A Popular Theory About Lochlan On ‘The White Lotus’ Is Shockingly Homophobic
Maybe I’ve streamed too many Saw movies. Maybe I’ve watched too many scenes of Cersei and Jaime Lannister banging each others’ brains out. Maybe my own brain is just broken after 1.1 Tr*mp administrations and a global pandemic.
Whatever the reason, I just wasn’t that fazed by the brotherly love in Season 3 Episode 6 of The White Lotus. It didn’t seem like the most shocking thing I’d ever seen on TV – or even on this show. Reminder: There was a whole week during Season 2 when we all thought that a character had just plowed his own uncle. No. Compared to that, the Lorazeclan Handy was about as edgy as Miley Cyrus performing anilingus on a teddy bear.
What really shocks me is the popular homophobic theory that the moment has sprouted. Not a few Very Online folks, queer people included, have proffered the idea that Lochlan (Sam Nivola) not only Happy Ended his brother, but remained sober so that he could take advantage of him and assault him. All of this from an imagined detail (“he spit out his pill in Episode 5”) that remains unsupported and unconfirmed by everyone involved with the show. All of this bolstered, perhaps unconsciously, by the ancient homophobic myth that non-heterosexual men are often predators. A myth that our current government has normalized with every new dawn of 2025, making life even more difficult for queer people, and especially trans people, in the United States.
First, let’s cast aside the notion that Lochlan spit out his pill during Season 3 Episode 5. It was never obvious that he did this; plus, it was always unlikely from the start, considering that creator Mike White wouldn’t have let such a huge plot detail go unnoticed. More importantly, Nivola himself has stopped this theory in his tracks: In an interview with Vanity Fair, he confirmed that his character was high when he gave his brother the old college try. So, he did not spit out his pill. It remains extremely unlikely that White, who also directed, would have intended for Lochlan to be sober in the Lorazehandy scene without informing the actor himself.
Second, we can remove the other crucial element of the S.A. theory which insists that Saxon was asleep during the brotherly bonding. If this had been true, then Chloe would have not presented the news of his indiscretion in the way that she did. As written, she insinuated that Saxon was very much awake for the helping handy. Furthermore, and more obviously, Saxon would not have been able to remember it if he had been asleep.
Third, viewers have been so quick to create a Predatory Queer narrative that they’ve ignored the crucial character notes about the Ratliffs that Mike White has already given us. Victoria Ratliff has already normalized sexual talk within this family by enabling Saxon’s crude horny comments and by sharing stories of her brother dangling spit over her mouth. She has cultivated an environment in which Lochlan feels comfortable working out his sexual frustrations on his own brother. But according to Nivola, not even that is the full story. As the actor told Variety, “I think Lochlan is a people pleaser, who will try to get people to like him by any means necessary … What he learns over the first few episodes is that Saxon is the sex guy. His primary motive in life is to make money and get laid. So, the thing on the boat is Lochlan’s tragically misguided attempt at being like, ‘So, you’re the sex guy. Let’s do something in that realm and try to connect in some way.’ It’s obviously a big swing and a miss.”
Fourth, viewers don’t even know for sure whether Saxon gave his consent or not. For all we know, he might have consented at that moment. Viewers have assumed that Lochlan, who until now has displayed non-exclusively-heterosexual tendencies, is the only one who “enjoyed” the fraternal fapping.
So, there you have it. Lochlan was canonically not sober and never intended to take advantage of his brother. By claiming otherwise, the Internet has unintentionally (I’m being generous) perpetuated an age-old homophobic myth. Drag artists and trans people have been accused of pedophilia and predation for years by the emboldened GOP. In fact, conservatives have been convinced that all queer men are pedophiles and predators ever since the first “Boys Beware” PSAs in the 1950s depicted adult gay men luring kids into their trucks with lollipops. Must we give Redhats more reason to hate wokeness by making them think that our current favorite TV obsession stars an evil gay twink? Let’s stop, please. Lochlan made an Incest Oopsie and we have no reason to judge him. I’m not saying that all of us have made out with our brothers, but most of us have definitely done something while blorked out of our minds that humiliated us for years afterwards. For example, I once hooked up with a Flat Earther who believed that his sun tea made him immune to Covid-19. Now you go.
