The White Lotus creator hints at show’s future following hilariously over-the-top season finale
The creator of White Lotus, Mike White, has alreadyt hinted where the series could go next. (HBO)
The White Lotus‘ second season may have only just wrapped, but creator Mike White has already started dropping hints about where the series could go next.
Viewers have once again obsessed over the constantly chaotic and regularly dramatic (lots of nudity too) series, with excitement reaching fever pitch and Jennifer Coolidge once again staking her claim at the pinnacle of the zeitgeist with the new “These gays are trying to murder me” meme from the finale.
It only makes sense, then, that the series should be back for round three at some point in the future – with the season already greenlit by HBO.
But despite an excellent idea from one viewer that suggests “Cities should have to bid to host the next season of The White Lotus like the Olympics”, it seems White has something more “spiritual” in mind.
During an episode of the Unpacking explainer series, White says that he’d love to take the series further East to take a satirical look at spirituality.
“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said. “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 previously told Deadline that he thinks it would be “fun” to do a “whole different continent” in the next season.
The creator of the show also unpacked Jennifer Coolidge’s character Tanya’s shocking – and suitably “derp-y” death – where she falls off the side of a yacht, hits her head and drowns, having just fought off a gaggle of murderous gays intent on killing her at her husband’s orders.
“In the end of [season one], Tanya is sitting with Greg in the last episode and he’s talking about his health issues. And she says, ‘I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years, death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.'”
White continued: “I was thinking, it’d be so fun to bring Tanya back because she’s such a great character, but maybe that’s the journey for her, a journey to death. Not that I really wanted to kill Tanya because I love her as a character and obviously love Jennifer, but I just felt like, we’re going to Italy, she’s such a diva – a larger-than-life female archetype – it felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story.”
He concluded that while Tanya dying at the “hands of someone else” felt too “tragic”, “It just made me laugh to think she would like take out this cabal of killers and, after she successfully does that, she just dies this derpy death, and it just felt like that’s just so Tanya,” he added.
Tanya’s death was the result of a twisted conspiracy to obtain her money – but will her beleaguered assistant Portia (Hayley Lu Richardson) uncover the truth in the next series of The White Lotus? White says … maybe.
“It’s possible that Portia [Haley Lu Richardson] 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 down to Greg. But maybe you’ll have to wait to find out what happens.”
The featurette is available on HBO’s streaming service, HBO Max, though the clips are also uploaded to the HBO YouTube channel on a delayed schedule.
