diff --git a/fs/inode.c b/fs/inode.c
index 31c5b9ee3a81..a31aa7cb47f6 100644
--- a/fs/inode.c
+++ b/fs/inode.c
@@ -763,21 +763,18 @@ void clear_inode(struct inode *inode)
 		fsverity_cleanup_inode(inode);
 
 	/*
-	 * We have to cycle the i_pages lock here because reclaim can be in the
-	 * process of removing the last page (in __filemap_remove_folio())
-	 * and we must not free the mapping under it.
+	 * We have to cycle the i_pages lock here because reclaim
+	 * can be in the process of removing the last page (in
+	 * __filemap_remove_folio()) and we must not free the mapping
+	 * under it.  We also remove nodes which are empty; these
+	 * can occur in two different ways.  The first is that radix
+	 * tree expansion can fail partway and the second is that THP
+	 * collapse_file() can allocate some temporary nodes and not
+	 * clean them up.
 	 */
-	xa_lock_irq(&inode->i_data.i_pages);
+	xa_destroy(&inode->i_data.i_pages);
+
 	BUG_ON(inode->i_data.nrpages);
-	/*
-	 * Almost always, mapping_empty(&inode->i_data) here; but there are
-	 * two known and long-standing ways in which nodes may get left behind
-	 * (when deep radix-tree node allocation failed partway; or when THP
-	 * collapse_file() failed). Until those two known cases are cleaned up,
-	 * or a cleanup function is called here, do not BUG_ON(!mapping_empty),
-	 * nor even WARN_ON(!mapping_empty).
-	 */
-	xa_unlock_irq(&inode->i_data.i_pages);
 	BUG_ON(!(inode_state_read_once(inode) & I_FREEING));
 	BUG_ON(inode_state_read_once(inode) & I_CLEAR);
 	BUG_ON(!list_empty(&inode->i_wb_list));