The White Lotus: A Timeless HBO Series That Just Keeps Getting Better

Almost five years on from when it debuted on HBO, The White Lotus is turning into a timeless TV classic. This wonderfully inventive anthology series is quite unlike anything else on the small screen, offering an entirely fresh spin on the murder mystery genre with each passing season.

Because its mysteries are primarily vehicles for overarching social commentary, The White Lotus holds up on rewatching. Indeed, each season of the series only gets better with a second viewing, which allows you to catch the exquisite detail in creator Mike White’s screenwriting. If any HBO show is continuing the golden age of television, it’s this one.

Now that The White Lotus season 4 is approaching, every new update about the show’s latest installment is enough to convince us that it’s going to maintain the spectacularly high standards previous seasons have set. As long as White wants to continue making it, the series doesn’t look like losing momentum anytime soon.

The White Lotus Seasons Are Aging Like Fine Wine

HBO’s The White Lotus keeps getting better with age precisely because its underlying themes are growing more and more relevant to the age we live in. Beneath its surface-level conceit of an exotic murder mystery, the show couldn’t be further from quaint and charming Agatha Christie fare. It’s a highly contemporary examination of modern society at its core.

When the series first arrived on HBO in March 2021, most of us were still experiencing periodic lockdowns, curfews and travel restrictions at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, billionaires like Kim Kardashian were sharing selfies of themselves jetsetting around the world to faraway tropical islands.

Five years later, the involvement of the global elites in a sex-trafficking ring operated via a billionaire’s own luxury private island is a rolling story making daily news headlines. What The White Lotus does better than anything else is skewer the corrupting effect of extortionate wealth on these elites as people.

The show might not go as far as dramatizes the level and scale of criminal behavior involved in the Epstein scandal, but it takes a very effective swing at the kinds of people who were and are part of this scandal. The biting satirization of the super rich provided by The White Lotus has never been more needed than today.

How The White Lotus Reinvents Itself With Each Season

Far from being a one-hit wonder, The White Lotus has managed to sustain itself as a major ratings and critical success for three seasons and counting. It’s done so by reinventing its essential premise with each new story. Mike White moves the show to a different continent every season, whilst introducing us to a different set of luxury resort guests.

This anthology format makes it easy to freshen things up from year to year. Each season of The White Lotus has its own unique characteristics, not least in the people populating its story. Of course, it helps, too, that many of Hollywood’s best and brightest are now lining up to appear in each new iteration of the show.

What We Know About The White Lotus Season 4 So Far

The White Lotus season 4 is raising the stakes in the series once again, and we should expect an even darker and deadlier story than season 3 gave us. The season will be set in Hollywood holiday hotspot Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera, making it the first in the show’s history not to take place primarily on an island.

Steve Coogan, Helena Bonham Carter and Sandra Bernhard are among the famous faces who’ll be introduced to us this time around, although details about their characters remain under wraps. Filming is due to begin in April 2026, and end in October, making a 2027 release window the most likely for this latest installment of The White Lotus.