The White Lotus’ season 3 location has been set, and it’s Thailand

Part of the fun of a show that resets itself with every season — like HBO’s The White Lotus, a drama that takes place at a new luxury resort with a new cast of characters each time — is the speculation about where it will go next, and who will land there. Variety, at the very least, has put us out our misery. Or, rather, spoilt our fun. Variety reports that Mike White is now settled in Thailand to host his next tragicomic roundelay for miserable rich people.

White stated that he would like to continue exploring this theme. “The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said in an HBO featurette after the finale of The White Lotus’ second season. “I think the third season would be maybe a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality. It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.”

According to Variety’s sources, White has been spending time in Thailand, scouting potential locations. Last week, HBO head Casey Bloys said that he’d heard White’s pitch for the plot of the next run of episodes of the show already. “He’s just pitched us the idea for the third season, and it’s great, a really fun idea,” Bloys, who was speaking at a French TV festival, said.

There’s no word on casting yet, though Bloys said that White was “casting people you know” but in a way that “allows you to rediscover them or see them in a new light.” Between the first and second seasons of the show, only one character returned — Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya, whose complex, absurd, and surprising second-season arc is one of the show’s highlights. White did not indicate if other characters would be included in the third season.

Every season has been a success. The White LotusThe film was shot at a Four Seasons hotel. Season one was shot in Maui on Hawaii and season two on Sicily. Four Seasons Thailand has four resorts: one in Bangkok and two on Chiang Mai’s rice-fields. The other is the Golden Triangle jungle camp, which offers tented adventures in the forest. Koh Samui fits the White Lotus formula the best, perhaps — although, who doesn’t want to see some existentially confused one-percenters losing it on a journey to the heart of the darkness in the jungle, like some kind of five-star Apocalypse Now?