‘The White Lotus’ Stars Explain Lochlan & Saxon’s Point of No Return (VIDEO)

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The White Lotus Season 3 Episode 6, “Denials.”]

Well, that happened. In The White Lotus‘ March 23 shocker, the brotherly love that’s been smoldering between the Ratliff boys went much further than the previous episode’s lip lock — which was done on a dare from Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) and Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon). Flashbacks to the rest of the drugged-out night on the yacht revealed that Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and younger sibling Lochlan (Sam Nivola) had a sexual encounter — while Locky was losing his virginity to Chloe.

Nivola reflected on why Lochlan would do something so taboo. “Lochlan is a really insecure character, and he just wants to do whatever he can to get in anyone’s good books,” Nivola tells TV Insider in the video interview, above. “He’s a people pleaser. And [with] Saxon, I feel like [Lochlan’s] just like, ‘I want to just go along with whatever you’re doing.’ Saxon’s the sex guy. He likes sex, so he’s talking about, ‘You got to get laid. You got to get laid.’ And [Lochlan’s] like, well, that’d be a great thing for us to do together. I mean, of course that’s not what’s going through his head. He’s incredibly fucked up on drugs and alcohol, but I think it really comes from a sort of primal place of insecurity and sort of twistedness.”

The Ratliffs are a tsunami of twistedness, and at one point it seemed that sis Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) was in danger of being pulled into the incest too. In the premiere Saxon told his brother that Piper was too hot to be a virgin, a comment Lochlan shared with her in the second episode. “Anyone talking like that without her knowing, would make her shudder. But the fact that it’s her older brother and her brother that she kind of despises — it’s just all kinds of foul to her,” Hook says. “It’s sad because it’s just furthering her insecurities around her sexuality. It’s like, I don’t need that being blasted talked about between my brothers, of all people. Let’s just not go there.”

Related

Walton Goggins Talks That Wild Surprise Cameo on 'White Lotus'

If Lochlan decides to “go there” again and confess to Piper about the incest, which he only remembered at the end of the episode while meditating with his sis at a temple, it would likely tear the Ratliffs apart. Dad Timothy (Jason Isaacs) is hiding the fact he’s about to be indicted for fraud and is numbing himself by stealing Lorazepam from his wife Virginia (Parker Posey) who insists their clan is normal despite clearly knowing something is off.

Hook says the family dynamic partly explains what happened between the boys. “Saxon is on this pedestal and really needs all this praise, especially from his dad,” Hook explains. “Piper, usually, if you’re the only girl, you are kind of seen as just the princess and maybe not taken as seriously. And so it’s like this weird tug-of-war dynamic of needing approval and validation from their parents and Lochlan being caught in between all of it, just needing love in general. But yeah, I mean, every person in this family is so specific and so different and weird.”

Learn more about the episode in the full video interview, above.

The White Lotus, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO

From TV Guide Magazine

How Hulu's 'Mid-Century Modern' Is a 'Golden Girls' for Our Times

Settle in for some older and bolder laughs with the BFFs of a certain age in the new comedy starring Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Nathan Lee Graham. Read the story now on TV Insider.