Spoilers beneath for the newest episode of The White Lotus for anybody who hasn’t but watched on HBO or streamed it with a Max subscription, so be warned!
With its third Season 3 outing, The White Lotus already began setting the stage for Jon Gries’ shady AF Greg/Gary to redirect his focus to endangering the lifetime of Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda, and I can’t think about the approaching yacht journey with the Ratliff household might be an encouraging preface for it. However essentially the most baffling sequence within the episode belonged to Walton Goggins’ timebomb Rick.
At this level, viewers aren’t but totally conscious of why Rick is at this White Lotus location, contemplating he’s both listlessly offended or torpid, however he’s concentrating on the absentee husband of resort proprietor Sritala, and can be apparently coping with the long-gestating trauma of his father’s homicide. So we’re already apprehensive about Goggins’ Rick, and such worries exploded after some of the nerve-rattling scenes of any 2025 TV present up to now, which apparently dovetailed with the actor’s real-life fears.
Talking with EW, the Fallout co-star didn’t mince phrases when addressing his innate discomfort when filming the snake present sequence that not solely had him watching different actors bodily deal with the reptiles, but in addition holding a fairly huge one himself after letting the vast majority of them free. Right here’s how Goggins felt about it:
It was fucking horrific. It was a horror present. It was a nightmare for me, actually, genuinely. It was two days of like, ‘I can not, I can not, I can not,’ they usually had someone proper off digicam, as quickly as I might decide a snake up, I would convey it over and put it of their arms like, ‘Oh my God,’ and nearly fucking move out each time.
Right here right here for snake liberation! However not a lot for lacing prerolled joints at native dispensaries, assuming that was certainly a root trigger for Rick falling backwards into the Twilight Zone for a couple of minutes. I can not think about that untainted marijuana would make anybody sweat buckets the best way Rick does.
In any case, I am now unclear on how a lot of that sequence’s effectiveness was attributable to Walton Goggins’ respectable nervousness, and the way a lot might be placed on him simply being a stable actor by means of and thru. I believe it could completely come all the way down to how a lot of his facial sweat was actual, and the way a lot was utilized earlier than every shot. As a result of each the actor and character seemed as genuinely depressing as could possibly be.
On the flip facet, Aimee Lou Wooden shared none of her co-star’s sick emotions about filming the snake present scene, however wasn’t totally unsympathetic to his woes. As she put it:
I am not afraid of snakes in any respect. Walton is, nevertheless — it is his greatest concern, and he is needed to, now twice in his profession, work together with snakes on fairly a high-key stage. So I used to be doing numerous ethical help for him.
That is an aesthetic transfer for each the actress and her character Chelsea, who wound up being bitten by one of many many reptiles that Rick let unfastened. She survived, and would not appear to have any lasting results from the incident, however time will inform whether or not it will come again to hang-out her.
With regards to narrative thematics and foreshadowing, Walton Goggins talked about how the snake present chaos is consultant Rick’s personal inside turmoil and the way he views his present state of affairs. As he put it:
On a narrative stage, what these snakes represented to Rick is that they’re him. They’re the villains within the biggest myths of our theologies. That’s the serpent, and he looks like that is how society treats him. And it wasn’t his fault. His life may have been completely different. He did not write the ebook of his life, someone else wrote it, and he was simply the principle determine within the tragedy of his personal life, and it wasn’t his doing. He simply desperately must get out from beneath it.
That reply can present as a lot or as little perception into Rick’s state of affairs as one needs to hunt out. Is the person he is monitoring down answerable for placing Rick on a downward spiral, maybe in connection together with his father’s dying? Or is another person the “author” right here, and Sritala’s husband is only a intermediary of kinds?
I do know I will be watching future episodes as intently as might be, and as distant from any toxic snakes as might be, when HBO debuts new The White Lotus episodes each Sunday evening at 8:00 p.m.