- - 'The White Lotus' Season 4 Casts Its First Stars

Erica Gonzales, Aimée LutkinDecember 21, 2025 at 12:08 AM

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Mike White’s Emmy-winning series The White Lotus concluded its third season (with a devastating finale) earlier this year, but luckily, the show has already been confirmed for a fourth chapter. In a press release sent in January 2025—ahead of the season 3 premiere—HBO announced that another installment of the massively popular social satire is on the way.

Here’s what we know so far.

Where will The White Lotus season 4 take place?

The new season will be filmed in France, and the team is “actively scouting swank locations” in both Paris and the French Riviera, Variety reported in October 2025. According to the outlet, “season 4 will likely unfold mostly in the South of France, with a subplot in Paris.” On Nov. 20, 2025, during a HBO and HBO Max slate presentation, HBO boss Casey Bloys confirmed the series would be set in France.

However, the series has not renewed its contract with The Four Seasons, according to Variety, so the new season might take place at a different luxury hotel collection.

A view on the Fort Carre in Antibes, France in the French Riviera. NurPhoto - Getty Images

In a behind-the-scenes clip after the season 3 finale, White briefly weighed in on the next season, saying he wants to “get away from the crashing waves against rocks vernacular,” but there’s “always room for more murders.”

In February 2025, HBO’s EVP Francesca Orsi told Deadline that the team would begin scouting for a new setting imminently.

“We’re going on some locations scouting in the next couple of weeks, so we’ll know soon,” Orsi said. “I can’t really say where we’re going to land but chances are somewhere in Europe.”

White echoed scouting plans while speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published April 2. “There’s already pressure from HBO [for season 4]. When they have something they’re bullish on, they want to get it out there,” he said. “We were supposed to start scouting in April, and I was like, ‘You guys, I haven’t been home in three years.’”

Producer David Bernad hinted where they probably won’t go: “I’d bet $100,000 we don’t end up in the cold next. Even if we flirted with the idea, Mike just wouldn’t want to be in the cold. He hates it.”

While speaking on the official White Lotus podcast after the finale, White shared that he’s considered a setting that would allow him to look critically at the art world, or film industry, or something similar. He said he thought about doing something “like the first season where it’s the satirizing stuff about art and criticism and movies and fame and celebrity...like a film festival type of thing or something like that, or like an art world sort of situation. It just feels like that would be some kind of new theme to get into that’s maybe a little less heady than what we just did, but still have some juice to it.”

Fabio Lovino/HBOWhen does filming start?

Sources told Variety that the season is “still in development and won’t shoot until next year,” according to an October 2025 report.

Who will be in the season 4 cast?

On Dec. 20. 2025, HBO confirmed that Alexander Ludwig and AJ Michalka had been cast on the show.

And a lot of other people are interested in auditioning.

Casting director Meredith Tucker told The Hollywood Reporter that she already got a call from an agent with an interested client, even though White had not written the scripts yet.

“Last week, an agent reached out, like, ‘It’s an emergency,’” Tucker said. “I call him and he says, ‘I know the answer is ‘no,’ but someone said they already had an audition for season 4. A client heard this from their friend.’ [White] has not written one thing. What are these people talking about? Don’t call me until after this one.”

By now, viewers know that season 3 features an A-list cast including Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Natasha Rothwell, Sam Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Jon Gries, Tayme Thapthimthong, and Aimee Lou Wood.

We can’t rule out the possibility of certain characters (if they survive) returning in the future. Jennifer Coolidge appeared in the first two seasons, Natasha Rothwell starred in the first and third, and Jon Gries has been present in all three.

While speaking to THR, Swarzenegger and White discussed a potential “all-star” season with favorites from previous casts. “I’d love to do that,” White said.

Swarzenegger added, “They could get all the douche guys in one hotel together. Mike said that one day when we were on set, he was like, ‘Oh my God, it’d be so good to get you, Jake Lacy, and Theo James in the same room.’”

When is the release date?

It’s too early to know that, too. But, for reference, The White Lotus’s first season, set in Hawaii, premiered in July 2021; season 2, set in Sicily, came out in October 2022; and season 3, set in Thailand, debuted February 2025. It could take another few years before season 4 is on our screens, but we’ll have to wait for official word from HBO.

However, Bloys has shared that the next season will likely be out in time to compete in the 2027 Emmy cycle. In September 2025, he told Variety, “Maybe not the 2026 Emmy cycle but probably the next one.”

Why is the composer leaving?

Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, who composed music for The White Lotus’s first three seasons (including that iconic ooh-loo-loo theme song) will not be returning for season 4 following creative differences with Mike White and producers. Tapia de Veer recalled “hysterical” conversations with the team in an interview with The New York Times, though HBO and White did not comment.

He recalled himself and White having different ideas in mind for the season 1 theme. “I just stuck to what I was doing. And when I was giving versions, it was still the same thing: There were still crazy people and screaming and stuff like that. From there, it became this weird relationship of, How do I pass all this weird music into the show?”

When it came to the season 3 theme song—which had fans in uproar because it was missing the beloved original melody—Tapia de Veer revealed that the iconic tune actually was in a longer version of the new track.

“I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give them the longer version with the ooh-loo-loo-loos, because people will explode if they realize that it was going there anyway. He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that—he wasn’t happy about that,” he told the Times. “I mean, at that point, we already had our last fight forever, I think. So he was just saying no to anything. So I just uploaded that to my YouTube.”

Days later, White responded to the claims in an interview with Howard Stern, per The Hollywood Reporter.

“I honestly don’t know what happened, except now I’m reading his interviews because he decides to do some PR campaign about him leaving the show. I don’t think he respected me. He wants people to know that he’s edgy and dark and I’m, I don’t know, like I watch reality TV. We never really even fought. He says we feuded. I don’t think I ever had a fight with him — except for maybe some emails. It was basically me giving him notes. I don’t think he liked to go through the process of getting notes from me, or wanting revisions, because he didn’t respect me. I knew he wasn’t a team player and that he wanted to do it his way. I was thrown that he would go to The New York Times to shit on me and the show three days before the finale. It was kind of a bitch move.”

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