‘White Lotus’ Star Aimee Lou Wood on the Tragic Finale

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the season three finale of The White Lotus.

Aimee Lou Wood didn’t need White Lotus creator Mike White to tell her that Chelsea was going to die.

Wood, who previously starred in Netflix’s Sex Education, was at her callback audition for the role when she was given a scene in which Chelsea finally hears from her boyfriend Rick that he would also like to be together forever. “My intuition kicked in, and I was so upset reading it. I didn’t have the rest of the scripts. I didn’t have context, but I knew,” she tells Vanity Fair. “She loves him and she dies, and I just knew it.”

Wood says White talked to her after her audition and could tell that she knew what would happen to Chelsea. He confirmed she’d have a tragic ending. “That’s why then at the end, I was like, ‘I feel like maybe I might have got that part because he just told me,’” she says.

Chelsea, the astrology-loving free spirit who heads to Thailand with her boyfriend Rick (Walton Goggins), has been concerned about their safety since she discovered Rick’s real motives for coming to the island. When Rick heads to Bangkok hoping to meet the man who killed his father, Chelsea is left to worry—and rightfully so, since by that time she’s already been the victim of a robbery and attacked by a snake. “Bad things come in threes,” she tells Rick.

Chelsea ends up being very right. In the bloody finale, Rick returns to Chelsea thinking he’s had closure after facing off with Jim Hollinger (Scott Glenn), who he believes murdered his dad. Chelsea and Rick have a few lovely moments, even promising to spend the rest of their lives together (in that scene that Wood read for her audition). But then Rick is filled again with anger after Jim returns to the White Lotus Hotel and insults Rick’s dead mother. Rick takes Jim’s gun and kills him, and then a shoot-out ensues, and Chelsea is shot as well. Rick is heartbroken, and gets shot as he tries to get lend a hand for Chelsea.

The White Lotus is the first show that Wood has been on that’s had a weekly release, meaning that she’s had to keep this secret for months. “I’ve known Chelsea’s fate for a long time, and that’s a lonely thing because no one else can know,” says Wood, who watched the finale with her White Lotus costars. “The relief and the release is so profound, but it feels like it’s more than just about the fact that I can talk about the secrets. It’s something deeper.”

Now finally able to reveal all, Wood spoke to Vanity Fair the day after the finale, discussing how it felt to film that violent finale, the importance of her pendant, and what we can all learn from Chelsea’s journey.