They really went there.
Spoilers ahead for the fifth episode of “The White Lotus” Season 3.
In the fifth episode of “The White Lotus” Season 3, the show took a shocking turn with a bizarre incest plot.
During the episode, brothers Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lochlan Ratliff (Sam Nivola) are partying with two women they want to impress, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon).
Everyone is drinking and doing drugs, and Chelsea and Chloe share a quick smooch before Chloe gestures that the brothers should also kiss. Instead of ignoring her like a normal person, Lochlan then lays a lingering kiss on Saxon.
“The White Lotus” executive producer David Bernad revealed if there was any behind-the-scenes discussion about whether an incest plot was going too far.
“No, in terms of that — that’s all [creator Mike White]. Mike is brilliant, and I think those big story turns are not just for shock,” he exclusively told The Post.
Bernad added, “There’s a specific reason in terms of the narrative storytelling, and the larger thematic idea Mike is trying to get across.”
He explained, “as the season wraps up, you’ll see the purpose of that story turn. The show goes there for a larger thematic idea. I love that family storyline, especially the brother story — and, it culminates in a very satisfying way.”
Each season of the Emmy-winning HBO dramedy follows a different cast of unhappy rich people on vacation at a branch of the fictional “White Lotus” resort.
In Season 3, which is set in Thailand, Schwarzenegger, 31, plays Saxon, a twentysomething frat boy type who seems to believe that the sole purpose of vacation is to sleep with someone. Lochlan is his younger brother who is about to go to college.
Their sister Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) is more spiritual. Meanwhile, their mother Victoria (Parker Posey) is frequently on drugs, and their father Timothy (Jason Isaacs) is lost in his own world, as he’s under investigation for white-collar crime and spiraling as he hides this information from his family.
Rounding out Season 3, there’s also troubled Rick (Walton Goggins) and his much younger girlfriend, Chelsea (Wood), and a trio of fortysomething women on a girls trip — Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon).
During a preseason HBO press conference, Schwarzenegger teased that his real-life family — including famous dad Arnold, mom Maria Shriver and brother-in-law Chris Pratt — are “super excited” to watch him in “The White Lotus” and “don’t know anything” about what was in store, including the incest plot.
He also said that there are some scenes that are “uncomfortable to watch with your family.”
“Maybe I won’t watch that episode [with my family]. I don’t know, we’ll see,” he said.
During the same press conference, Nivola said about the Ratliff family, “We’re not necessarily that close with one another, at least the three siblings going into this vacation. And then it’s really like a sort of petri dish. You just plop us in where we have to be so close.”
Referring to Saxon and Lochlan, Nivola added, “We’re literally sharing a room.”
Schwarzenegger chimed in and quipped, “We share more than a room!”
Over the course of filming, he and Nivola “became really great friends — which almost made it a little bit weirder.”
“The White Lotus” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
