The deaths (plural) that were meted out during the season 3 finale of The White Lotus delivered yet another bitter final meal for some of our guests in Mike White’s zeitgeist-dominating series. After an eight-day stay in the Thailand-set resort, White’s anthology series drew to a bloody close, taking two of the season’s most beloved characters, Walton Goggins’ searching, soulful, sad Rick, and his delightful, daffy, even more soulful girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood). The worst part? The man Rick killed before getting himself and Chelsea gunned down (by Gaitok, no less!) wasn’t his father’s killer but his actual father. Rick’s family tree has now been entirely burned down, and poor Chelsea, who deserved so much better, went down with it.

It was a decidedly grim fate for two characters who seemed to have finally found the peace they (or at least, Chelsea) had arrived in Thailand hoping to find. Rick and his buddy Frank (Sam Rockwell) had gone to Bangkok on their ruse so Rick could face Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), the man whom he blamed, per his mother’s deathbed confession, of killing his father. But once Rick got the old man alone, he didn’t find himself face-to-face with the dastardly ruiner of all things holy and beautiful, but rather, with an aged, weakened would-be king living out his final days in his Thailand idyll. Rick toppled the old guy off his chair and felt, at long last, at peace with it all. After a debauched night with Frank, Rick returned to the White Lotus, found Chelsea, and lifted her into an embrace. It was the most emotional and loving we’d seen Rick toward her all season. Chelsea had told Saxon that she and Rick had a ying and yang battle going, between Rick’s grim outlook and her relentless optimism. It seemed as if Chelsea and her brightness and warmth might have actually won the day.

Considering the fates of the victims of the first two seasons—the absurd death of White Lotus employee Armond (Murray Bartlett) in season one, and the even more absurd demise of Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) after her victorious shootout onboard a yacht in season two, only to fall to her death due to poorly chosen pair of heels, the question of who would die this season at least came with what seemed like the how, thanks to the gunshots we heard in the opening seconds of the first episode. Guns factored majorly into season 3, not just with those opening shots, but with the guns used in the robbery (clearly Valentin’s Russian friends), and the gun Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) has, loses to Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs), and regains again. White maintained loyalty to Chekov’s gun rule and had Gaitok use his gun to terrible effect, when he shoots Rick (who was carrying an already shot Chelsea) in the back, spilling them both into the water, killing them both.

While Jim Hollinger turning out to be Rick’s dad wasn’t that big a shock, it was surprising that it was Rick and Chelsea who both bit the bullet, and the entire Ratliff family escaped unharmed—but not for a lack of Tim’s dark imagination on how to end it. Tim had made the gruesome choice that the only member of his clan who might be okay once they’re poor—for they will be poor once they return home, and Tim’s embezzlement is made clear, was his youngest, Lochlan (Sam Nivola). So Tim whips up a batch of killer pina coladas with some of the poisonous Chekov’s fruit so plentiful on the premises, and pours them out for himself, his wife Victoria (Parker Posey), his eldest son Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), and his daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook). Only Lochlan is refused one, given a Coke instead, with Tim apparently deciding that good old Lochy would find his way as a poor orphan. But, before the family can really have at their drinks, Tim changes his mind and snatches them away. Unfortunately, he doesn’t wash out the original poisoned blender, and Lochlan finds it in the morning and helps himself. It seems for a bit like it’s going to be Lochlan who dies, but he doesn’t drink quite enough to do him in. A little puke session and he’s okay.

And while it seemed possible that a showdown between Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) and Greg/Gary (Jon Gries) could have resulted in death, instead, thanks to Zion (Nicholas Duvernay)’s insistence, Belinda makes Greg/Gary a counteroffer and winds up not with $100,000 to her name but $5 million. It’s the type of life-changing payday Belinda has dreamed of. And what does Belinda do with her newfound money? Does she start her own spa with Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) as they’d discussed? She does not, returning the favor once bestowed upon her by Tanya when Tanya dangled a potential joint business venture together, only to rescind the offer. When Zion asks her if she intends to open her new spa with Pornchai, she asks if she might just enjoy being rich for a minute. Her son doesn’t disagree.

That left our three gal pals, the “blonde blob” as White had envisioned them when writing them, Laurie (Carrie Coon), Kate (Leslie Bibb), and Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), all of whom were moving from gossip to outright hostility by the tri[s end. It was conceivable that something dark and dreadful could befall one or all of them in the finale, especially given the outright venom Laurie unleashed on them all last episode, but instead, Laurie delivered what has to be the sweetest moment in any season of The White Lotus, showering love on her friends, telling them how grateful she was to even be seated at a table with them. It breaks whatever dark, rivalrouss spell had befallen them and brings them all closer. “I’m glad you have a beautiful face,” Laurie says through tears to Jaclyn. “And I’m glad you have a beautiful life,” she says to Kate. “And I’m just happy to be at the table.”

“The ladies’ petty and large differences have come to the surface,” White said in a podcast after the finale aired. “It creates pain for them. So much of the later years of your life are spent defending the decisions you made or trying to justify your life to yourself. For Laurie, what is her takeaway? How is she going to take this into some kind of lesson to help her in this next stage of her life?… You realize that the show’s pleasures come a little bit from these relatable or identifiable types of people who go on vacation. A family that goes on a vacation, or a honeymoon, or three friends. I was trying to think, what is a new version that isn’t the same – like a slightly different family. But part of me also feels like (and it’s the reason why the first episode is called ‘Same Spirits, New Forms’) there’s an attempt, whether I’m successful or not, to deepen what’s come before, or continue to use certain tropes where the show feels like it’s a conversation with itself in some way.”

So why Rick and Chelsea, then, after finding their peace? Because Jim Hollinger returned to the White Lotus and took the opportunity to both flaunt his weapon at Rick and disparage Rick’s mother, never once telling him, Oh, by the way, I’m your father. He does tell Rick that his father wasn’t worth much, anyway, disparaging himself without letting Rick in on the secret. Rick, now desperate for some counsel, tries to find Amrita (Shalini Peiris), the White Lotus spiritual guide and meditation expert, but she’s got a client—Zion—as we’ve now come full circle to the first episode, where Zion is sitting with Amrita before the gunshots ring.

This is all it takes to sap Rick’s hard-earned peace and unleash the vengeance he’d been stoking for years. Watching Jim and his wife Sritaa (Lek Patravadi) pose for a photo with Jacklyn, Laurie, and Kate, Rick snaps, rushes the man and rips his gun from his coat, and says “f**k you.” He shoots Jim dead where he stands.

It’s then that Sritala tells Rick that Jim was Rick’s father. New shots are fired, now from Sritala’s otherwise useless bodyguards. Rick returns fire, taking out some of the guards, but Chelsea’s been hit. All season long, Chelsea had been warning Rick that bad things happen in threes. She’d already been nearly injured in that robbery, and then was bitten by a snake (that Rick released). She was just missing that third bad thing—it found her.

Rick scoops Chelsea up and walks her off to get help, promising her that they’ll be together forever. But Gaitok does as he’s been goaded all season long to do: He allows the natural violence flowing through life to flow through himself and shoots Rick. Rick and Chelsea fall into the pond, finding their peace at last.

In an after-episode and on the show’s podcast, White explained why it had to be them. “It’s a classic theme of Greek tragedy: someone killing the thing they love while trying to get some revenge.”

“Chelsea has this kind of romantic fatalism about their relationship, and you want to buy into it,” says White. “She says to him, ‘Stop fixating on the love you didn’t get. Think about the love you have! I’m right here!’ It feels like a nice return to the beginning, where we find Amrita (Shalini Peiris) in this therapy session with Zion. And now we see it in a completely different context. If Amrita had sat with Rick, maybe none of this would have happened.”

What Rick needed, he had all along, White explained. Chelsea. “He has this person who really loves him, and he just can’t experience the love in the present because he is just so fixated on the lack in himself and the lack of love he had in his past.”

So what’s in store for The White Lotus now? We might be moving into a mountain resort, or some place without all the loving/creepy shots of waves, White reveals.

“For the fourth season, I want to get away from the crashing waves against rocks vernacular. But there’s always room for more murders at the White Lotus hotels!”

“This season, at least from how I was composing it, is using Buddhist ideas as the organizing principle, trying to think about identity as a cause of suffering,” he says. “I think of identity as this way of thinking about yourself in these concrete, literal terms that then end up becoming a source of pain for you. It can be a source of pride, but it also becomes a source of pain. Basically, the whole thing is really a kind of dramatic investigation. And that is why the writing is a little different than the other ones. Obviously, there are satirical elements, but there is a kind of Buddhist parable. Like the Rick (Goggins) story. It’s a little more hard-boiled than something that I usually write.”

Featured image: Aime Lou Wood, Walton Goggins. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO