Of all the characters to get the fuzzy end of the lollipop on the third season of The White Lotus, for some reason, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) seemed the person least likely to get so fucked over. Maybe because she was among the purest of heart (apart from Gaitok [Tayme Thapthimthong]). And then one remembers that it’s always the purest of heart who get led to the slaughter (see also: Au Hasard Balthasar). Indeed, looking back, all the signs of Chelsea’s tragic demise were there—as she would have told you herself…had she lived to look back on those signs. Unfortunately, her hopeless romantic nature blinded her to the ways in which Rick Hatchett (Walton Goggins)—as in, a “hatchet job” of a human—was bound to be the source of her downfall.
What’s more, he was the one constantly trying to dim her light, sucking up all the energy in the room. Case in point, because Chelsea is the type of person that normies frequently describe as a “free spirit,” she doesn’t even get the “benefit” of being given a last name. Instead, Rick is the one bestowed with that apparent luxury (though “Hatchett” is the type of last name that might make one feel as though they’re better off without one). Upon better getting to know this character, the lack of any mention of her last name also indicates the willingness with which she makes Rick her entire world. And it’s obvious that, despite all evidence to the contrary, she hopes to be “Mrs. Hatchett” sooner or later (though it would have been later, knowing Rick). Even if, to her dismay, he’s a “Scorpio. So secretive” (as she points out in the third episode, “The Meaning of Dreams”). Further adding, “It’s not easy for me Rick, I’m an Aries. I need everything out in the open.” Rick is not an “out in the open” kind of guy. Surly, monosyllabic and brusque, he appears to be looking at Chelsea the entire time as though in awe that someone like her could keep enduring someone like him. Especially after he tells her he’s jetting off to Bangkok after one night of staying at The White Lotus, giving her no explanation as to why. Instead, he tries to “placate” her with the insult of suggesting she might meet another guy (a rich one she can “sponge off” [the implication being that’s what she’s doing to him]). In response, she insists that they’re soul mates. Rick counters, “How can you be my soul mate? Our signs aren’t even compatible.” Leave it to Rick to tune in to Chelsea’s hippie-dippy teachings only when he wants to use them against her.
As for the imbalanced power dynamic between the two, it’s more than just a matter of Rick paying for everything, but rather, the way in which Chelsea must act as his, for all intents and purposes, mother figure. And, from the outset, it’s clear that Chelsea is always trying to deescalate the situations that Rick entangles himself in. An example of this reveals itself from the moment when all the guests are first going to the hotel on the boat, and Rick smokes his cigarette freely, not caring that it’s bothering the Ratliff family, even though they’re all being quite open about their distaste for it. When Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) starts to intervene with a belligerent approach, Rick is only too ready to get in a tussle over it, but it is Chelsea who pulls him back, reins him in. Almost as though telepathically reminding him that they’re going to a place that’s meant to ensure calmness and tranquility within. Naturally, that’s not at all why Rick opted to bring them there, but Chelsea doesn’t know that, hence ensuring that he takes full advantage of the various services offered. For instance, booking him a session for “stress management meditation” with Amrita (Shalini Peiris).
Before meeting Amrita, however, Rick and Chelsea are introduced to their “health mentor,” Thidapon “Mook” Sornsin (Lalisa Manobal), who guides them to their hotel room. Once there, Chelsea wastes no time in telling Mook plenty of personal information, like, “We can go wherever really, ‘cause Rick barely works.” Though he does, as he later tells Greg (Jon Gries), do a bit of “this and that” to make ends meet (yes, he’s one of many rich white balding men who have found themselves exiled in Asia).
The “yin and yang” nature of Rick and Chelsea’s personalities are seemingly more vexing to Rick than they are to Chelsea, who insists, “I think the cosmos brought us together so that we could get to the root of your issues.” Such rhetoric is all in keeping with Chelsea’s “New Age” vibe, complete with being a former yoga instructor—another piece of information she doles out to Mook. This in addition to the foreshadowing statement, “Once he gets an idea in his head, you can’t argue with him. Isn’t that right, babe?” Yes, as viewers found out over a burn so slow it felt like no burn at all until the end, you can’t argue with Rick once he gets an idea in his head. That idea being to avenge himself and his father by confronting Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), a business mogul who “owns half of Thailand” and happens to be married to Sritala (Lek Patravadi), the narcissistic co-owner of the hotel. And yet, Rick has the audacity to tell Chelsea, “You’re like a fuckin’ machine gun, you know that?” when he thinks she’s asking too many questions. Of course, there’s an irony to that line too, considering Rick is the only one who ends up quite literally firing shots over and over again.
It is also in the first episode (titled “Same Spirits, New Forms”) that Chelsea does start to show slight signs of cracking under the pressure of always having to be subjected to Rick’s mercurial moods, remarking of his complaints about the food on the menu, “This is so on-brand for you. To be a victim of your own decisions.” Even so, she declares, “I’m gonna help you get your joy back. Even if it kills me.” And it will. For she, too, is a victim of her own “hopeless romantic”-based decisions. Even if Rick, often times, appears as though he’s totally impervious to what Fellini would call Chelsea’s “aggressive, sticky, maternal love.” More specifically, this is what he has Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) in La Dolce Vita tell Emma (Yvonna Furneaux): “I don’t believe in your aggressive, sticky, maternal love! I don’t want it, I have no use for it! This isn’t love, it’s brutalization!” When pushed to the brink by Chelsea’s “forceful” love, it’s not difficult to imagine Rick saying this as well. Albeit less eloquently. Case in point, in the second episode, “Special Treatments,” Chelsea laments, “God, you’re so shut down” after he refuses to see Amrita again. He replies bluntly, “And you are an idiot.” Over and over again, Rick tells her who he is (an asshole), but Chelsea refuses to see it. A common affliction among hetero women.
But it’s also obvious that Rick’s self-hatred is a key part of why he can’t accept Chelsea’s love, cringing when she kisses him and tells him she loves him even after he calls her an idiot. In the third episode, Rick’s total disregard for even being in a relationship (only concerned with doing what he feels like doing in the moment) reaches an apex (or so the viewerthinks it’s an apex) when the two are at a snake show and Rick, having gotten high beforehand, decides to sneak back into the main area of the shop because he must free all the snakes from their cages. When Chelsea comes out to find him, she is put in the crossfire of his poor decision-making—yet more foreshadowing on Mike White’s part. Later, back at the hotel, Chelsea asks why he would do something so stupid. Rick replies, “They still got a right to live free.” To which Chelsea counters, “Not if they’re out biting people.” Needless to say, the snakes are a metaphor for Rick himself, whose thoughtless decision to do that was itself a snakelike maneuver (later blaming it on the weed being laced with something else).
The snake incident marks the second time that Chelsea has a brush with death (the first being in episode one, during the robbery at the high-end luxury store at the hotel—incidentally, while she was about to try on a snake choker necklace). In fact, with this one, she’s actually rushed to the hospital, with the snake farm workers warning Rick that she could die if they don’t get her there as soon as possible. So it is that we see the first instance of Rick realizing what he’s brought on someone as innocent as Chelsea, who’s simply trying to show him love, but somehow always ends up being punished for that in some way. Because, it’s true, to love Rick is a punishment—especially for a romantic. When she confronts him about why he would release a pack of venomous snakes, Rick ultimately has no better explanation than that he “felt bad” for them. Chelsea replies that snakes are evil and he should know that from the Bible. But it’s almost as if she’s speaking subconsciously to herself in mentioning that Rick should know better about snakes, just as she should know better about a man like Rick. But, as Rick puts it, “Even evil things shouldn’t be treated like shit. It’s only gonna make them more evil.” In this subtext-y sense, it would seem that Chelsea loving Rick all this time has made him less evil than he otherwise would be (with Chelsea’s hopeful face always staring back at him, whether in real life or in his mind’s eye).
Despite her irritation over the “snafu,” Chelsea continues to show nothing but love and understanding for Rick, assuring him, “You’re not gonna get rid of me that easy. If you kill me, I’ll follow you into the next life, and the next. You’ll never get rid of me.” Obviously, White can’t help but give the audience as many dialogue-related clues as possible about what’s in store for Chelsea. Something that comes up again in episode four, “Hide and Seek,” when Chelsea says to Rick of her brushes with death, “This could be some Final Destination shit. Like Death is coming for me.” Rick comforts her with the adage, “Lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice.” But that doesn’t mean a person can’t be walking along a few steps ahead of the spot where they first got struck and then get struck again.
As for Rick’s increasingly brooding aura in this episode, it prompts Amrita, passing him by in the hotel, to remind him, “You can let go of your story. You can escape the karmic cycle. Find peace in this life.” But a man like Rick, per his own estimation, isn’t “meant” to find peace. Even if that’s all Chelsea wants to give him, by way of her love. A love that is so lopsided, she’s the only one willing to resist temptation when it comes to sleeping with other people on this trip. As she tells Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) in episode five, “Full Moon Party,” “I could never cheat on Rick. I’m a romantic” (Rick, on the other hand, has no problem cheating on her while in Bangkok). Chloe looks at her with concern, recalling, “When I was modeling, all the girls who were romantics ended up broke and broken-hearted…or worse.” “What’s worse?” Little does Chelsea know…
And yet, the signs that she’s always going on about believing in are there throughout the trip. Even so, Chelsea is convinced Rick is “her person,” explaining her devotion to Saxon in episode seven, “Killer Instincts,” as follows: “It’s like we’re in this yin and yang battle, and I’m hope and Rick is pain. And eventually one of us will win.” By the time the brutal finale arrives, it’s apparent that Rick a.k.a. Pain is the winner. That finale, called “Amor Fati,” also finds Chelsea delivering yet another prophetic line, “At this point, we’re linked. So if a bad thing happens to you, it happens to me.” Of course, the line that most viewers glommed onto was Chelsea saying, “I think we’re gonna be together forever, don’t you?” To her surprise, Rick answers without a hint of malice or sarcasm, agreeing, “That’s the plan.” So unaccustomed to him being in any way “gooey” like that, she starts to tear up, genuinely believing that perhaps Rick really has changed. Learned to “let go.”
Alas, White gives too many of his characters a presumed “happy ending” (no massage double entendre intended) much too early on in the episode. Which clearly means that those happy endings aren’t going to be real, least of all the one for Chelsea and Rick, who get stuck with the unhappiest ending out of everyone (granted, the audience isn’t given the benefit of seeing the Ratliffs’ downfall upon arriving on U.S. soil). And yes, as Chloe predicted, Chelsea ends up “worse” than broke and broken-hearted: dead. Yet, despite all that Rick has put her through, when she looks up at the sky in the midst of dying, the trees above her make it form a shape that looks like a heart. A hopeless romantic even through the cruel conclusion. But she already knew the risk of loving someone as “closed off” as Rick. A risk she found well(ness) worth taking, speaking to the title of the finale episode by informing Rick, “You have to embrace your fate, good or bad. Whatever will be, will be.” What will likely be, in the minds of all the hopeless romantics out there, is that Chelsea is definitely going to make good on the promise to follow Rick into the next life. Where, hopefully, he’ll treat her with a bit more gratitude. Or so a hopeless romantic can dare to dream.
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