Mike White Reveals 'White Lotus' Season 3 will be 'Supersized... Longer, Bigger, Crazier'

Out writer-director Mike White, the creative force behind HBO's hit series "The White Lotus," is "seriously finishing scripts" for the next season, which has him "super excited," Variety reported.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, White said he's looking to start production on the new season in early 2024 for a 2025 premiere, assuming the actors' strike is resolved in time for that to be possible.

"Still waiting to be able to cast," White said, cautioning that "If the SAG strike isn't resolved soon, then yeah, we'd have to push again because the show has a new cast every season, so there's lots of parts to cast". But, he added, "I'm more than eager to get going."

White teased that Season 3 is "going to be a supersized White Lotus. It's going to be longer, bigger, crazier. I don't know what people will think," he went on to add. "...but I am super excited, so at least for my own barometer, that's a good thing," he said.

Just as Season 2 featured the return of Jennifer Coolidge as the wealthy, but emotionally chaotic, Tanya, Season 3 will see the Season 1 character Belinda – played by Natasha Rothwell – join the main cast. Nothing is known about the character's arc in the upcoming season, but in Season 1 Belinda was a spa manager at the White Lotus resort in Hawaii. She made plans with Tanya for a business venture of her own, which Tanya would fund, until Tanya pulled out of the nascent deal.

The new season will be set at a White Lotus resort in Thailand. "The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex," White noted in comments at the end of the show's Italian-set second season. "I think the third season would be maybe a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality."

As for further seasons, and perhaps more on the stories of characters familiar from the show's first two seasons, White "previously stated that he would be open to bringing other characters back, like Connie Britton's wealthy tech CFO Nicole Mossbacher or Greg, Tanya's... greedy, duplicitous husband played by Jon Gries in seasons 1 and 2," EW noted.

"It would be easy to just be full-on anthology, but I think it's more fun to have little threads through the show," the article quoted White saying. "If the show goes on for a couple of seasons, it would be fun to have an all-star season."