Spoilers ahead for “The White Lotus”!
The shocking last five minutes of Episode 5 of the second season of “The White Lotus” may make some yell “Uncle!” at HBO.
The show veered into “House of the Dragon” territory in the “That’s Amore” episide when in a closing scene, Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) sneaks out of her room in the middle of the night to discover her new friend Quentin (Tom Hollander) having sex with his nephew Jack (Leo Woodall). To make matters even weirder, Jack has been hooking up with Tanya’s assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson).
The bonkers twist seems eerily similar to a scene in Season 1 of “The White Lotus” in which hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) is caught in the act with his young employee Dillon (Lukas Gage).
Mike White, the show’s creator, told Variety on Sunday that was precisely his intent — and that the latest scene was meant to “echo” its predecessor.
He also noted to Variety that both scenes in Season 1 and 2 feature a character walking in on gay sex behind closed doors and both occur two episodes before the finale. It should be noted that in Season 1, the person who walks in on Armond is Shane (Jake Lacy), who eventually kills Armond. If White truly wants to “echo” the scene in Season 2, Tanya may suffer the same fate as Shane.
“There’s a pleasure to me as a guy who is gay-ish to make gay sex transgressive again,” White told Variety. “It’s dirty… men are having sex and you have this ‘Psycho’ music underneath. It just amuses me.”
He added: “I just think transgressive sex is sexier. I guess I’m old school. There’s this gothic vibe of walking through a haunted hotel or haunted house and people are having sex behind closed doors.”
Yet, when it comes to the burning question that most people have regarding the scene — which is whether or not Jack is Quentin’s actual nephew — White played coy.
“Well, you’ll have to see,” he teased.
Despite White giving somewhat of an elusive explanation, plenty of people on Twitter have their theories on who Jack actually is and where the story is headed. Check them out below!