The White Lotus Season 3 Finale Recap: Bloodshed and Sacrifice

After seven episodes of bickering, betrayals, confrontations, soul-searching, illicit sex and a little bit of incest, the eighth and final episode of “The White Lotus” Season 3 ended with five gunshot deaths (including two bodyguards), a close call with a poisoned protein shake and two White Lotus employees seeing their dreams come true — though not without some sacrifices.It was exactly the kind of season finale one might expect from the “White Lotus” creator, Mike White.We will have a fuller recap of the finale soon, but for now, here is a quick rundown of where all of the season’s major characters and story lines landed, after an eventful week at a luxury Thailand resort.The RatliffsThis family of North Carolina blue bloods — half Duke blue, half Tar Heel blue — has been at the center of this season’s juiciest story lines, with the patriarch, Tim, watching his business fall apart from afar while his wife, Victoria, fretted over her daughter Piper’s passion for Buddhism.

Meanwhile, the sons Saxon and Lochlan flirted with both hedonism and spirituality — and, during one drunken night, with each other.In the finale, Tim decided to protect his family from living a life of poverty and scandal by mixing the poisonous seeds of a local fruit into toxic piña coladas and serving them to his wife and kids — minus Lochlan, who had insisted earlier that a simpler life was no big deal to him.Tim immediately changed his mind and knocked the drinks out of everyone’s hands after a few sips, but the next day — in a moment of Mike White irony — Lochlan ended up drinking the poison seeds in a protein shake.Lochlan survived the experience, and the brush with death seemed to have sobered up Tim, who left Thailand with his family — including Piper, who chose not to live with the Buddhists after all — and finally warned them about the troubles ahead for all of them.The gal palsAt the end of Episode 7, Laurie was chased out of the Russian crook Alekse...