The Endearing Wrongness of Rick’s Hawaiian Shirts in The White Lotus

In The White Lotus season 3, Rick Hatchett is impressively dedicated to being a grump. Introduced as the sulking, moneyed American tourist (played by Walton Goggins), his irritability is so unwavering that no amount of balmy evenings, fruity cocktails or beachside dance performances can unravel it. This is precisely what makes his breezy Aloha shirts so deliciously poetic.

Visiting the luxury Thai resort with his peppier, younger girlfriend Chelsea, Rick is enigmatic and perpetually peeved. His profession is not stated, but it’s clear he has money — enough to fly around the world and brood all day. At first, he spends his time demanding drinks, staring into nothingness and emitting generally terrible vibes. Having planned the trip with an ulterior motive — to avenge his father’s death — he is armed with a pessimistic attitude and an extensive collection of sad vacation tees. Sure, he may be luxuriating at a five-star hotel. But he doesn’t have to be happy about it.

“The White Lotus, for someone like Rick, is vapid,” Walton Goggins said in an interview with HBO. “Soulless.” Naturally, aloof disinterest emanates from his appearance. His floral-emblazoned shirts are always slightly wrinkled and unbuttoned halfway, signalling how little he cares about anything. Limp and languid, they hang off his body with no structure or intentionality, serving as an emblem of his unknowability and a bastion of his barely suppressed rage.

His tousled flow and receding hairline give him a weathered, mysterious appeal. His always-on accessories — gold chain, inexpensive water-proof Timex watch and bold stone ring — communicate that he is not someone who bothers with being on-trend. And perhaps most interestingly, his shirts are uncharacteristically rich in joie-de-vivre details.

One is festooned with sombreros and “Mexico” stamped in cursive writing. Another is intricately embellished with red-crowned cranes feeding on lush greenery. Colourful and lively, they’re probably best suited for someone who is in a good mood. But the way Rick wears them — all flaccid and depressing — captures his emotionally stunted complexities.

“Underneath anger, there is always a sadness, something we are grieving,” a meditation coach tells him in the third episode. “What are you grieving?” He goes on to ominously explain that he’s searching for “some satisfaction” regarding his father’s mysterious murder. Both his parents died when he was a kid, we learn, and he has grown up longing for love.

It’s clear that his anger, just like his droopy shirts, is a veil for unresolved feelings. This comes to a head when he frees venomous snakes in a stoned stupor. Like many situations in The White Lotus, it is the epitome of Schadenfreude; painful to witness, impossible to look away from. But it’s also kind of soft and melancholic. Rick identifies with the caged reptiles’ vilified reputation. “He sees himself as someone who has never been understood,” Goggins explains. Even though this decision leads to Chelsea being hospitalized with a snake bite, it somewhat endears you to Rick. Through an act of unhinged desperation, he brings shape to the shell-of-a-person image he projects.

To be fair, when it comes to redeemable characters on The White Lotus, the bar is low. Saxon is a repugnant finance bro alarmingly obsessed with his younger brother’s virginity. His mom, Victoria, is a deeply classist tourist who regularly doles out xenophobic opinions in a laissez-faire Southern drawl. And vacationer Gary (né Greg), in addition to being exceptionally boring, is very possibly a wife murderer.

But Walton Goggins’ Rick, on the other hand, paints a refreshing three-dimensional picture. It’s easy to initially write him off as a jerk, especially when he calls his girlfriend an idiot and refuses to put out his cigarette on a crammed boat. But as the season goes on and he searches for the man who killed his dad, it’s evident that he’s deeply lost. “Rick is in an arrested state of development,” says Walton Goggins. “He is a very soulful guy who’s lost his soul.”

Ultimately, his depleted Aloha shirts reflect that.