The White Lotus Season 3 Finale: [REDACTED]'s Violent Rampage, Explained

(Put down that mai tai and step away from the pool if you haven't watched "Amor Fati," the season 3 finale of "The White Lotus." Massive spoilers lie ahead!)

Out of all of the characters on the third season of "The White Lotus," Mike White's anthology series that always takes place in a different exotic locale, Walton Goggins' Rick Hatchett might have been the most troubled one from the outset ... which is saying something. Nobody on this show is "normal," per se; Jason Isaacs' character Timothy Ratliff finds out early in the season that he's probably going to prison for a variety of financial crimes, which builds to him nearly poisoning his entire family during "Amor Fati," the season 3 finale. I digress, though, because we're here to talk about Rick and his wild, revenge-fueled rampage through the fictional hotel that leads to his demise (and the deaths of two other people, actually).

Late in "Amor Fati," Rick succumbs to his worst impulses in a big way. He initially went to Bangkok in the season's fifth episode, "Full-Moon Party," with an evil plan to confront "Big Jim" Hollinger (Scott Glenn) — the owner of the Thailand White Lotus — and perhaps kill him, but he resists. As we now know, Rick yelled at Jim and pushed him out of a chair, but he didn't kill the guy. Point in fact, Rick returns to the resort in "Amor Fati" and tells his girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) that he's freed from his resentment ... until Jim returns the favor and confronts him at breakfast, setting off a chain reaction that results in Rick's rampage.

When Jim confronts Rick at breakfast after their incident in Bangkok, it's ugly, to say the least. To recap, Rick has believed — for years, actually — that Jim Hollinger killed his father and left him and his mother to fend for themselves. As it turns out, Jim didn't kill Rick's father, but he does return to his hotel to taunt Rick all the same.

During breakfast on Rick and Chelsea's final day, Jim, enraged by Rick's behavior, tells his hotel guest to get out of the property immediately and insults both his mother and father for good measure, even saying that Rick's father wasn't worth very much when all is said and done. Unfortunately, this enrages Rick, and when he joins Chelsea at their table, his thirst for revenge is fully renewed. 

Desperate for some stability, Rick seeks a meeting with Amrita (Shalini Peiris), a meditation expert and spiritual counselor at the White Lotus, but she already has an appointment with Zion Lindsey (Nicholas Duvernay) and asks Rick to wait on a bench. While he waits, he sees Jim, Jim's wife Sritala (Lek Patravadi), and TV star Jaclyn Lemon (Michelle Monaghan) with her friends Laurie (Carrie Coon) and Kate (Leslie Bibb). Due to Jaclyn's famous status, Jim and Sritala want to get a photo with Jaclyn before she leaves. To say Rick seizes the moment here is ... an understatement, because what he seizes is the gun that Jim flashed at him as a threat during breakfast.

Rick steals Jim's gun from his own jacket, utters two words — "F**k you" — and shoots the man multiple times in front of his wife, completely ignoring the fact that the hotel is absolutely crawling with armed security guards. As a kicker, Sritala tells Rick that Jim isn't the man who killed Rick's father; Jim was Rick's father. (To be honest, this reveal is a total throwaway line in the scene and barely even matters in the moment — and it also feels like an easy reveal that Jim was Rick's father based on the fact that Rick never knew his father in the first place.) 

Putting all of that aside, things go seriously wrong after Rick shoots Jim (obviously) as the armed security guards open fire on him, killing Chelsea in the crossfire (rest in peace, you sweet Aries queen). As Rick sweeps Chelsea's body into his arms to try and save her — sweetly telling her that they'll "be together forever," which she wished for earlier in the episode — it's Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) who finally gets some courage and opens fire, killing Rick, and he and Chelsea fall into the hotel's pond and die amongst some lotus flowers. It's an absolutely brutal ending to the season, to be sure — but based on what Rick "knew" about Jim's involvement in his life, it does make a little bit of sense that he would travel to Thailand just to take Jim down. Sure, it was unbelievably ill-advised, and Chelsea ended up being a casualty — to say nothing of Rick's death — but in the end, Rick got what he wanted ... in a sense.

"The White Lotus" season 3 is streaming in its entirety on Max now — and even though Deadline confirmed tonight that the show has been renewed for season 4, we have no idea where Mike White is headed next.