Warning: This article contains spoilers.
“White Lotus” fans are mourning Rick and Chelsea after Sunday’s shocking finale — and so are the actors who played them.
Walton Goggins posted a lengthy Instagram statement addressing the characters’ deaths “with the heaviest of hearts” after Season 3’s eighth episode aired.
“To me, ours was a love story,” the 53-year-old captioned on-set snaps of himself and co-star Aimee Lou Wood. “It was only ever a love story, hindered by unresolved, childhood trauma.”
He noted, “We all have them… but can we move past them. In the depths of our despair there is always beauty around us. If we can sit with our pain, just sit with it… not react… not be defined by it…It’s there.
“The love the world is constantly giving in any given moment is there,” Goggins continued. “Always waiting for us to see it… Trust me I know.”
The Emmy nominee went on to thank creator Mike White for his “imagination” and “tender heart,” also shouting out Wood, 31, as his “partner [in] a journey [he] will never forget.”
After mentioning other “stellar f–king actor[s]” and the crew, he concluded with a quote from Greek tragedian Aeschylus.
“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God,” Goggins wrote.
Wood, for her part, re-posted photos to her Instagram Story of Rick and Chelsea that featured one of her character’s lines.
“I’ll follow you into the next life and the next,” the social media upload read, praising the “beautiful episode.”
She shared another statement about highlighting pair’s “kinda perfect ending,” as well as one calling the finale a “gut punch.”
The “Sex Education” alum went on to reveal graffiti she saw on her single trip home while filming the hit show, reading “R and C forever.”
In the emotional episode, Rick killed the White Lotus Thailand hotel owner Sritala’s husband, Jim Hollinger — before finding out Hollinger, who he believed killed his father, actually was his father.
In the ensuing shootout with the couple’s security team, Chelsea died — and Rick was shot by guard Gaitok while he walked away with his girlfriend’s body.
Both of them fell into the water and left the resort in body bags.
Notably, Sam Nivola’s character, Lochlan, appeared to die earlier in the episode due to a protein shake mixed with poisonous seeds, but he ultimately survived.
Wood addressed the series’ “incredibly uncynical” ending in a panel following a screening Sunday, calling it “very, very, very moving” with “a lot of hope” and “softness” according to CNN.
“This whole time I’ve been like, ‘So sad, Mike kills hope.’ Because Chelsea is hope, and he kills her,” she said. “But there was so much love in it. … That’s life, isn’t it? Just love and pain all the time.”
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