On the small screen, 2025 looks set to be the year of buzzy returning favorites, from the sophomore installments of The Last of Us and Wednesday to the conclusions of Stranger Things and Squid Game. But perhaps the most breathlessly anticipated release on this list, at least for some of us, is The White Lotus. Mike White’s sun-, sea- and satire-filled romp about the super rich has been a staple since 2021: Its first season took a newlywed couple, a deranged heiress, a dysfunctional family, and a disillusioned hanger-on to Maui for soul searching, holiday romances, and murder; and its second, the installment that confirmed the show as a global phenomenon, featured tech bros, enterprising sex workers, and a listless Gen-Zer galavanting across Sicily.
Now, after a more-than-two-year-long gap, a third season, set in Thailand and with an almost entirely new cast, is about to be served up—the first without series standout Jennifer Coolidge, following the (spoiler alert) tragic death of the demented millionaire Tanya McQuoid, and with viewer expectations higher than ever before. Can it possibly live up to all the hype?
Well, the result is a season which—at least in the first six episodes shared with press—never quite reaches the jaw-on-the-floor highs of the first two seasons, but it’s also one that is layered, rich, weirder, and often more interesting than what’s come before it. It’s a reminder that in an era where shows can go from incredible to highly disappointing in a single season (The Bear, Severance), there are still some that continue to deliver time and again.
As is always the case with The White Lotus, much of this is down to the cast. This time around—and, to some extent, filling the gloriously chaotic hole left by Coolidge—there is Parker Posey as a pill-popping, socially anxious, rich Southern mom, traveling with her tightly wound financier husband (Jason Isaacs), their swaggering eldest son (Patrick Schwarzenegger), spiritually minded middle daughter (Sarah Catherine Hook), and introverted youngest son (Sam Nivola).
Arriving at the same time are a wonderfully odd couple—Walton Goggins as a jaded, mysterious drifter and Aimee Lou Wood as his bubbly, much-younger girlfriend—and three childhood friends reuniting for a wild girls’ trip: Michelle Monaghan as a casually glamorous LA actor, Leslie Bibb as a prim and proper Texan society wife, and Carrie Coon as a divorced New York lawyer and single mother.
Then there are those at the beck and call of these demanding guests: Lek Patravadi as a former movie star and the hotel’s charismatic owner; Christian Friedel as a supplicating senior manager; Arnas Fedaravičius as a dashing yoga instructor; Tayme Thapthimthong as a sweet-natured security guard hopelessly in love with one of the hotel’s bright-eyed young health mentors (Blackpink’s Lisa, simply luminous in her screen debut); Dom Hetrakul as a serene spa practitioner; and Natasha Rothwell’s beloved Belinda from The White Lotus’s first season, the Hawaii-based spa manager who almost started a business with Coolidge’s Tanya, and is now in Thailand as part of an exchange program.
Her warm and reassuring presence, alongside that of her visiting son (Nicholas Duvernay), is especially welcome, as is Posey’s swirl of vanity and delusion, Coon’s eye-rolling snark, Wood’s sunny, Sex Education-esque optimism, and Charlotte Le Bon as a stylish expat and the latter’s new best friend—though, in truth, everyone gets their moment. Two episodes in, I found myself wondering why exactly Jason Isaacs had agreed to take the part of a largely humorless businessman; an episode or so later, that question was answered for me in spectacular fashion.
Unlike the show’s first two installments, which seemed to hit the ground running, the whole thing takes a moment to warm up, as we acquaint ourselves with this new ensemble—but once it gets going, it swiftly takes off.
As with previous seasons, we open with a terrifying crime being committed, after which the clock is turned back by a week, as our guests are sailing into their swanky abode on Ko Samui. Posey and Isaacs’s Victoria and Timothy Ratliff seem to have the perfect family, but then the latter finds himself in a bind that causes everything to unravel. Wood’s Chelsea seems determined to get Goggins’s Rick to lighten up, but then learns of his real reasons for going to Thailand. Meanwhile, Monaghan’s Jaclyn, Bibb’s Kate, and Coon’s Laurie are initially harmonious, but their allegiances begin to fracture as old rivalries and new tensions rear their heads. And then there’s Belinda, who encounters something she never expected—a revelation that had me punching the air.
Then, the twists keep coming, including one surprise cameo with the perfect balance of star power, expertly judged acting, and surreal, off-the-wall writing. Nowadays, most prestige TV can’t resist squeezing in a few Hollywood A-listers, and usually, it feels like an amusing and ill-judged distraction. If you have to do it, though, this is how.
The bizarre monologue that comes as a result also connects to the central theme of this season: While Season 1 focused on money, and Season 2 on sex, this installment is a meditation on the meaning of life, on our fear of death, and on what happens once we pass out of this world and into the next.
But, somehow, these questions never weigh the season down. It’s exceptionally light on its feet, with these interconnected, overlapping plot lines delicately woven together with all of the series’ usual pleasures: eye-wateringly stunning locations; poetic, hallucinatory cinematography; razor-sharp dialogue; and killer costuming. In the midst of this very long, very dark winter, there’s nothing I crave more.
The White Lotus Season 3 will premiere on HBO and Max on February 16.
