute in a, in a quite haunting way,

Speaker 4 because it's someone who's so full of life, but with such a, she's got such life force, but such a death drive at the same time. It's the both of them are really

Speaker 4 going hell file.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And this frees her from having to make any choices as well, right?

Speaker 6 she doesn't have to totally she does not have to go live the complicated life that would have emerged with uh with saxon after they had some uh after she initiated him into the spiritual path with some tantric sex yeah yeah you know that that

Speaker 4 is

Speaker 4 being truly vulnerable and having true intimacy is terrifying it's terrifying and

Speaker 4 We all do a lot of acrobatics to avoid that emotional, mental acrobatics, to get away from that. And we convince ourselves that we're not doing that.

Speaker 4 But we are a lot of the time because love and loss are, they go hand in hand. And if you're truly, truly letting someone in, the loss, the feelings of the potential loss, you can't avoid it.

Speaker 4 It's like grief is the admission fee you pay for love. It's all that stuff.
So it's like, you know, if she loves him and she's not getting much back, there's something about this, you know,

Speaker 4 destined tragedy that makes her feel in control of the tragedy rather than what could arise with someone who it's fluid and unknown and uncertainty. Exactly.

Speaker 4 There's a certainty that I think she craves. And Rick, weirdly, his

Speaker 4 lack of certainty about her gives her certainty. So if someone's certain about her, she then has to be uncertain.
So it's like she's taking up the quota for certainty.

Speaker 4 And it's what Esther Perell says, you split the ambivalence. Couples do this.
One person takes up the, I have no doubt about this relationship end of the spectrum.

Speaker 4 And the other one takes, I'm not sure. I have all the doubt.
And the truth is,

Speaker 4 both of them are in the middle somewhere, but we split the ambivalence. And Rick and Chelsea have done that.
The truth is that Rick is probably like, I quite love this girl.

Speaker 4 And I actually kind of think she's great. And Chelsea's probably like, I love him, but he drives me mad, right?

Speaker 4 But they've taken the, it's, she's like, I'm 100% you're my soulmate and he's like no you're not and so it's so tragic that the moment that they do actually meet in the middle they only get that middle ground for a night second yeah it's like one night only and they're right there with each other they're right in the middle which we've seen little bits of in like their intimate scenes where they can be physically together but you just get that glimmering moment and then Mike just takes it away.

Speaker 6 Oh, I've learned something thinking about the character from this conversation. So thanks so much.

Speaker 4 Oh, I'm so glad. Thanks, Josh.
I really want to speak about this for hours.

Speaker 5 It's such a relief to be able to talk about it with someone.

Speaker 6 I know, right, right.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, thanks so much.

Speaker 4 Thank you so much.

Speaker 5 Thank you so much, Amy, for coming on the show. And thank you to everyone who's listening for coming along with me and Josh on this journey.
And now we've come to an end.

Speaker 6 Oh, I know. It's so sad.

Speaker 5 It is really sad. I'm sad the season is over.

Speaker 6 It's been fun to watch the episodes, watch them together, and then like run right into the studio and record.

Speaker 6 We convinced our producer that this is the greatest season by virtue of our incredible analytical ability.

Speaker 5 Thank you to everyone that has listened to us yap and yap and yap.

Speaker 6 Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 5 Goodbye.

Speaker 5 The White Lotus podcast is a production of HBO and Campside Media. This episode was hosted by Gia Tolentino and Josh Baerman.
Natalia Winkleman is the managing producer.

Speaker 5 Our associate producers are Allison Haney, Anthony Pachillo, and Aaliyah Papes. At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.
Sound design and mix by Bart Warshaw at Cocoon Audio.

Speaker 5 For the HBO podcast team, our executive producers Michael Gluckstadt, senior producer Allison Cohen-Sorokach, and producer Kenya Reyes.

Speaker 5 We'd also like to extend additional thank yous to the HBO concept and design team. Lynn Kim, Brett Krause, Tom Haskard, Marta Dwart Diaz, Nicholas Park, Kendall Thomas, and Eden McDebitt.

Speaker 5 From HBO Legal, Daniel Nemet Najat, Nina Festa, and Ariel Moger. And Aaron Tresco and Kelly Sheets from HBO Media Relations.