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The White Lotus' Season 3 Finale Confirms The Biggest Theory About Rick & The Husband, Jim, Making That Last Twist Way More Tragic
WARNING! This article contains SPOILERS for The White Lotus’ season 3 finale!Amid the chaos of The White Lotus season 3’s shootout scene, Sritala finally confirms a long-held theory about Rick and Jim’s real relationship. Throughout The White Lotus season 3, Walton Goggins’ Rick had been on a mission to find and confront hotel co-owner Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), who his mother told him had killed Rick’s father before he was born. Rick eventually faced Jim in Bangkok and told him how he ruined his life, but when the moment of truth came, Rick decided not to kill Jim in season 3, episode 7. Still, it was clear their story wasn’t over.
Jim seemed unthreatening after his frightened reaction in episode 7, but the finale proved that wasn’t the case. When Jim returned to the resort and confronted Rick about threatening him in his home, Jim himself threatened Rick with a gun in his jacket pocket. That soon led to Rick and Jim unexpectedly coming face-to-face yet again in The White Lotus season 3’s ending, culminating in Rick grabbing Jim’s gun and fatally shooting him for insulting his mother and killing his father. Seconds later, Sritala would reveal the tragic truth about Jim and Rick’s father that fans had widely surmised beforehand.
The White Lotus’ Season 3 Finale Confirms Jim Was Rick’s Father
Jim Never Killed Rick’s Father, He WAS Rick’s Father
When Rick sees Sritala cradling her husband’s body, he explains his actions by saying that Jim killed his father. However, Sritala quickly rebuts by confirming the theory that Jim is Rick’s father – which sends Rick into a deeper state of confusion, panic, and guilt all at that moment. It made absolutely no sense to Rick – he believed his mother when she said that his father was a good man who was killed by Jim while trying to help the locals in Thailand protect their land from greedy businessmen. However, the clues to Jim being Rick’s father had been there all along.
Jim had no idea what Rick was talking about when being accused of killing his father, but he started putting two and two together when Rick mentioned his mother, Gloria Hatchett.
In The White Lotus season 3, episode 2, Rick revealed in his session with Amrita that when he was 10 years old, his mother, who was a drug addict and had overdosed, told him on her deathbed that his father was killed by Jim Hollinger. However, according to his mother, his father’s body was never found. Despite there being no body or proof of his father’s murder, Rick defended his mother’s story, stating that a woman on her deathbed wouldn’t lie about something like that to her young son. But, unless young Rick misunderstood her, that’s exactly what she did.
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The White Lotus Season 3 Finale Deaths |
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Character |
Who Killed Them |
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Jim |
Rick |
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Rick |
Gaitok |
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Chelsea |
Jim & Sritala’s bodyguards |
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Jim & Sritala’s Two Bodyguards |
Rick |
It’s implied that Jim wasn’t aware that Rick was his son until The White Lotus season 3, episode 7’s ending. Jim had no idea what Rick was talking about when being accused of killing his father, but he started putting two and two together when Rick mentioned his mother, Gloria Hatchett. Jim clearly recognized her name, and seemingly realized at that exact moment that Rick was unknowingly his child. The details of their affair aren’t clear, but it seems like Jim and Gloria were together, she got pregnant, he abandoned her, and never looked back after staying in Thailand.
Why Rick’s Mother Lied About Jim Killing “His Father”
Gloria Didn’t Want Rick To Know The Truth About His Father Being A Bad Man
Image via Max
Considering she lied about his father anyway, it’s odd that Gloria still used the real name of Rick’s father as the identity of the man who supposedly murdered him. Rather than just tell Rick that Jim Hollinger is his father, she lied about Jim killing him while still giving Rick a clue about how to find his father. Perhaps by saying that Scott Glenn’s The White Lotus season 3 character killed his father, who was supposedly a good man, she had hoped that Rick would one day kill Jim and get revenge for both of them.
The White Lotus season 3 revealed that Jim has two other children with Sritala, a daughter living in New York and a daughter living in Thailand.
Gloria presumably lied to Rick about his father because she thought she was protecting him. By giving Rick a story about his father being a good man and only being absent from his life because he was “murdered” by someone bad, he would be “protected” from the truth: either that his father simply abandoned him and wanted nothing to do with them, or that she never told his father that Rick existed because he wasn’t a good man. However, her lie sent Rick on a lifelong search for vengeance against Jim for never allowing him to meet that “good man.”
Related
Scott Glenn makes his debut as Jim in The White Lotus season 3, episode 7, creating an actor reunion for one of HBO’s best mystery TV shows.
Additionally, Gloria might not have seen her confession to Rick as a lie. In her mind, she may have believed that the Jim Hollinger who became a greedy, ruthless businessman in Thailand “killed” the good man that he once was. Therefore, the story she told Rick might be about the Jim that she originally fell in love with before becoming pregnant. However, that version of Jim “disappeared,” with Scott Glenn’s Jim Hollinger becoming a man she didn’t even recognize. To cope with the harsh reality that Jim wouldn’t be in their lives, Gloria fabricated a new story for her son.
By Killing Jim, Rick Ironically Became The Man He Spent So Long Searching For
Rick Committed The Crime That He Originally Wanted To Kill Jim For
There are several terrible layers of irony to Rick and Jim’s deaths in The White Lotus’ season 3 finale. For most of his life, Rick had been on a journey to try to get satisfaction from the man who murdered his father in Thailand. While he thought that person was Jim, he ended up fulfilling that role himself. It was Rick who would go on to kill his father in Thailand, though he didn’t know his real relationship with Jim until moments after he pulled the trigger.
Additionally, with Rick being killed by Gaitok a few minutes after killing Jim, he also fulfilled the dark fate that he had intended for his father’s killer. Though Rick initially wasn’t certain that he was going to kill Jim for murdering his father, he did end up making that decision after Jim also insulted his mother. However, since Jim was his father, Rick would ironically have to be the one to die in order for his father’s killer to be brought to justice.
Rick proved to be the one responsible for the death of his father (by killing Jim), his perceived inability to feel or give love (by accidentally causing Chelsea’s death), and ruining his own life (by his murders leading to Gaitok killing him).
Still, Rick got the revenge and peace that he needed by confronting the man who ruined his life. Even if the murdered “good man” who Rick envisioned didn’t exist, Jim Hollinger arguably did still ruin his life by being absent from it. Jim had the money and power to support Rick throughout his childhood had he been there, and could have even chosen to make amends with him after realizing the truth in The White Lotus season 3, episode 7. However, rather than finally try to be a father to Rick, Jim threatened him, insulted Gloria, and banished him.
Not only did Rick become his father’s own killer, but he also became indirectly responsible for Chelsea’s death in the finale because he couldn’t move on from the pain Jim caused him. Chelsea tried to get Rick to stop dwelling on the love he never got from his father and focus on the love that he received from her now, but he ultimately lost both. Chelsea got caught in the middle of the gunfire when Jim’s bodyguards tried to shoot Rick, which never would’ve happened if he had followed her advice in The White Lotus season 3’s ending.
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As Amrita tried to tell him earlier in The White Lotus season 3, Rick was the one who created and fostered his deepest pain and misery. He didn’t have to be consumed by finding his father’s killer; he didn’t have to let his father’s “murder” and absence ruin his life. Ironically, and perhaps karmically, Rick proved to be the one responsible for the death of his father (by killing Jim), his perceived inability to feel or give love (by accidentally causing Chelsea’s death), and ruining his own life (by his murders leading to Gaitok killing him).
9/10
- Release Date
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July 11, 2021
- Network
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HBO
- Showrunner
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Mike White
- Directors
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Mike White
- Writers
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Mike White
