The White Lotus Season 3 Finale Cut A Huge Storyline With Piper And Zion

If you watched the third season of "The White Lotus" and felt that its many narrative threads were wrapped up pretty disappointingly, you're not alone, and it turns out that there was one big idea that got cut completely: a tryst between theology student Piper Ratliff (Sarah Catherine Hook) and business major Zion Lindsey (Nicholas Duvernay), who is visiting his spa manager mother Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) while she learns some new tips and tricks (and how to blackmail) at the White Lotus Thailand resort. 

On the official "White Lotus" podcast, series creator Mike White revealed that there was an entire subplot where Piper and Zion had sex after Piper left the monastery where she had been planning on living and before her father Timothy (Jason Isaacs) attempted to poison most of the family with murder coladas. Sexuality among the Ratliff siblings was something of a plot thread earlier in the season, when eldest brother Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) teased Piper and youngest brother Lochlan (Sam Nivola) for still being virgins, followed by Lochlan giving his older brother a handy while Lochlan lost his virginity in a very unnerving power play. It seemed like there were hints of Piper's sexuality being explored as well, but unfortunately, White ended up cutting the whole thing due to time. 

White explained what while he ended up cutting the subplot because there was already too much going on narratively in the extended-length final episode, he had originally planned for Piper and Zion to hook up, saying:

"She decides to lose her virginity in the script in the last episode. And she actually has sex with Zion, which is Belinda's son. So she's like, you know, there's a whole scene where she's like, 'It's true. Saxon's right about this one thing. I need to get this over with.' And after she leaves the monastery, she's just, like, 'I need to have sex.' And she's scoping the restaurant in the end."

After feeling let down by her experience staying at the Buddhist monastery where she had originally intended to spend a year, it makes sense that Piper would go looking for some other kind of fulfilment, spiritual or otherwise. Her hooking up with Zion, who is a future businessman like her father and has few scruples about convincing his mother to take blood money, would actually be a kind of perfect arc for her character. Not only is she just as shallow and spoiled as her mother Victoria (Parker Posey), but she's likely to follow in her exact footsteps eventually. It's pretty frustrating that White decided to let this loose plot thread go, leaving Piper with a less complete story than either of her brothers. It's not the only plot thread that went nowhere, but it is one of the more annoying given White's reveal.

It's a little annoying that the Ratliff boys had pretty complete arcs, with Saxon having his ego shattered by the incestuous three-way and Lochlan's near-death experience after making a protein shake in the poisoned blender, while Piper just sort of realizes she's more vapid and spoiled than she originally thought. When Piper rejoins her family on the boat and Saxon, reading a self-help book, comments that she looks different, it was a nod to her change in sexual status. "At the end, when they're on the boat," White explained, "She's just thinking about how she got nicely f***** or whatever. And he's reading his self-help book, and it's this kind of reversal." This idea sings to White's attempts at depicting Taoist concepts like yin and yang, with balance between sexuality and chastity, selfishness and selflessness, but because the finale was already an hour and a half long, Piper's hookup with Zion was cut.

"The White Lotus" has done a fair job of laying out mysteries and surprises along the way that feel at least somewhat organic, but in season 3 White really seemed to get in over his head trying to make the whole ordeal really mean something, losing sight of individual character arcs in service of a greater thematic ideal (that didn't really come together all that well anyway!). The season 3 finale of "White Lotus" was really disappointing, and had it taken the time to really finish the stories set into motion, including Piper's, it would have been a much better conclusion.