Mike White, the writer-director of the hit HBO series The White Lotus, doesn’t want you to think it’s formulaic. In an April 2025 interview with Lacey Rose and Mikey O’Connell, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that he “bristl[ed] at the notion of any formula.” As the show’s creator, he has an incentive to distract viewers from its repetitiveness: each season starts with the death of a hotel guest before winding back the clock, prompting viewers to guess who, of several pampered vacationers, will die. However, amid a rotating mix of heiresses, spoiled rich kids, and get-rich-quick investors, thematically, The White Lotus never repeats itself.
The White Lotus starts fresh every season, with a new crop of guests arriving at a new location of the titular hotel. Conceived as a one-off production during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the cast could film in a bubble, The White Lotus subverted both the circumstances of its characters and its initial viewership, implying the full range of human emotion can be felt in confined spaces.