This story contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of The White Lotus.
Attention vacationers! We finally have our first look at season 3 of The White Lotus. On Sunday night, HBO dropped a montage of new footage featuring its upcoming projects—and it included a glimpse of The White Lotus’s five new travelers. It’s hard to tell exactly who’s who—their faces are covered by sunglasses—but the crew looks chic, rich, and ready for an adventure.
I’m not sure what they will get into, but series creator Mike White said season 3 will be “longer, bigger,” and “crazier” than what we’ve seen before. “I don’t know what people will think, but I’m super excited,” he explained. “So, at least for my own barometer, that’s a good thing.”
In case you were wondering, Natasha Rothwell will also reprise her role as the spa manager, Belinda. When we last saw Belinda, she’d just been scammed by Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) after a botched business deal. Fans of the series saw Tanya’s untimely demise in the season 2 finale. Now that she’s out of the picture, it will be interesting to see how Belinda is worked back into the story.
Rothwell told Vanity Fair that she loved the material for season 3. “I gasped out loud a minimum of five times, and this was just me reading them,” she said. “The scripts are a testament to Mike’s skill and ability to tell the most smart and entertaining stories. I mean, everything that he does is like a lesson to me as an actor and a performer. And as a writer myself, he takes folks on a journey. Everyone needs to buckle up, because it’s going to get real.’
Read on for everything we know about The White Lotus season 3.
When Will Season 3 of The White Lotus Premiere?
HBO has not disclosed the exact date, but it did confirm that The White Lotus will premiere in 2025. Let’s cross our fingers for a January launch—I can’t think of a better cure for the winter blues.
Where Will the Next The White Lotus Take Place?
Earlier this year, White mentioned that he toured Asia in search of a new location. Due to some complex tax incentives, however, he chose Thailand. “We saw some absolutely stunning locations all over Honshu,” Toho producer Georgina Pope told reporters at the Tokyo Film Festival. “The showrunner loved it all, and I was feeling very confident that I had it all in the bag. . . . At the time in Japan, we had no [tax] incentive in place at all. I could not respond with a concrete answer. All I could hear was the sound of a $35 million project flying out the window.”
According to Variety, every season of The White Lotus has been filmed at a Four Seasons resort. If White continues that tradition, he’ll have plenty of options to choose from for season 3, as the company has hotels in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Koh Samui, and the Golden Triangle. The resorts each have a different setting, so depending on White’s plans for season 3, we could see the next batch of travelers lounge in the city, countryside, jungle, or another beach.
White joins a group including Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible: Fallout and Martin Scorsese’s Silence, both of which have also left the country in favor of Thailand. Still, HBO head Casey Bloys is reportedly amped about the next round of vacationers, even though production had to go with their second location choice. Though further details are still under wraps, the network CEO revealed in a Series Mania keynote interview that White’s vision for season 3 was a “really fun idea.” The next installment is shaping up to be a “satirical and funny look at death in Eastern religion and spirituality.” If there’s anything these rich vacationers need, it’s spiritual healing.
What’s Next for The White Lotus’s Cast?
The White Lotus is an anthology series (meaning, of course, that the seasons don’t fully connect to one another), so just about anything can happen in season 3. But we might already have an idea as to a certain storyline the next season will follow up on. Not one to let us recover at home and properly pour one out for Tanya and the handful of men she murdered, White started merrily talking about the next season in his post-episode interview. And guess what? Sounds like season 3 of The White Lotus may very well act as a quasi-sequel to the finale’s fateful showdown.
“I think as far as like, what happens to Greg and the conspiracy of Tanya’s death, it’s possible that I think Portia is scared enough to just leave it alone, but the fact that all of those guys die on the boat, it feels like there’s gotta be somebody who’s gonna track it back down to Greg. But maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens.”
What can we expect thematically going forward? Well, the first iteration of The White Lotus used the backdrop of a (tense as hell) vacation to explore larger societal themes. Set on a beautiful Hawaiian island, the show illustrated how travelers often visit a new destination, abuse its resources—and in turn, its people—then leave without a second thought. Season 2, I think we can all agree, waded through the powers of attraction and sex. Here’s what White said could be in store for the third go-round:
“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. “And I think the third season it would be maybe a kind of satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality. And it feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.”
Who Else Will Appear in Season 3 of The White Lotus?
Each season of The White Lotus introduces a new ensemble—aside from Jennifer Coolidge (Tanya), Jon Gries (Greg), and now Rothwell (Belinda). It seems White has a pattern of bringing back the most complex characters and fan favorites. Coolidge’s performance as Tanya McQuoid, a distressed multimillionaire, earned her her first Emmy in 2022. Given Tanya’s fate, more Tanya time is obviously not on our future vacation itineraries, unless it’s via flashback.
Earlier this year, Variety announced that Blackpink’s Lisa is joining season 3’s cast. The K-pop singer, born Pranpriya Manobal in Buriram, Thailand, will star alongside newcomers Parker Posey (The Staircase), Jason Isaacs (Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris), Leslie Bibb (Jupiter’s Legacy), Dom Hetrakul (The Outrage), Michelle Monaghan (Mission: Impossible—Fallout), Carrie Coon (The Gilded Age), and Tayme Thapthimthong (Farang).
Also, with Coolidge out of the running, it’s fun to think about which guest from season 2 might be fit for another vacation. Our money’s on Michael Imperioli—and it sounds like he’d be down. “I don’t want to think about it too much,” he told Esquire. “Because the idea of that makes me so happy. I don’t want to be disappointed. . . . I would want nothing more than that. I just loved working with Mike so much.”
