“At the end of the week, you will be an entirely different person,” the trailer for Season 3 of “The White Lotus” begins.
The trailer, which debuted on Jan. 27, shows groups of guests drinking, swimming and dancing at an exclusive resort in Thailand.
But as with the previous seasons of “The White Lotus,” there are also some darker undertones — snippets show an apparent robbery, a family on the verge of losing it all and of course, a body bag.
Season 2 of the hit series had viewers gasping, theorizing, dissecting fashion and dreaming of Sicily, all while trying to solve which character winds up dead.
Creator Mike White told Entertainment Weekly in November 2023, nearly a year after the Season 2 finale of “The White Lotus” aired, that viewers can expect Season 3 to be even “crazier.”
“It’s going to be a supersized ‘White Lotus,’” White said. “It’s going to be longer, bigger, crazier. I don’t know what people will think, but I am super excited, so at least for my own barometer, that’s a good thing.”
Natasha Rothwell, who starred in Season 1 and is set to return in Season 3, echoed the hype, revealing during an interview with Vanity Fair in December 2023 that she “gasped” while reading the scripts.
“I gasped out loud a minimum of five times, and this was just me reading them,” Rothwell 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!”
“The White Lotus” first premiered in July 2021 and has won multiple Golden Globes and Emmys, including one for outstanding limited series.
“What happens in Thailand, stays in Thailand,” the characters say in the trailer for Season 3. Here’s what we know so far about the next season of the award-winning series.
When is the release date for Season 3 of ‘The White Lotus’?
HBO announced that Season 3 of “The White Lotus” will premiere on Feb. 16, 2025.
Unlike the first two seasons, which had six and seven episodes each, respectively, the third season has eight episodes, meaning the finale episode is set to air on April 6, 2025.
After airing on HBO, all eight episodes will be available to stream on Max.
Who is in the cast of Season 3 of ‘The White Lotus’?
The show’s third season will feature both Hollywood vets and newcomers.
According to HBO, the cast includes Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal (better known by her stage name Lisa), Michelle Monaghan, Sam Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Tayme Thapthimthong and Aimee Lou Wood.
Additional cast members include Nicholas Duvernay, Arnas Fedaravičius, Christian Friedel, Scott Glenn, Dom Hetrakul, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Julian Kostov, Charlotte Le Bon, Morgana O’Reilly and Shalini Peiris, according to HBO.
TODAY.com confirmed in April 2023 that Rothwell, who played spa manager Belinda in Season 1, will also return. Rothwell’s return as Belinda continues the anthology series’ subtle pattern of bringing back one familiar face amid an all-new cast each season.
White had told Entertainment Weekly he was open to cast members returning for Season 3 — and beyond.
“It would be easy to just be full-on anthology, but I think it’s more fun to have little threads through the show,” said White. “If the show goes on for a couple of seasons, it would be fun to have an all-star season.”
Fans of the show know that its cast changes every season — with the exception of Jennifer Coolidge, who played the wealthy and somewhat stunted Tanya McQuoid, and Jon Gries, who played Tanya’s husband, Greg Hunt, in Seasons 1 and 2.
After Tanya’s stunning demise in Season 2, it seemed unlikely Coolidge would return, though she said during Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series that she hopes creator White isn’t done with Greg’s character arc.
“My hope for (co-star) Jon (Gries) is that he’s not finished with Greg,” Coolidge said. “I hope there’s some comeuppance for evil Greg. I think he should, I don’t know, end up in a meat-grinding machine.”
In her speech after winning the Emmy Award for best supporting actress in a drama series in 2024 for her performance as Tanya, Coolidge said White called her character “definitely dead.”
And in a final reference to the show’s second season, Coolidge also thanked “all the evil gays” for her Emmy win.
Where will Season 3 take place?
Certain things about “The White Lotus” are not expected to change — starting with the format. Each season takes place in a different White Lotus luxury resort located around the world, and begins with the discovery of a dead body.
The first season was in Hawaii; the second, Sicily. And the third will be filmed in Thailand. (Though Meghann Fahy’s character, Daphne, mentioned in the Season 2 finale that she wanted to vacation in the Maldives, leading fans to speculate that the show would be set in the island nation next.)
The show’s first two seasons were shot at Four Seasons resorts in Hawaii and Italy. Season 3 was filmed in Koh Samui, Phuket and Bangkok, per the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
The Thailand news came after White teased continental and thematic changes for the third season.
“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said in an interview with HBO that aired right after the Season Two finale.“I think the third season would be maybe a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality. It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.”
White also hinted at pivoting to a country in Asia during a red carpet interview with Deadline in October 2022.
“We just turned in our last episode to the network, so it’s hard to think about the next race,” White said. “But if we did, I think it’d be fun to maybe go to a whole different continent. We did Europe. Maybe Asia … would be fun.”
What is known about the plot?
The only official information out about the plot of third season is the logline for the series, which reads, “The social satire is set at an exclusive Thai resort and follows the exploits of various guests and employees over the span of a week.”
In addition to what White has teased about taking a “satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality” in the upcoming season, he also told Entertainment Weekly in September 2022 that he might return to his original idea he’d pitched for Season 2, which has to do with politics and power.
“I might still do it down the road maybe, if they give us a third season,” White told the outlet.
After visiting Sicily, White decided to change the plot to fit the “vibe” of the country.
