Aimee Lou Wood Reveals Chelsea & Saxon’s Cosmic Fate After The White Lotus

For viewers, watching Chelsea die during The White Lotus Season 3 finale was devastating. For Aimee Lou Wood — who plays the unlucky traveler — it was a revelation.

“I was like, ‘I’m so honored that I get to grow up,’” she recalls to Bustle. “Part of growing up is accepting the mundane, being steady, and being balanced, which Chelsea has an allergy to. She wants excitement. She wants exhilaration. She doesn’t want normality. She doesn’t want mundane.”

The April 6 finale saw Rick (Walton Goggins) confront and kill his father, Jim, and tragically, his ride-or-die girlfriend, Chelsea, is caught in the ensuing crossfire. Rick, in turn, is killed while carrying her limp body.

“Seeing her die, [I went], ‘All the bits of Chelsea that weren’t serving me, I can release now. And I can grow up for both of us,’” Wood recalls.

While the 31-year-old Sex Education alum has a lot of love for Chelsea, she’s delightfully clear-headed about how her character might have benefited from a different path. Below, Wood breaks down the finale, Chelsea’s “unhealed sh*t” and what a relationship with Saxon might have looked like.

Congratulations on this beautiful and heartbreaking finale! Chelsea is such a spiritually in tune person. Do you think she knew in her heart Rick would do something reckless — or did she hold out hope until the very end?

She knew. She had hope because she’s very hopeful. But Mike [White] doubted this choice a lot. He would say, “Am I making the wrong decision? Are people going to hate me too much, killing the personification of hope and romance and optimism?”

But I’m saying, “Mike, it has to be Rick and Chelsea. By giving them that ending, you elevate Chelsea. You give her the status of the mystic that she thinks she is.” Because she gets it right: “Bad things happen in threes,” “Rick and I are going to be together forever,” “If anything bad happens to you, it happens to me.” By killing her and Rick, you prove her right. In this lifetime, she wants to be right about this gut feeling that she’s got.

That’s really interesting.

Chelsea has got so much sh*t that she has not dealt with and processed, and she looks outside for the answers all the time: the zodiac, the spirituality books, the jargon, the aphorisms, the mantras. She hasn’t looked inside because she’s scared of what she’ll find in there. And so she says, “The thing that’s drawing me to Rick is fate.” No, the thing that’s drawing her to Rick is some unhealed sh*t.

Many people are using this finale as a referendum on “I can fix him” energy. Do you think this White Lotus season confirms you can’t heal someone else’s problems — and shouldn’t try?

Including Chelsea! Patrick [Schwarzenegger] was devastated that Saxon didn’t take a bullet for Chelsea. He was like, “I want Saxon to die for Chelsea.” And I’m saying, “But you can’t save Chelsea.” Saxon can’t save Chelsea in the way that Chelsea can’t save Rick.

People say, “Rick should never have taken Chelsea to Thailand and put her in harm’s way.” Do you think Rick was going “Chelsea, please come on my revenge quest?” No, he was probably saying “Go home.” Look at [when] she sees Rick kill Jim, she doesn’t run away. She walks towards it.

OK, you’re giving me a little bit of peace about this whole thing. She wasn’t totally helpless.

She is not. She is a tenacious, determined, strong love addict. Her higher power has become Rick and the relationship. When he says, “We’re going to be together forever. That’s the plan,” she sees God in that moment. If she went to therapy and did some deep inner work, she would probably have made a different choice. But this is what she wanted. When she says, “Is this a kind of ‘You killed my father, prepare to die’ thing?” He says, “I don’t know.” Now, anyone in their right mind finding out that their boyfriend might be a killer will go, “I’m going to step away now, darling.”

But she hugs him. She’s not scared. She’s so childlike, curious, endearing, funny, and lovely that people want to save her. But she’s a grown woman.

Some fans wish Chelsea and Saxon would have ended up together. It probably wouldn’t have worked out for all the reasons you mentioned, but as a viewer, would you want that for her?

Saxon and Chelsea would have been a connected relationship, not an addictive one. She wants to be the seer, not the seen. Saxon going, “OK, yeah, I’ll read those books. I’ll do that.” It’s too reciprocal, and she’s like, “No, you’re not for me. You’re a douche. You’re shallow.”

I think Saxon has so much hope and determination and wants to be better, and Rick actually wants to succumb to his worst bits, and Chelsea wants the Scorpio. She wants the darkness. She doesn’t want her Aries twin. [She and Saxon] would be firing along together, moving forward and getting things done.

[Saxon is] still reading the book on that last shot, so she’s living on in him. He will be a better person. In a way, they’re more cosmically linked than Rick and Chelsea because they die. Saxon lives on with all of Chelsea’s best bits.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.