How HBO keeps ‘The White Lotus’ on our minds — and screens
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In the age of binge-watching, HBO’s hit series “The White Lotus” is demonstrating the power of weekly appointment viewing.
Most viewers streamed the darkly comic anthology series from Mike White, set each season at a new luxury resort where the worst instincts of the privileged guests are unleashed. But the weekly rollout of the latest eight-episode season on Sundays — the night that HBO established as the gathering point for prestige television in the pre-Netflix era — is turbocharging the show’s cultural impact and viewing levels.
Season 3 of “The White Lotus,” which premiered in February, averaged 19 million viewers across traditional TV and streaming platforms, according to Max (soon to be known again as HBO Max). About one-fifth of that audience, 4 million, watched on HBO proper the night the episodes aired.
HBO saw the audience for the show grow each week, with the finale drawing 6.2 million viewers on April 6 — 51% higher than the Season 2 finale and more than twice the viewership for the series premiere. Such boosts over a single season are rare, according to Jason Butler, senior vice president of global content and strategy for HBO and Max.
The growth indicates that viewers felt compelled to watch sooner rather than later in order to participate in the public discourse about the show.
“There’s this really symbiotic relationship between recurring weekly viewership and burgeoning buzz, as you would expect,” Butler told The Times.
Subscription prices for Netflix, Disney+, Max and Peacock have crept up in the last year, and more consumers are turning to the free, ad-supported video-on-demand streaming service owned by Fox.
Butler added that Max is seeing the same pattern for its Emmy-winning comedy “Hacks” and its high-octane medical drama “The Pitt,” which are also rolled out weekly. He noted that Max’s biggest shows, such as “The White Lotus,” are driving 50% more social media conversations during the course of a season compared with series that drop all of their episodes at once for binge-viewing.
It helps that “The White Lotus” offers up signature moments and catchphrases that are meme-worthy.
This season, Parker Posey’s Southern wine mom Victoria Ratliff did the heavy lifting (“Piper, nooo!”), generating nearly 28,000 videos on TikTok. HBO has seen the phenomenon in previous seasons with, “What are you doing? Texting” and Jennifer Coolidge’s legendary line, “These gays, they’re trying to murder me,” which can be found on a variety of T-shirts and baseball hats sold on Etsy.
HBO also effectively flooded the zone with stories in the days between episodes, with Monday morning recaps and video interviews in the Hollywood trades, having the cast members dissect their characters. The Los Angeles Times turned out nearly 20 pieces while the New York Times served up 10 stories on Season 3.
Tabloid websites latched on as well. “The White Lotus” star Aimee Lou Wood’s negative reaction to the “Saturday Night Live” parody of the series became a clickbait-driven saga for a week.
Max sees plenty of binge-watching after the final episode runs too. Viewing of previous seasons of “The White Lotus” surged by 15 times once the third edition launched. (HBO has already ordered a fourth season.) Nielsen data showed viewers streamed the entire series more between 800 and 900 million minutes a week during the third-season run.
What’s up with the Ratliff family? Why does Rick need to go to Bangkok? And whose dead body is in the water? Answering all your questions about Mike White’s HBO series.
Max doesn’t release data linking a series to subscriber growth. But during the first quarter of 2025, the direct-to-consumer streaming service added 5.3 million customers.
The sustained conversation around “The White Lotus” has also driven consumer behavior in travel and fashion.
At the recent Warner Bros. Discovery presentation to advertisers in New York, the company’s ad sales chief Robert Voltaggio noted how the show generated a significant boost in tourism to Maui, Sicily and Thailand, the locales featured in the series’ first three seasons, respectively. Website visits to the Four Seasons locations where the show is set saw triple-digit growth as well.
And of course, there is Victoria Ratliff’s caftan.
“The sales for that fashion brand spiked by almost seven times,” Voltaggio said.
No word on any spike in Lorazepam prescriptions.
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