Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

It’s been a month, a full month, since The White Lotus aired its Season 3 finale. It wasn’t my favorite season of the show—I’m happy for Carrie Coon et al., but I’ve moved on, and so has most of the world. So how is this Aimee Lou Wood–Walton Goggins situation still going on?

Goggins and Wood played Rick and Chelsea, respectively, a couple in an age-gap relationship that was perhaps more importantly a rage-gap relationship. Off-screen, viewers of the show took notice that something seemed weird about the dynamic between the two actors around the time the season was ending, in much the same way these things always seem to start these days: by paying a little too much attention to their Instagram presence. Goggins shared a tribute to the series and the two characters on his account, including photos and a very passionate written ode to their love story. He posted a similar series of photos on his Story, soundtracking it with Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs,” which is a wonderful song but one that has, possibly unbeknownst to Goggins, become “a phenomenon in its own right” in recent years, as Slate’s Sam Adams has written: “Silver Springs” is now kind of known as the ultimate anthem for scorned lovers, in addition to carrying the strong whiff of infidelity that Fleetwood Mac always brings. Someone must have alerted Goggins that posting “Silver Springs” online was going to bring on questions, rabid speculation, and possibly even a wellness check, so he changed the song, to “Love” by John Lennon, but the damage was already done. The other big (well, “big”) thing observers took away from the post was that Goggins didn’t tag Wood. Wood followed Goggins’ lead by posting some loving tributes of her own on Instagram, in which she also used the song “Silver Springs” (and didn’t change it), and also didn’t tag Goggins.

Why did people read so much into two actors failing to tag each other? Why couldn’t it just be a case of them being sloppy or not very good at Instagram? One of them is in his 50s, after all. But no, this supposedly suspicious activity led some fans to discover that Goggins and Wood weren’t following each other on Instagram when the finale aired, and some even posited that he had blocked her, because, as Vogue explained, “her comments no longer showed up under his posts, but his comments were still visible on her posts.” As childish as it feels to discuss something as small as actors not following their co-stars on social media, I have to grudgingly admit that where there’s smoke, there’s often fire in these types of situations: If the Blake Lively–Justin Baldoni feud has taught us anything, it’s that famous people do sometimes spite-unfollow other famous people, so there are sometimes real insights to be mined from these sorts of things. Just as often, however, gossip about celebrities unfollowing each other is meaningless, because it’s reported that someone unfollowed someone when they never followed that person in the first place. I wish Hollywood publicists could get it through their clients’ heads that fans are reading into every single click they make on Instagram, so they should probably stop using it so pettily, but alas.

What did all of this supposedly add up to, though? The implication was that there was some kind of rift between Goggins and Wood, and for reasons that are both unfair (they’re a man and a woman who played a couple on TV) and actually kind of fair (they were the ones who brought “Silver Springs” into it!), it didn’t take long for the speculation to turn to the idea that said rift stemmed from some kind of romance gone wrong. Or, as one person on Reddit memorably put it: “There is no planet on which they didn’t fuck.” (Just relaying one person’s perspective—sorry!) Their fellow White Lotus co-star Jason Isaacs certainly did the two no favors by going around, puckishly implying that there was all sorts of drama on set to every media outlet he spoke to. Who knew Lucius Malfoy was so messy?

Heather Schwedel Read More

Since the finale, headlines about the possible falling-out between Goggins and Wood have seemingly only gained steam. When Wood criticized a Saturday Night Live sketch that poked fun at her in April, several articles were quick to note that Goggins praised the same sketch. When Goggins was announced as an SNL host, that too was interpreted as a possible dig at Wood, though it was also rumored that Wood might join Goggins on his episode to publicly bury the hatchet. In early May, Goggins inspired another round of headlines by abruptly ending an interview with the Times of London rather than answer any questions about Wood. Though that sounds bad, some scholars of the matter had a more charitable (to Goggins) interpretation of the incident, namely that the actor understandably wanted to focus on the film he was supposed to be promoting, and the journalist speaking to him was being kind of a jerk. This is fair enough, but also, shouldn’t he and his team have devised a polite way to address this obvious question? I suppose it’s still no evidence of anything more salacious.

And that brings us to the present: Goggins and Wood both attended the Met Gala in New York Monday night. Reporters, naturally, spoke to Wood about whatever is going on between the two of them. As has been true throughout this saga, she had only kind things to say about Goggins. She did note that she would not be going on SNL, though, and if the two took a photo together, I haven’t seen it. As of Tuesday, the two are back to following each other. Where does this all leave us? Is it possible Goggins is not the easiest to get along with? And that shooting The White Lotus in particular was a difficult experience for him? I think where I come down on it all is that while there’s no actual smoking-gun proof of any kind of love affair gone wrong, there’s also so much pointing to something being off that it’s hard to ignore, and some kind of falling-out seems plausible. And that may be all we can say for sure unless Jason Isaacs can be persuaded to spill. Mike White mercifully gave Rick and Chelsea a clear ending on the show, but the people obsessed with what happened with Goggins and Wood off-screen are going to have to live with a little ambiguity.

I Thought ChatGPT Was Killing My Students’ Skills. It’s Killing Something More Important Than That. An Aggravating New Barrier Is Making It Harder Than Ever to Land a Job. Candidates Are Pissed. People Say It’s a Magic Trick for Raising Smart, Happy Kids. I Simply Can’t Do It. This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only Allow Me to Dissect the GOP’s Utterly Absurd New Anti-Porn Bill Get the best of news and politics Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.