Television April 08, 2025
‘The White Lotus’ Cut Shocking Sex Scene from Season 3 Finale!
Fabio Lovino/HBO
It’s been two days since the most talked-about finale of 2025, and we’re still learning new details from the buzzy “The White Lotus” Season 3 ender!
During an appearance on the official podcast of “The White Lotus,” Mike White revealed what was left out of the finale.
Originally, White wanted to include a sex scene between Piper Ratliff, played by Sarah Catherine Hook, and Belinda’s hunky son Zion, played by Nicholas Duvernay.
The scene would have shown Piper losing her virginity.
Calling it “very disappointing” to remove, Mike explained, “It was just one of these things where it's an hour and a half already, and it would have added, like, 10 minutes to the thing."
The tone would have been different from the rest of the finale, which did include a murder-suicide storyline. He shared, “It had a little bit of a romantic rom-com vibe in the middle of [Timothy] trying to kill the family with the pong-pong fruits."
Mike also opened up about why he wanted to include the virginity storyline.
Referencing Patrick Schwarzenegger’s character Saxon commenting about his sister Piper’s virginity in the first episode, he said, “She's like, 'It's true, Saxon's right about this one thing, I need to get this over with.’ After she leaves the monastery, she's just like, 'I need to have sex.'"
Even without the scene, the finale crushed rating records, with 6.2 million viewers!
Over the weekend, Aimee Lou Wood joined a cast panel and dished on shooting her fan-favorite character Chelsea’s emotional death scene.
She said, “It looked exactly how it felt, which was really strange.”
“It’s weird because for about two weeks before we shot it, I felt super weird. It was like this odd, ominous thing that was just hanging over us,” Wood pointed out.
Aimee Lou admitted that her character’s death has not “sunk in” for her yet. She went on, “There’s a lot in that episode that made me sob on-screen.”
On screen, Chelsea and Chloe, played by Charlotte Le Bon, became island besties, and Charlotte gave her hysterical take on how Greg’s party girl GF would have reacted to Chelsea’s shocking demise.
Charlotte kept it real, saying, “Probably she cried really hard for maybe five minutes, and then she just decided to numb herself again with sex, chaos, and party ’cause that’s what she does.”
