Who Dies In The White Lotus Season 3 Finale?

Do not keep reading past this point if you haven't watched "Amor Fati," the season 3 finale of "The White Lotus." Massive spoilers lie ahead.

We all knew people were going to die in season 3 of "The White Lotus," Mike White's international anthology series that spent its third outing in Thailand. People die in every season, and in seasons 1 and 2, the manners of death were, frankly, ridiculous (one guy got accidentally stabbed after pooping in a guest's suitcase, and Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya McQuoid yeeted herself off a boat and died in the process). The third season gave us three major deaths and a full action sequence to boot. So who died?

Let's start with — I'm sorry! — the least important death of the episode, Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), who turns out to be Rick's long-lost father. Yes, Rick came to this hotel in the first place because he mistakenly believed that "Big Jim" killed his father; as Jim's wife Sritala (Lek Patravadi) tells Rick in the aftermath of his shooting rampage, Big Jim was his father. Rest in peace, Big Jim! We genuinely barely knew ye. Now that we've got that out of the way, here's everything you need to know about the two other major deaths in "Amor Fati," the season 3 finale of "The White Lotus," which featured the most carnage out of any season finale so far.

My sweet Chelsea! Mike White, you will pay for your crimes! Chelsea, played by "Sex Education" standout Aimee Lou Wood, was, without question, the purest and kindest person on this season of "The White Lotus." A gorgeous little free spirit canonically from Manchester, Chelsea arrives at the fictional White Lotus with her much older boyfriend Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins) and seems just a little flighty at first ... but before long, you realize that she genuinely loves Rick. She says as much, but her affection for him is obvious and palpable, especially as she endures his disdain and cruelty during their vacation.

Rick decamps to Bangkok in the show's fifth episode, "Full-Moon Party," leaving Chelsea alone with her new friend Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) and the frankly awful Ratliff brothers Saxon and Lochlan (Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola). After a night of raucous partying, Chelsea emerges with her dignity intact, waiting faithfully for Rick to come back ... and when he does, they greet each other with real joy and love — which feels like a bad sign after the fact. Rick confronted Big Jim in Bangkok and considers the matter closed, which delights Chelsea, but when Jim confronts Rick at breakfast at the White Lotus and taunts him, Rick is filled with rage all over again — so much so that he steals a gun directly from Jim while the man is distracted and kills him. A shootout occurs between the resort's guards and Rick, and when he turns around, Chelsea is on the ground barely able to breathe and bearing a fatal gunshot wound to the heart. Chelsea was entirely too kind and pure for the world of "The White Lotus," but still, watching her die was absolutely heartbreaking.

To be absolutely fair to Rick, he tries. He goes to Bangkok, confronts Jim — who, he believes, killed his father — barely even roughs the guy up, and leaves with his soul intact, triumphantly returning to Bangkok to tell Chelsea that he didn't kill anybody after all. After his whole Inigo Montoya mission concluded without any bloodshed, Rick does seem like he's finally at peace; as he tells Chelsea in the season 3 finale, "the monkey is off [his] back." Unfortunately, this is short-lived, because Jim and Sritala come back to their hotel the next morning and Jim decides to mock Rick, insulting his mother and saying his father was nothing to be proud of ... and understandably, this reignites Rick's desire for revenge.

While Rick is waiting for the wellness guru Amrita (Shalini Peiris) to meet him for a session, he sees Jim and Sritala posing for a picture with TV star Jaclyn Lemon (Michelle Monaghan) and feels so overwhelmed by fury that he can't help himself. He leaps up, pulls the gun out of Jim's jacket — the same gun Jim flashed during their breakfast confrontation — and kills the hotel owner before being chased down by various guards. Eventually, it's Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) who takes Rick down; as Rick carries Chelsea's body across a bridge, Gaitok fires and kills Rick, leaving the doomed couple to float in the lotus pond until their bodies are removed from the property. "The White Lotus" ended its third season with a bang — several of them, actually — and three bodies in its wake. 

(Oh, and technically a couple of Sritala's bodyguards also die, but those guys were jerks and nobody cared about them.)

"The White Lotus" season 3 is available to stream on Max.