Mike White Explains the Roots of the Most Notorious Storyline from 'The White Lotus'

This article contains spoilers for "The White Lotus."

The post mortems continue following the explosive conclusion of the third season of "The White Lotus." Actor Patrick Schwarzenegger, who played Saxon Ratliff in the season's most talked-about storyline, gave his thoughts now that he could comment freely and not worry about spoilers. Mike White addressed that same wild storyline, in which Saxon and his younger brother, Lochlan (Sam Nivola), incestuously shared a bed during a threesome, with Lochlan reaching over to masturbate his brother while in the process of losing his own virginity.

That storyline didn't come out of nowhere; it was preceded by a different "incestuous" relationship in the show's second season, Mike White has revealed.

In a discussion with Howard Stern about the show, the radio host "pressed White on infamous 'incest hand job' between Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola's sibling characters and the creator admitted that, to some degree, he was indeed trying to generate some shock and attention for the show," The Hollywood Reporter summarized in a writeup of the interview.

The creator-writer-director explained that "gay sex is like a jump scare" on "The White Lotus" – a moment designed to impart intense shock.

"We had done faux incest," White noted, "so maybe we should do real incest" for Season 3.

White was referring, of course, to the "jump scare" moment in Season 2 when Jennifer Coolidge's character, Tanya McQuaid, stumbles upon 20-something English hunk Jack (Leo Woodall) pounding his supposed uncle, Quentin (Tom Hollander). As it turns out, Jack is not related to Quentin – though he is a hired ruffian who is subsequently deployed to seduce Tanya's assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), in order to get her out of the picture while a conspiracy unfolds to murder Tanya so that her husband, Greg (Jon Gries), can inherit her vast wealth.

Season 3's "real incest" also served as a way to further Saxon's journey.

"Beyond the shock of it, just to have a character like [Saxon], who's all about getting off and just thinks of sex in base terms, what would need to happen to him to where he'd suddenly have to pull the brakes on the way he's thinking? I was trying to think of a way that would be integral to his character," White added.

Lochlan, on the other hand, ends up explaining the brothers' shared sexual experience by saying that he's "a pleaser" surrounded by "a family of narcissists" – so a sexual experience involving Saxon is, for him, a way of making a connection with a brother with whom he shares little in the way of common interests.

White acknowledged just how shocking the moment was for many viewers, telling Stern that he offered Schwarzenegger and Nivola the chance to bail before being forever associated with a storyline that is sure to echo through the culture for years to come.

"I told them, 'You guys can still get out of this; you're going to be the face of gay incest,'" White said.