This season of The White Lotus will go down in history for so many reasons. For giving us a southern Parker Posey! For giving us the ultimate trio of toxic besties! For…that brotherly incest plot! Yes, brothers Lochlan (Sam Nivola) and Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) kissed and then got it on during a truly horrifying post-moon party ménage à trois. It’s no wonder it made Schwarzenegger look physically ill.

But, shocking as the moment might have been, it does have both a narrative and a thematic purpose. According to Jason Isaacs, who plays Tim, the boys’ father, the incestuous sex scene is a result of Lochlan’s desperation to fit in with his ultra wealthy, snobby family. Yes, it may seem extreme, so to make sense of it all, Isaacs likened the Ratliffs to a family of royals.

“They have that thing that royal families have all over the world: That they are better than other people,” he said of the Ratliff family in an interview with Men’s Health. “That the people you bring home are never going to be good enough to continue the dynasty. They need to be very careful who they do that with.”

The Ratliffs are an old money family from the south—it’s a world filled with big expectations. “[Tim] is all about being the alpha of his world—Lochlan’s not,” said Isaacs. “He’s physically and mentally not who and how Tim would want him to be.”

Because Lochlan is such a disappointment to his family, he winds up trying to become an alpha male in the most backwards and inappropriate way. “Lochlan is a people pleaser. He wants to be liked and he doesn’t know who to be,” said Isaacs. “He’s out of sorts, so he looks at this alpha male brother, and he’d desperately want his approval. He knows he’s got everybody’s disapproval, apart from maybe his sister. He knows he doesn’t fit in with his family. He’s the black sheep, and he’d like to do better, but he doesn’t know how. And so things happen…”

As for Nivola, he sees Lochlan’s move on Saxon as a “big swing and a miss.” Ultimately, he said to W Magazine, it’s “really sort of tragic.”