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The White Lotus Season 3 Finale: Creator Mike White Reveals WHY Piper and Zion's Intimate Scenes Were Deleted
Mike White reveals how Piper and Zion would have shared a pivotal moment if their intimate scenes hadn’t been cut from The White Lotus Season 3 finale.
The White Lotus Season 3 would have witnessed Piper lose her virginity to Zion had they not cut the scene for runtime. Series creator Mike White spoke out about cutting the scene where Piper gets intimate with Zion from the last episode of the season, even though he had wanted to feature it.
Originally planned to come after Sarah Catherine Hook's Piper dramatically left the monastery, the deleted scene would have seen her acting upon a personal epiphany triggered by a previous conversation with her older brother Saxon, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger.
In the season's first episode, Saxon called Piper a virgin, and the scene was supposed to come to a complete circle in the series finale of the HBO Max hit show, which aired on April 6, 2025.
White took to the The White Lotus Official Podcast to explain, "It was just one of these things where it's an hour and a half already, and it would have added, like, 10 minutes to the thing."
In White's opinion, the scene introduced a lighthearted, amorous tone that did not sit well with the more sinister subplot of Jason Isaacs's Timothy almost murdering his whole family with the toxic fruit.
Mike added, "It had a little bit of a romantic rom-com vibe in the middle of [Timothy] trying to kill the family with the ping pong fruits."
White explained that the tone contradiction made it hard to include it in the end, particularly since the episode's already long running time was ninety minutes.
The writer-director said the scene seemed a fitting follow-up to Piper's storyline about the monastery, as the character chooses to experience a new type of freedom. White added that when she comes back from the monastery, by opting to lose her virginity in the cut scene, Piper attempts to regain control over her own decisions.
Even though it was cut, the scene gives Piper's journey this season an added depth. The deleted scene, which was tonally different from the rest of the intense narrative arcs around it, would have starred Nicholas Duvernay as Zion alongside Sarah Catherine Hook as Piper.
The White Lotus Season 3 is available on Max.
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