The Complete Timeline of Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood’s Relationship

Rick and Chelsea’s tragic love story in The White Lotus left viewers devastated, but the relationship between actors Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood might have its own dramatic arc. On The Toast, Jackie and Claudia discussed rumors of a feud between the actors, noting that fans “believe that he may have blocked Amy because her comments on previous posts have disappeared from his page, while his still appear on hers.”

Internet sleuths have been piecing together evidence of a potential falling out between the actors, so we’ve put together a timeline of their relationship. Some of the details will forever be a mystery, but those that can be found will be found right here.

January 2024: The White Lotus S3 cast announced

HBO announced that Wood, who was best known for Sex Education at the time, and Goggins would star in the new season of Mike White’s hit show set in Thailand. Goggins was already a recurring character in another HBO series, The Righteous Gemstones.

August 2024: Goggins misses his co-star

When Wood posted a series of Instagram photos from the set, Goggins commented, writing, “You are the brightest light in every room. A Humans Human. Miss you. 🦊🦊.” Foxes seem to have some significance to the duo, as they were referenced again while promoting the show.

February 7, 2025: Fox and friend(?)

In an HBO promotional interview, Wood asked Goggins what animal he would be reincarnated as. “A fox. 100%, I’d be a fox,” he replied. When Wood suggested that he’d have a hard life “digging through bins” for his meals, Goggins protested that he would live in the country, but Wood disagreed. “You’d definitely be a city fox,” she laughed. 

(For his part, Goggins teased Wood about her apparent addiction to her phone.)

February 11, 2025: The White Lotus cast hits the red carpet

Wood’s stunning custom Burberry dress featured a pattern of foxes (!!!) in silver sequins. (The song “Silver Springs” by Fleetwood Mac also seems to have been significant to their friendship. More on that later.)

Wood captioned her Instagram photos of the dress with “✨🦊🪷”. 

March 30, 2025: Jason Isaacs says there was drama on set

Poor Jason Isaacs. Not only did his character spend the entire season in either a panic, a drug-induced stupor, or a twisted fantasy of murdering his family, now his comments about The White Lotus have sparked speculation that he surely never intended to set off. But his allusions to drama in a Vulture interview got the internet detectives thinking…

“It was like a cross between summer camp and Lord of the Flies but in a gilded cage,” he told the outlet. “It wasn’t a holiday. Some people got very close, there were friendships that were made and friendships that were lost.” He went on to describe a “pressure cooker” environment, adding, “They say in the show, ‘What happens in Thailand stays in Thailand,’ but there’s an off-screen White Lotus as well, with fewer deaths but just as much drama.”

…Oh boy.

April 5, 2025: Wood reveals the thin line between actors and characters

In an interview published the day before the finale, Wood told The Times that living on set at the Four Seasons in Thailand blurred the boundaries between character and actors. “There was a bit of leakage. We were all accidentally Method,” she said, adding that they sometimes found themselves using their characters’ dialogue in conversation. “It has happened every season. Everyone has lost their marbles a little bit.”

Is it possible that Aimee Lou and Walton became a little too close to Chelsea and Rick and that their relationship suffered as a result?

April 6, 2025: The White Lotus Season 3 finale airs

After seemingly reaching a new level of love and understanding in their relationship, Rick and Chelsea’s story comes to an end. We’re still crying about it, but it’s fine.

Goggins calls Wood his “partner”

​​The night of the final episode, Goggins posted a long tribute to the series on his Instagram: 

“Rick + Chelsea. With the heaviest of hearts… To me, ours was a love story. It was only ever a love story, hindered by unresolved, childhood trauma. We all have them… but can we move past them. In the depths of our despair there is always beauty around us. If we can sit with our pain, just sit with it… not react… not be defined by it…It’s there… the love the world is constantly giving in any given moment is there. Always waiting for us to see it… Trust me I know. Thank you Mike White for your imagination, your tender heart, for the privilege of giving us the opportunity to tell it. Thank you Aimee Lou for being my partner… a journey I will never forget.”

Goggins posted the same series of photos of himself and Wood to his Instagram Story, all set to the song “Silver Springs” by Fleetwood Mac. The same song initially accompanied the post, but Goggins then changed it to “Love” by John Lennon. Goggins didn’t tag Wood in any of the posts.

Wood posts “R+C forever”

Wood, for her part, posted an image of a spookily relevant graffiti to Instagram on the night of the finale, writing, “I only went home once whilst filming White Lotus. This is what I saw on the first day back there. R and C forever 💘”

April 7, 2025: Wood doesn’t tag Goggins in her farewell

The day after the finale aired, Wood shared another Instagram post, this one featuring a black-and-white photo of Rick and Chelsea, also set to “Silver Springs,” writing “The perfect storm 🩷☯️♾️.” Like Goggins, she did not tag her co-star.

In the aftermath of these posts, Reddit users noticed that Goggins and Wood no longer followed each other on Instagram.

Meanwhile, Wood told The Hollywood Reporter that Goggins didn’t watch the finale with the rest of the cast. 

“I was sad that Walton wasn’t there because it was something that we did together,” she told the outlet. “But also it’s so fucking Rick and Chelsea. Like, of course Walton had to watch it alone and of course I had to watch it in the group because there is so much Aimee in Chelsea and so much Walton in Rick.” 

Wood went on to say that she was ready to let go of the character and that she suspected Goggins felt the same: “I think both of us are feeling a similar thing today of, “Okay, I can let go of the parts of this character, of Chelsea, that have been holding me back and I can grow up in the way that Chelsea couldn’t. […] I’m sure that Walton feels the same about Rick because it’s like, whatever the fuck was going on in him, that was Rick, and he can let go of it now.”

April 9, 2025: Jason Isaacs says IG detectives have it “all wrong”

Isaacs walked back his previous comments on an episode of Today’s SiriusXM podcast The Happy Hour. “Like anywhere you go for the summer, there’s friendships, there’s romances, there’s arguments, there’s cliques that form and break and reform and stuff like that,” he said. “Nobody has the slightest clue what they’re talking about,” he said of fan detectives. “People think they’re onto something, then it gets magnified because of a thousand other people. Nobody has any clue.” 

Isaacs is right—we’ll never know exactly what’s going on between any of The White Lotus cast members. As Jackie notes, “This is the biggest moment of both of their careers. People love Rick and Chelsea. No matter what’s going on between them, they’re going to milk it on their social media. Walton is very social media literate for a 53-year-old man.”

What do you think? Are Goggins and Wood stirring up social media speculation on purpose to amp up their careers? Was there actually drama and they’re trying to create distance? Or are we just all a little too obsessed with Rick and Chelsea?

For more pop culture hot takes, listen to The Toast.