From today until the end of March, we will be staying at a resort in Thailand where everything happens: The White Lotus. The series that started out as a proposal to be a mini-series (i.e., a single season) ended up becoming a prestigious MAX franchise and a worldwide craze. Thank you, Mike White!

Until the craze for the series, we generally remembered him – visually – as a supporting character and friend of Jack Black, with whom he starred in The School of Rock. But guess who wrote the script for the film (now a Broadway musical)? That’s right: Mike White.

And it wasn’t even his debut! If you are part of generations X and Y, you will remember the series Dawson’s Creek and be surprised to remember, or admit that you didn’t know, that White also wrote several episodes. Remember Jennifer Aniston‘s first film that sparked a strong campaign for an Oscar nomination, The Good Girl? Script by White. And so it goes. The examples highlight that White has a keen eye for society and human behavior, two essential elements that, in the isolation of exotic, luxurious, and hidden places, can bring out the worst in frustrated and complex people, like the guests in The White Lotus.

Mike White‘s proposal to HBO in 2020 (now simply MAX) was to deliver an Agatha Christie-style mystery series, with only six episodes, which would be filmed entirely in the same location over a few weeks. This would meet several important production factors in uncertain times during the pandemic: it would be short, cost-effective (since everyone would be on location for the entire filming period), and would meet the distancing and isolation requirements of the height of the pandemic. Whoever approved it won the lottery.

White was already adored in Hollywood and had made the spectacular Englightned with Laura Dern for the platform, so it wasn’t a blind bet, but it was still a shot in the dark. When it premiered in 2022, The White Lotus delivered much more than promised, precisely because of White’s talent for human observation. The clash of generations, people’s emotional and professional frustrations, addictions, temptations, narcissism, and yes, crime. Of course, there would be a second season! Now we’ll have four.

The Agatha Christie formula stands the test of time for several elements and fits perfectly into the stories of White Lotus: groups of rich people hiding secrets and a seemingly unsolvable murder, often committed in a closed environment (closed circle mystery). The characters usually form a small and varied group, with well-defined personalities. Each one has a reason for committing the crime, making everyone a suspect.

While series like The Perfect Couple (from Netflix), The AfterParty (from Apple TV Plus), or even Only Murders in the Building (from Disney), including remakes of the author’s classics or new franchises like Knives Out, all try to rescue the genre, what Mike White brilliantly eliminates, or transfers to the audience, is the role of the detective. It’s addictive to try to decipher what happened in 10 days to culminate in the death of one of the characters without the help of a character.

This “Hotel California” element – ​​you enter but never leave – is suffocating even in wide-open areas like Hawaii, Sicily, and Thailand. In the first season, the victim was accidental (the manager of the Hawaiian branch) and in the second the death itself was also accidental, but it was part of a sinister murder plan that was not solved. If Mike White wants, The White Lotus could become something completely separate, but he continues to surprise us by letting our imaginations flow and only connecting the essentials.

At the moment, we will have a body found floating in a meditation lake in the Thai branch of the hotel chain and we will go back 10 days in time to try to decipher who died, how they died, who killed them, and why.

The actors signed ‘multiple’ non-disclosure agreements to try to keep the identity of the culprit and the dead man a secret, as well as a mysterious guest star who will join the cast later on. Even the confessions of some cast members that behind the scenes of filming include fights, parties, and tensions between the actors, do not take away from the fact that the audience’s keen attention will be fully dedicated to speculation for six weeks.

It is worth remembering that Mike White “dreamed” the entire plot during a single night when he was exploring possible locations for the season and during a bout of bronchitis when he was hospitalized in Chiang Mai. Placed on a nebulizer, the hospitalization could be a nightmare, but, once again, we are the ones who profit. The director’s brilliant imagination promises to keep us awake for six weeks. Who else has this magical gift?

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