Perhaps the most shocking moment in Season 3 of The White Lotus shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Specifically, Episode 6 of the season, titled “Denials,” exposed the disturbing truth about brothers Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lochlan Ratliff (Sam Nivola) and their activities on Chloe’s (Charlotte Le Bon) yacht during the Full-Moon Party. The episode revealed that the drugged Ratliff siblings engaged in a threesome with the Quebecois model-turned-escort. As Lochlan lost his virginity to Chloe, he involved his brother Saxon in the sexual encounter.

There were various hints throughout Season 3 of The White Lotus that could have prepared fans for the shocking incestuous events. The Ratliff brothers’ unusually intimate relationship was already evident, with instances like Lochlan observing his naked brother masturbating with curiosity. Furthermore, this storyline aligns with the consistent narrative style of creator, writer, and director Mike White. Each season of The White Lotus follows a similar structure where privileged Americans visit a luxurious resort to confront their personal issues and exploit the local community. Tragic deaths often occur by the season’s conclusion, supported by sharp dialogue, stunning costumes, and a talented cast. Notably, each season’s second act features a character stumbling upon a taboo sexual encounter, typically involving two men.

In previous seasons, these encounters included Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and Shane (Jake Lacy) discovering Armond (Murray Bartlett) with Dillon (Lukas Gage) in Season 1, and Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) finding out about Jack (Leo Woodall) and Quentin (Tom Hollander) in Season 2. In Season 3, the characters Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and Chloe witness the disturbing dynamics between the Ratliff brothers.

White has framed these acts as scandalous or shameful not because they are homoerotic, but because they transgress other boundaries. Armond was high on the job and taking advantage of his authority to seduce an employee (who then turned the power dynamic back on him). Jack is supposedly Quentin’s nephew, but actually clearly a sex worker hired by the wealthy conman. Saxon and Lochlan are literally brothers.

What might be most shocking about the Saxon/Lochlan hookup is how comparatively tame it was.

When DECIDER spoke with White Lotus star Patrick Schwarzenegger, he insisted that Mike White purposely directed the sex scene to be “ambiguous.”

“Why did it happen? Was it the drugs? Was it not? Was it the relationships leading up to it? Was it that this power shift? All these different things,” Schwarzenegger said. “I think Mike White wrote it in that specific way to have that conversation at home and to leave it up to the audiences to interpret it how they how they want.”

Ambiguity is something else that shouldn’t feel new or surprising to White Lotus fans. After all, White has left other sexual hookups — like a potential affair between Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) — up to the audience’s imagination. What we’re supposed to glean from Saxon and Lochlan’s hookup is that something sexual occurred between the two brothers, one that upends their power dynamics and pushes against their assumed moral code.

The Ratliff family’s storyline in The White Lotus Season 3 has been about the dissolution of dynastic wealth, power, and all the confidence that comes with its trappings. While Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) contemplates killing his wife and himself to avoid the pain of public shame and poverty, sister Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) is turning to Buddhism to fill the void that all of her designer duds can’t cover up. Saxon has roared into the season defining himself in terms of sex, money, and power. It would be inevitable that Mike White would rip that first, most important, sign of success away from the character.

Again, the brothers’ incest was essentially inevitable.

What’s interesting now is to trace the fallout of the latter two transgressive sex scenes from past seasons of The White Lotus. Fans will remember that Shane eventually stabbed Armond and that Quentin and Tanya had their own grim ends.

If Saxon and Lochlan’s hookup serves a similar structural role in this season of The White Lotus, does that mean that one of them is the dead body that floats by Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) in the show’s cold open? Are Chloe or Chelsea doomed to be caught in the crosshairs of the impending shooting? Or is this yet another one of Mike White’s elegantly drawn red herrings?