HBO and Max's The White Lotus Season 3's finale had many impactful deaths, but Lochlan Ratliff isn’t one of them, despite drinking a poison-infused smoothie.
The White Lotus Season 3, Episode 1 planted the seeds of a potentially tragic storyline after hotel worker Pam warned the Ratliff family not to eat the poisonous fruit outside their room.
It all came to a halt after Timothy (the patriarch of the Ratliff family) became a wanted man due to a financial scandal back in the United States, ultimately leading him to hatch a suicide plan involving his family and the poison fruit.
Lochlan's Fate in White Lotus Season 3 Finale Explained
Lochlan (played by White Lotus Season 3 cast member Sam Nivola) is the youngest member of the wealthy Ratliff family, who is still trying to find his place in the world.
In the Season 3 finale, the people-pleasing Lochlan suffers a near-death experience that changes his life forever, mainly due to the actions of his father.
Wanting to get out of the legal repercussions back in the States has led Timothy to create a drastic plan to kill his entire family and himself by creating a piña colada mix that consists of the deadly poison fruit (aka the othalanga in Thailand).
However, Timothy ultimately prevents his family from drinking the dreaded beverages, but one of the members is not out of the woods yet.
The following day, Lochlan decides to create a protein shake by using the blender that is still full of ground-up othalanga seeds (without him knowing that those are deadly).
After drinking the whole thing, Lochlan gets visibly sick, with him vomiting before eventually passing out. Timothy later finds his unconscious son as he fears for his death, trying his best to wake him up and keep him alive.
Thankfully, Lochlan regains consciousness after seeing visions of his siblings and, in his own words, "God."
Despite finishing his protein shake infused with the poisonous seeds, the fact that Lochlan survives the whole ordeal means that there wasn't enough poison in there that would've killed him.
Essentially, he only ingested a small dose of poison, just enough to get him sick and pass out and not kill him.
The True Meaning of Lochlan's Near-Death Experience
Lochlan's near-death experience in The White Lotus Season 3 serves as a moment of reflection not only for him but also for Timothy Ratliff.
The final moments of the episodes saw Timothy (sort of) coming clean to his family about the repercussions of his past actions that will haunt them once they return to the United States.
It's quite too bad, though, that Lochlan almost became a tragic victim of Timothy's actions, and his near-death experience served as the push he needed to face the dire consequences.
As for Lochlan, while he would treat his protein shake incident as a random food poisoning fiasco, he has his own issues to resolve when he returns.
He wanted to create a protein shake mainly to be like his brother, Saxon, who he idolizes a lot.
However, it did not end well for him, and it almost cost him his life (though it's not entirely his fault).
Speaking with Variety, Sam Nivola admitted that Lochlan did not make any progress in terms of figuring out his identity despite his near-death experience, noting that his character is still "going through the phases of trying to figure out" who he is:
"I don’t think he’s made any. There’s a moment when he comes back to life, and he says, 'I think I just saw God.' And you think, 'Oh maybe he found the answer.' But I don’t think he did. He’s going through the phases of trying to figure out what his thing is, and he still doesn’t know. That’s the realism of the show. Some people are changed by their experience at this hotel and all the fucked up shit that happens. And some people just aren’t. And that’s like life. People change, but people also stay the same, depending on who you are and what their circumstances are."
After one wild night that involved getting intimate with his brother Saxon, Nivola confirmed in the same interview with Variety that his bond with his sibling has been "irreparably damaged," noting that both of them will never be as close as before:
"Their relationship is irreparably damaged. I don’t think they’ll ever be as close. I don’t know if it’s like they’ll never talk again — I think they’ll probably suppress it and try to forget it never happened. But you can’t forget something like that happened. It’s too awful and traumatizing."
Unfortunately, a near-death experience like Lochlan experienced wouldn't repair his relationship with his brother, and this just goes to show how deep of a conflict the siblings have.
All episodes of The White Lotus Season 3 are streaming on Max.
Read more about a story update about The White Lotus Season 4.
