Well, there it was: the handjob that stopped the nation—or at least made me stop the latest episode of The White Lotus, yell at my television, and go for a long walk.
Yes, after weeks of the most uncomfortable will-they-or-won’t-they vibes between walking red flag Saxon Ratliff (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and younger brother Lochlan (Sam Nivola), Sunday’s episode of The White Lotus left us with no doubt that they, indeed, would. In the previous episode, if you’ll recall, during a drunken and druggy Full Moon Party in Thailand, the two brothers both seem set to hook up on a luxury yacht with model-turned-woman-of-leisure Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon), who is clearly more than happy to share. (Asked in a red carpet interview to describe her character, Le Bon quite aptly used the words, “Sex. Party. Chaos.”)
And if we viewers thought the prospect made us feel sick, evidently it ultimately made the brothers retch too. In the new episode, “Denials,” as their memories slowly return to them the next day amid soul-crushing hangovers, each Ratliff brother slowly recalls flashes of himself kissing the other—first as a joke and on a dare, but then later, perhaps not—and then, even more shockingly, of Lochlan simultaneously having sex with Chloe while jerking Saxon off under a sheet. The younger brother, as seen in hazy recollections, even smiled proudly to himself as his older brother came. Their respective glimpses of the night before send Saxon running to the bathroom and Lochlan, as he later tries to meditate in a nearby Buddhist monastery, into an apparent spiritual crisis.
If you thought that the third season of Mike White’s hit anthology series would never go as far as brotherly incest, well, you must not have been paying attention to the Ratliff siblings’ weird vibes all along—or to which television network houses The White Lotus. “If it was not quite the ‘ick’ heard ’round the world, there was a collective shudder that went up the spines of fans of serialized television at the moment,” the New York Times declared in a piece exploring a sudden glut of incest content on HBO back in 2011. The old Home Box Office has been perhaps somewhat inappropriately obsessed with relations inside the family home for a while now.
Just think about it. Most prominently, there’s been Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, both of which have featured prominent brother-on-sister, aunt-on-nephew, and uncle-on-niece storylines, albeit in fantasy worlds dreamed up by George R. R. Martin. In 2022, the HBO Max reboot of Gossip Girl also revealed that a prominent character had been hooking up with her brother in a hotel room, while on Boardwalk Empire in 2011, one of the lead mobster characters was shown having a sexual relationship with his mother. (This is the incident that sent the Times into a conniption.) Even the comedies Bored to Death and Rick and Morty (which airs on Cartoon Network, which shares a parent company with HBO) have teased incest storylines. Hell, this isn’t even the first time incest has been a plotline in The White Lotus. Last season, Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) memorably walked in on Jack (Leo Woodall) sticking it to who we were told was his uncle. Although Quentin (Tom Hollander) was most likely just Jack’s john, the scene still came as a shock for both audiences and Tanya. (It also gave us the unforgettable line from Haley Lu Richardson’s Portia in the finale, “Yeah? So you fuck your uncle?!”)
While HBO isn’t the only network whose shows have featured incest—Showtime’s Dexter somewhat infamously in its sixth season had the serial killer’s adopted sister profess she was in love with him, while two different seasons of FX’s American Horror Story have, well, horrified viewers with incestuous characters—there’s a reason why everyone’s favorite boundary-pushing channel in particular doesn’t shy away from such depictions. As public standards (if not broadcasting rules) have relaxed when it comes to sex in recent decades, viewers have become more comfortable watching things that once seemed verboten, such as homosexuality. But as prestige adult dramas, especially those on streaming platforms (or what we used to call cable TV), still seek to titillate and scandalize without completely outraging audiences, they have been left with few other options that can push the envelope. Enter: circumstantially murky incest among consenting adult characters. (White went out of his way in the fifth episode of The White Lotus’ third season to state for those on the luxury yacht, and for those watching at home, that Lochlan is indeed 18.)
“There’s a sexual libertarianism right now,” Oona Chaplin, who played a 19th-century English woman in an incestuous relationship with her half-brother in the appropriately named FX and BBC joint production Taboo (2017), explained to Vanity Fair. “Sex has become a very public-display type of thing, so there’s very few things that have remained taboo. Where does the taboo lie now? I think it’s in incest.”
Incest storylines can be a boon for ratings not just for their shock value, but because they prey on deep-rooted desires among audiences to witness the forbidden, Kinsey Institute researcher Justin Lehmiller told Business Insider in 2022. “Part of it is that transgressive element, that heightened arousal that comes from taboo activities,” he said. Other viewers, according to Lehmiller, may just be tuning in out of “morbid curiosity.”
The result can be repulsive to viewers, but also evidently gripping. Just look at the popularity of incest porn, or fauxcest, which some adult stars have noted boomed as it became more common on TV. “If you want someone not to hit the remote control clicker, show a hint of incest,” told Salon in 2011.
But if incest is such a common feature now in many shows, can it still feel provocative if it starts to feel tired? Writing for the Daily Beast after the 2022 incest twist on Gossip Girl, critic Coleman Spilde said he felt astonished that television had reached a point where such stories seemed to him to be played out. “A plotline that was once the most controversial route for writers to take has begun to feel like an uninspired play for some much-needed shock value,” Spilde said. “How wild is it that incest is in its flop era?”
Still, judging by reactions online, viewers of The White Lotus have been horrified by, and hooked to, the developing Saxon-Lochlan storyline since it was first teased in the season premiere. When Saxon sits with Lochlan by the pool and explains how long plane rides make him horny, a ghostly sound begins to underscore his dialogue. “It’s like, a lot of hot women, away from home, no one to answer to, acting all anonymous,” Saxon says over the foreboding whispers, omens of what’s to come.
The incestuous vibes between the Ratliff boys have been clear for a while. At the end of that first episode, as the two brothers lie shirtless in their respective beds and Saxon tells his brother not to follow the path of his sister, he instinctively frames her through a sexual lens. “I’m sure you’ve noticed she’s pretty hot, but I don’t think she’s ever been laid before,” Saxon says casually, as if everyone routinely thinks about their sibling’s hotness or sex life. (“He shouldn’t be talking about me like that,” Sarah Catherine Hook’s Piper says quite rightly in a subsequent episode.) Then, in a moment that gave many viewers an instinctive ick, Saxon takes things a step further by openly wondering how he’ll manage to masturbate during their vacation while sharing a room with his brother, before then asking Lochlan about his porn consumption preferences. When Saxon stands up naked and wanders to the bathroom to jerk off, Lochlan watches him leave, staring at his brother’s butt and a glimpse of his penis in the mirror, biting his lip. The next morning, Lochlan is still unable to take his eyes off his sleeping brother’s buttocks, finally taking himself to the bathroom to wash his face and look at himself in the mirror.
Whatever is going on in the Ratliff family seems to be confined solely to the three adult children. When Lochlan and Piper are accidentally flashed by their father Timothy (Jason Isaacs) in the fourth episode, they’re instantly disgusted and horrified. And while mom Victoria (Parker Posey, who herself once starred in a movie about incest) laughs at Saxon’s joke about not receiving a happy ending during his massage, she still recoils in animated disgust and tells him to shut up.
Yet the vibe between Lochlan and Piper isn’t ever presented as sexual—more codependent and protective, as if she recognizes part of herself in her younger brother and wants to nurture it. “You’re protecting yourself with your female side,” Lochlan’s posture guru at the resort tells him. It’s this side that’s under threat from Saxon’s questionable influence.
Just like he is still choosing which college to attend, Lochlan has quite clearly been positioned from the beginning as facing another big choice: whether to emulate the in-your-face sexuality and toxic masculinity of his brother or the repression and spirituality of his sister. Does he want to go to the pool or visit a monastery? Drink a protein shake or read a book? Go to the Full Moon Party or have dinner with the family? Over the course of the season, we’ve seen him drift more and more to his brother’s camp, much to his sister’s disappointment.
All of which is to say: The Episode 6 incest scene isn’t necessarily about incest at its core, at least for Lochlan. Instead, it’s the literal manifestation of him aligning himself with his older brother—of becoming him, even—if just for one night. His proud smile during that moment is because he thinks he’s achieved the unadulterated sexual machismo that his brother wanted for him. In fact, he’s even bested him. “One day, I’m going to take you down,” he tells Saxon in the previous episode. Turns out that day is today.
There are still two episodes left in The White Lotus to see what the show ultimately does with Lochlan’s character and with the incest storyline—whether the brothers’ antics will be exposed and cause further familial chaos, or whether the shared memory alone will be punishment enough for the both of them. The looming question for Lochlan remains: Now that he’s had a taste, quite literally, of his brother’s life, what path will the youngest Ratliff choose?
As for the rest of us (as well as Saxon, evidently), the mental image is going to take some time to forget. “God! I don’t think there’s a drug in their world that would make me get with my brother,” a disgusted Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) tells Saxon by the pool the next day. Noting his horror, she then adds, unconvincingly, “Hey, I don’t judge, OK?” Suuure.
