There are lots of mysteries to be solved in regards to what happens to The White Lotus Season 3 characters as Mike White’s dark comedy plays out on the 2025 TV schedule. Fans are dying to know what Greg is up to and how much we should worry about Belinda, but another big question might be how the creator was able to predict real-world events? After President Trump became the topic of conversation on a recent episode, some of the cast admitted they questioned the timeliness of the topic.
One of the stories we’ve been following on this third installment of The White Lotus (available to stream with a Max subscription) involves longtime friends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Kate (Leslie Bibb) and Laurie (Carrie Coon) reuniting for a girls trip. In the episode "The Meaning of Dreams," Kate’s friends are shocked to learn she voted for Trump, and Bibb admitted to EW she didn’t realize how relevant that topic would still be, saying:
I feel like Mike had binoculars into the future because when we did it, it just didn't feel [timely anymore]. I was like, 'We already did that. That was in the past.'
When the current season of The White Lotus filmed, we hadn’t yet been through the 2024 election, so Leslie Bibb was only thinking about 2016. For his part, Mike White couldn’t actually have known that voting for Trump would still be such a hot-button issue that people are talking about in 2025.
Factually, sure, the stress-inducing group of female friends could have been referencing Trump's first presidency and, in that case, I can see how Leslie Bibb would wonder if the events of eight years ago would still be topical. She wasn’t even thinking about the 2024 election making that issue relevant again, as she said:
I don't even think Trump was running when we did it — it was in January or February of last year or something, so yeah, that was pretty wild. But he's like a little soothsayer, that Mike White. It feels like we've hit a nerve. We're in the zeitgeist, as they say. We've done something current, if you will.
Donald Trump officially announced that he was running for president again in November 2022, but many weren’t thinking that far ahead, and The White Lotus was filmed before the race (and tensions surrounding it) heated up.
Mike White definitely had an eye on the future when he added politics to the list of polarizing subjects for Jaclyn, Laurie and Kate to tackle, and it definitely fit right in there with their other topics of conversation like each other’s religious beliefs, love lives and physical appearances.
The scene in question set Kate up to be ostracized from her friends, much in the same way she and Jaclyn had stayed up late gossiping about Laurie earlier in their trip. I’m afraid tensions are just going to continue to boil between the three old friends (sorry, longtime friends) until at least one of them explodes.
Tune in to see what fireworks await with new episodes of The White Lotus Season 3 airing at 9 p.m. ET Sundays on HBO and streaming on Max.
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