The White Lotus producers wrote six fake endings to prevent finale leaking

Executive producer David Bernad said this season had three key secrets during filming

The White Lotus executive producer David Bernad has revealed that fake scripts containing six different finales were distributed during production to ensure the real ending wouldn’t leak.

The final episode of season three of Mike White’s hit social satire airs this Sunday, with speculation rife as to how the 90-minute final installment will play out.

Speaking to People, Bernad said: “We have fake endings to the scripts.

“So we wrote up — we have six different endings — and we kind of distributed fake endings to people just in case someone leaked anything, and then we could say there’s different fake endings.”

He continued: “And then when we shot the ending scene, it's a locked down set. So no one really has access to what we were shooting, and there would be no non-White Lotus participants ever seeing what we're doing.”

Along with the ending, Bernad said there were two further key secrets that were closely guarded during production: the return of Jon Gries and the casting of Sam Rockwell.

Patrick Schwarzenegger as Saxon Ratliff and Sam Nivola as his brother Lochlan in season three of ‘The White Lotus’ (Fabio Lovino/HBO)

Bernad explained that Gries was determined not to reveal his presence ahead of time, saying: “Jon was really committed to keeping the secret.

“When we were traveling and entered Thailand, he, one time, rode with the equipment in a bus, instead of flying the 45 minutes or whatever it was. I think he drove like, 12 hours from Phuket to Bangkok.”

Ahead of Sunday’s finale, it has still not been revealed which character or characters may end up dead and which may be killers. Seven The Independent writers have offered their own theories.

Phil Harrison suggests sweet-natured security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) could turn violent: “Is he going to be the hero? Or, as seems more likely, entirely lose the run of himself when things get real? It’s always the quiet ones…”

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Annabel Nugent says troubled patriarch Tim Ratliff (Jason Isaacs) is the most likely murderer: “For seven episodes straight, the financially troubled Ratliff patriarch has been simmering like a kettle on the stove about to go off. And there’s only so much lorazepam one man can take. He’s been fantasising about it all along: first, he’ll shoot Victoria, then Saxon and lastly himself.”

Jacob Stolworthy speculates that Rick (Walton Goggins) might turn to murder if he catches his girlfriend being unfaithful: “How might Rick react if he returned to the resort after his abortive revenge mission to find the incest-curious American [Saxon] in his private suite? My money is on ‘badly.’”

Read more White Lotus theories here.