5 Characters Who Could Return In The White Lotus Season 4

After season 3 of "The White Lotus" wrapped up its run in April 2025, fans started thinking about the forthcoming fourth season ... and shortly before the Thailand-set finale of that third season aired, the cast and crew participated in an oral history about the series (in The Hollywood Reporter) that brought up an interesting point. Could some characters from the anthology's first two seasons, which were set in Hawai'i and Italy, come back for the fourth outing? Maybe!

Season 3 star Patrick Schwarzenegger, who plays privileged twentysomething Saxon Ratliff, brought up some fan chatter to showrunner and creator Mike White, saying, "I've heard rumors of them doing an all-star season." White's response? "I'd love to do that." If I might be permitted to bring up White's time on "Survivor" — as I am wont to do — this is actually perfectly in line with the reality competition show hosted by Jeff Probst, which frequently features casts with returning players, fan favorites, and even an entire season's worth of winners vying for their second or third victory (specifically, season 40, which is aptly titled "Winners at War"). 

As it turns out, Schwarzenegger actually had some ideas. "They could get all the douche guys in one hotel together," he mused. "Mike said that one day, when we were on set, he was like, 'Oh my God, it'd be so good to get you, Jake Lacy [who appears in season 1 as Shane Patton] and Theo James [Cameron Sullivan in season 2] in the same room.'" Max and HBO content head Casey Bloys, who was also present for the interview, was totally into the idea too: "Maybe Molly Shannon's character [Kitty Patton, Shane's mother in season 1] and Victoria Ratliff [Parker Posey in season 3] know each other? There are so many connections between all these awful people."

So, who should come back and stay at a different White Lotus property? Who could come back, considering that at least one person dies each season? Let's look at some possibilities.

Let's get one thing out of the way: Shane Patton, the Pineapple Suite obsessive played in season 1 of "The White Lotus," does kill a guy at the end of his stay at the fictional hotel chain's Maui location. It is, to be absolutely fair to him, a complete accident ... due entirely to the fact that the hotel's manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) snuck into Shane's room to crap in his suitcase after getting routinely abused over the guest's lodging situation. Shane was a total jerk to Armond throughout the season. That part's not up for debate. He didn't mean to stab him to death, though! He heard someone in his suite, grabbed a knife to defend himself, and unfortunately, things played out as they did.

That's why Shane should come back for a future season, and while I know this list says "five characters," I do want to point out that Shane could potentially be a weirdly delightful package deal. Casey Bloys brought up his equally demanding and spoiled mother Kitty Patton, played by Molly Shannon, who could make it a point to crash another vacation — and then there's the issue of Shane's wife Rachel (Alexandra Daddario), who directly tells her husband that she regrets marrying him on their honeymoon before they hastily kiss and make up in the aftermath of Armond's death. Maybe Shane and Rachel are still together and have a kid who takes after his dad a little too much; maybe they're divorced and Shane is vacationing on his own and on the prowl for a new trophy wife. Let's catch up with this guy again! I want to see if he's still awful, because odds are good that he hasn't changed one bit!

We're not given a ton of specific timelines within "The White Lotus" — meaning that we don't know precisely how much time has passed between the start of season 1 and the end of season 3 — but I think it's safe to assume that Olivia Mossbacher, Sydney Sweeney's college sophomore from season 1, has probably graduated by now. Maybe Olivia is taking a year to travel after getting her degree (and based on her self-made mother and tech maven Nicole Mossbacher, who's played by Connie Britton, she probably has the funding to do such a thing), and maybe she decides to stay at another White Lotus property.

Olivia is a fascinating character; much like Sarah Catherine Hook's Piper Ratliff from season 3, she constantly disavows and criticizes her family's wealth right up until the moment where that privilege becomes convenient for her. We see this in her storyline with her best friend from college Paula (Brittany O'Grady), who joins the Mossbachers on vacation and who, we learn, does not run in their same socioeconomic circles; when Paula gets involved with a local boy named Kai (Kekoa Scott Kekumano), Olivia is clearly jealous and then grows suspicious of both Paula and Kai when the Mossbacher's safe is robbed. (She's right, but the fact that she suspected them in the first place doesn't say a lot about her overall character.) I think it would be great to see Olivia a few years down the line and see if she's grown up at all or not a bit — plus, it's always a delight to see Sweeney in just about anything.

Daphne Sullivan, the flighty but secretly savvy trophy wife played by Meghann Fahy, is on this list because she's awesome. (This is also in large part due to Fahy's absolutely stunning performance.) In season 2 of "The White Lotus," we see Daphne flit around the Sicilian hotel with her wealthy, handsome husband Cameron Sullivan (Theo James, who should probably also come back), force her fellow guest Harper Spiller (Aubrey Plaza) to be friends with her under duress (in that she tricks the other woman into a girls getaway to a palazzo in nearby Noto without asking if Harper is even interested), all but tells Harper that her children aren't biologically Cameron's, and maybe hooks up with Harper's long-suffering husband Ethan Spiller (Will Sharpe). Daphne is a whirling dervish of chaos who's not sure if she's ever voted, is always smiling and sipping on an Aperol spritz, and gets through life by simply remaining cognitively dissonant. She is incredible, and I need her on my screen as regularly as possible.

Unlike Shane and Rachel Patton, whose relationship may or may not have survived their stay at the fictional White Lotus, I do think Cameron and Daphne are still together; in fact, I think the two get a perverse thrill out of their seemingly near-constant infidelity (Cameron cheats on Daphne while she's in Noto, and like I said, I'm pretty sure Daphne's kids were fathered by her personal trainer). Maybe they're just circling the globe and pulling a full "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" on unsuspecting couples at various high-end resorts. They're almost definitely still having a great time being insane at each other, no matter what. If you say you don't want to watch Daphne's glorious messiness take center stage again, you are lying.

Patrick Schwarzenegger was the one to suggest, in that oral history, that some of the "bros" from "The White Lotus" should meet up during a potential all-star season, which frankly means that we need his character, Saxon, to return. If I'm being honest, I actually think Saxon should come back in this hypothetical all-star season because his storyline, which was absolutely unhinged, just sort of fizzled out, and I'd like to see him have another existential crisis. (What else is this show for, if not to watch absurdly wealthy people have complete meltdowns?) After hooking up with his younger brother Lochlan (Sam Nivola) in a drunken haze, Saxon deals with the aftermath of that and, by the end of the season, we see his father Timothy (Jason Isaacs) finally confess to the whole family that he's committed a myriad of financial crimes and is, in all likelihood, going to jail when they get back to North Carolina.

Saxon gives a whole speech to his dad about how his professional life is directly tied to Timothy's success and he's nothing without his work, so he probably had the crashout of the century upon his return to the United States. Perhaps we see him at another White Lotus hotel, but this time, he's deep in both denial and credit card debt and just pretending to still have wealth and privilege. Maybe he was able to turn the bones of his father's business into something successful in Timothy's presumed absence, and he's taking a victory lap with another trip. The point is that Saxon should come back in some way, shape, or form ... and so should his mother.

Parker Posey's Victoria Ratliff is — and I hate this word — iconic. I physically and mentally cannot imagine watching the most recent season of "The White Lotus" (as of this writing) without being blessed by her pronounciations of the words "Piper," "no," "tsunami," and "Buddhism" (to say nothing of her drunkenly exclaiming, "You want to live in Taiwan?!" after Piper says she wants to live in, uh, Thailand). Victoria, who's constantly blissed out on lorazepam, wine, or both, is completely oblivious to everything happening around her. She has no clue that her sons start avoiding each other all of a sudden after a wild night out. She doesn't appear to notice her husband stealing her pills, freely disassociating in social situations, or frantically taking phone calls, only to return in a totally agitated state. Again, she might not know what country they're vacationing to in the first place. This is all to say that Victoria is perfect, and she needs to be on a possible "White Lotus" all-star season.

Here's my pitch: Victoria, who tells Timothy that she doesn't think she'd want to "live" if she's not rich, divorces him the second their plane touches down on American soil and gets out of his entire mess without any consequence. She promptly remarries a super-wealthy man and decides to start traveling again, because, just as a reminder, this woman lives with such a staggering lack of self-awareness that she definitely wouldn't be traumatized by everything that went down in Thailand slash Taiwan. I generally believed that the powers that be should put Parker Posey in everything. Put her on "Wheel of Fortune." Get her to do a guest arc on "Severance." See if she's willing to play a zonked-out parent on "Abbott Elementary." Most importantly, though, she should return as Victoria on "The White Lotus."

"The White Lotus" is streaming on Max now.