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There was a lot of plot in the White Lotus finale—approximately 90 minutes of it, in fact. The three friends got back together, the Ratliff family almost didn’t, and we finally got our bodies. (R.I.P. Rick and Chelsea!) According to a new episode of the official White Lotus podcast, however, there was a whole new relationship that was supposed to bloom in the season’s final hour-and-a-half. To the two or so Piper and Zion shippers out there—today’s your lucky day.
Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) was supposed to lose her virginity to Zion (Nicholas Duvernay) upon her return from the monastery, but Mike White decided to cut the scene from the script. “[Piper] decides to lose her virginity in the script in the last episode,” White explained. “There’s this whole scene where she’s like, ‘It’s true. Saxon is right about this one thing. I need to get this over with’… After she leaves the monastery, she’s just like, ‘I need to have sex.'” While the two characters never interact in the final version of the season, Piper was initially supposed to scope Zion out during her final resort breakfast.
In the end, however, White decided that the scene was just too much to tack on, especially considering that it would have added about ten minutes to the already overstuffed episode. Thematically, it also brought too much of a “rom-com vibe” to the proceedings when the Ratliff’s storyline that was closer to the family annihilation end of the spectrum.
“It just felt like I was trying to do too much narratively,” White concluded. There will be more time for Piper to have post-enlightenment sex if the family ever has enough money to go on vacation again.
