In a nutshell:
As we pick up the pieces from the blood-soaked season three finale, we can’t help but wonder: where on earth will Mike White’s sun-soaked satire take us next? Here’s absolutely everything we know so far.
Is The White Lotus season four definitely happening?
Yes! Back in November 2024, HBO CEO Casey Bloys revealed that when he was in Thailand during the production of the show’s third season, White pitched him his concept for a fourth instalment. Bloys’s response, per Deadline? “If White wants to do a fourth season, HBO will do a fourth season.” The official renewal announcement came just over two months later.
Where will The White Lotus season four be set?
This, perhaps more than anything else, remains the biggest question. After Maui, Sicily and Koh Samui, will the fourth season take us to yet another ridiculously luxurious Four Seasons resort? And will we be transported to a new continent once again?
On 12 February, Francesca Orsi, the HBO executive who oversees the network’s drama slate, told Deadline of season four: “We’re going on some locations scouting in the next couple of weeks, so we’ll know soon. I can’t really say where we’re going to land but chances are somewhere in Europe.” She then hedged her answer by adding that a return to Europe was “likely”, but that there were “some countries on the map that we talked about, but nothing to report on until they actually go locations scouting”.
If they do end up landing on Europe, there will be a few Four Seasons hotels to choose from – perhaps the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera? – though White’s options might be slightly limited if he’s hankering after another beachside setting.
Then again, maybe he isn’t – on 6 April, following the release of the season three finale, White teased to Deadline that “for the fourth season, I want to get a little bit out of the crashing waves over rocks vernacular, but there’s always more room for more murders at the White Lotus hotels”. What would that mean, exactly? Could a city location be on the cards? Or one on the slopes? Well, probably not the latter – as White’s executive producer David Bernad told The Guardian: “Mike doesn’t like the cold.” Fair enough.
According to sources, this planned location scouting trip has now been pushed back to the summer, and per a recent Hollywood Reporter story, the locations still on the table could include everywhere from Japan and Mexico to Australia and South Africa. Keep your eyes peeled for more updates.
Who will be in the cast of The White Lotus season four?
New cast members have not yet been revealed, of course – and it seems a safe bet that White will draw in a starry, largely new ensemble, as he has done every other time – but there are also a few major players who could return. These include two key survivors (spoiler alert): Jon Gries’s Greg, who we last saw sipping a drink in his mansion following the bloodshed of the season three finale, and Natasha Rothwell’s newly rich Belinda who may or may not now be opening her own spa (and her hot son, Zion, as played by Nicholas Duvernay, too). I for one would love to see where they wind up.
Who will be behind the scenes on The White Lotus season four?
White, naturally, but another beloved behind-the-scenes fixture crucially won’t be: Cristobal Tapia de Veer, the show’s revered, three-time Emmy-winning composer, who created that iconic “ooh-loo-loo-loo” melody in the opening credits which went onto become a remixed club hit. On 2 April, he told The New York Times that his working relationship with White had been a “struggle” from the very beginning, and that during the making of season three they had their “last fight forever” and decided to part ways.
White responded on Howard Stern, saying of his collaborator: “I don’t think I ever had a fight with him – except for maybe some emails. It was basically me giving him notes. I don’t think he liked to go through the process of getting notes from me, or wanting revisions, because he didn’t respect me. I knew he wasn’t a team player and that he wanted to do it his way. I was thrown that he would go to The New York Times to shit on me and the show three days before the finale. It was kind of a bitch move. By the time the third season came around, he’d won Emmys and he had his song go viral, he didn’t want to go through the process with me, he didn’t want to go to sessions. He would always look at me with this contemptuous smirk on his face like he thought I was a chimp or something… he’s definitely making a big deal out of a creative difference.”
Regardless, this loss will certainly be a big blow to the series, which is remembered for that hair-raising theme tune as much as it is the plot twists and all-star casts. And it’s anyone’s guess what the new White Lotus opening music might sound like.
When will The White Lotus season four be released?
Considering that location scouting for season four hasn’t even kicked off yet – and given that there was a more-than-two-year gap between season two and three – it seems likely that the next instalment will arrive in 2027 at the earliest.
Will there be more seasons of The White Lotus after season four?
Probably. In her Deadline interview, HBO’s Francesca Orsi said of White: “I imagine he is going to go beyond four. He hasn’t confirmed it, but I think he has more to say than just one more season.”
Will there be an all-star edition of The White Lotus in the future?
Quite possibly. White has told The Hollywood Reporter that he’d “love” to do one, and Orsi has added: “I don’t think that’ll be season four, but that’s still on the horizon. It’s still in discussion but it’s too early.” Patrick Schwarzenegger, who played douchey big brother Saxon in the latest season, also recently revealed that White had floated the idea of bringing “all the douchiest guys together” from past seasons for a new instalment. (Just thinking of Saxon, Jake Lacy’s entitled Shane and Theo James’s tech bro Cameron in the same room sends shivers down my spine.)
An all-star season “would be cool,” continued White, though tricky from a scheduling standpoint “because all of these people end up becoming huge, huge stars. A lot of these kids that are easy to get are suddenly not so easy to get… but hopefully they’d come back.” For White, they surely would.
