1 Minute on What The White Lotus Incest Plot is Really About
Celebrity spill over! Star shadow! Biographical bleed!
Spoilers but if this is spoiled for you do you even actually go here (the internet)?
Wow, the internet is really yapping over the brother-brother incest plot in the new season of The White Lotus. This season misses Jennifer Coolidge, but Mike White is still doing what he does best:
Dismantling the illusions of the privileged, one gradient arc at a time.
Weaponizing cultural taboos to get there.
Case in point: the now-infamous Ratliff brothers kiss and subsequent threesome. It’s a trope ripped straight from porn, and White knows it. But I don’t think the scene is really about ego death or even family dynamics — it’s about something deeper, and more damning: the closed loop of elite masculinity.
Patrick Schwarzenegger, playing one of the brothers, brings more than just his excellent performance to the role — he brings legacy. As the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the most recognizable symbols of American hypermasculinity, Patrick’s very presence in this season creates an echo chamber of meaning. This is a textbook case of off-screen gravity — where an actor’s real-world identity exerts an invisible pull on the fiction.
It’s also an example of celebrity spillover: Arnold's legacy doesn’t just linger in the background — it floods the frame. Watching Patrick navigate this fraught, eroticized relationship with his brother becomes a critique of how masculinity is passed down, copied, mirrored, and internalized to the point of collapse. We’re not just watching a scene — we’re watching masculinity fold in on itself. An ouroboros of bro-ness.
As casting agents increasingly research actor’s social media presence before placing them in a roll, it is becoming more common that Hollywood doesn’t just cast actors, but meanings. When casting is this intertextual, the role becomes inseparable from the actor’s history, DNA, and cultural baggage. Sometimes, that’s the whole point.
Star shadowing, biographical bleed — whatever you want to term it: Patrick is not just performing a role, he’s performing a system. A few other examples:
Margaret Qualley’s manic, sensual, slightly unhinged women feel like a fun house mirror of her mother Andie MacDowell’s '90s arthouse femininity, updated for late capitalism.
Isabella Rossellini offers the perfect storm of legacy — made more potent by her lineage as the daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. Watching her is like watching cinema itself reflect on its own mythologies.
Maude Apatow in Euphoria delivers not just a performance, but a dispatch from the frontlines of nepotism aesthetics — her casting folds her father’s entire Judd Apatow empire into a Gen Z psychodrama.
Next post: I’ll make the case that Nicole Kidman in Babygirl is the most intertextual casting of all time. In fact, I’ll argue that you cannot fully understand Babygirl if you haven’t seen Nicole’s entire filmography.
Thoughts? Let me know if you just learned right here that Saxon Ratliff is The Terminator’s kid — and does it actually change anything about the show for you?
Yes girl I was just talking about this, even more so though because the younger brother is also a nepo baby
ok two things 1. I wonder if patrick even realizes HIMSELF the performance he is giving, like i feel like i were that hyper aware i''d lose my mind, but like good for him? watching his characters masculinity shatter is like to meta for my own brain I think i just shrieked at the tv 2. I have been saying this! babygirl feels like kidmans the character in eyes wide shut redemption story