Picture it: you’re clinking glasses of something sparkling in the midday sun, the azure waters of the Mediterranean glisten behind you. Everyone around you seems tastefully rich. Someone mumbles something about aperitifs in a European accent. Maybe you already have a tan. Where are you? On holiday? Wrong! You’re in the second season of The White Lotus, d’uh.
Mike White’s HBO series about a group of monied Americans abroad is saying aloha (it means hello and goodbye, you know) to Hawaii and a wide-toothed ciao to Sicily. The follow-up to the 2021 show, which earned 20 Emmy nominations, drops in October and also has a shiny new cast. Aubrey Plaza and Will Sharpe will appear as Mr and Mrs Spiller, while Meghann Fahy and Theo James play their couple friends. Haley Lu Richardson and Tom Hollander are also joining their ranks.
After a summer where seemingly everyone you followed went to Europe – a carousel of Instagram stories spinning through Santorini, Capri and Ibiza – it’s fitting that one of this year’s most-anticipated TV shows is too. “It’s very intoxicating,” drawls Tanya in the teaser (played by a career-best Jennifer Coolidge, the only season one character to return). “I feel like I’m in a dream.” Both of those could be captions to Instagram slideshows of orange parasols, artfully-strewn peaches and high-brow summer reading.
It is not the only much-loved follow-up to opt for a European jaunt. Knives Out, 2019’s murder mystery hit which introduced Daniel Craig’s brilliant but ever so slightly nonsensical detective Benoit Blanc, is now jumping from Massachusetts (cold?) to a private Greek island (chic!). The sequel is entitled Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, hinting at both its layers and the launch of an anthology series – the sequel is landing on Netflix 23 December, and the streamer has rights for a third film.
It will deal with the fall-out from a death, after a tech billionaire (Edward Norton) invites his closest friends to his exclusive Grecian residence. The cast is a who’s who of culture, likely to appeal to everyone from fans of Marvel to musical theatre: Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Janelle Monáe, Madelyn Cline, Ethan Hawke and Jada Pinkett Smith.
Director Rian Johnson told Tudum that he was inspired by “tropical getaway murder mystery" flicks like The Last of Sheila and Evil Under the Sun. That's clear in the just-released first images. There's a sun kissed Craig, Monáe in holiday mode, glamorous guests gathered around a slightly OTT table setting. “It felt like a summer vacation where we also made a movie,” Johnson added. No kidding.
None of this is new: going abroad is a time-honoured for many sequels. A change of scenery will surely fix anything that is starting to feel stale, from Spider-Man: Far From Home (Venice, Prague, Berlin) to Ocean’s Twelve (Amsterdam, Lake Como). But there’s something about venturing to Europe now which feels of the moment in a way that TV shows and films – often stuck in years of development – don’t always capture.
It also makes perfect sense for Knives Out and The White Lotus. The former is a beloved film which examines privilege and starts in death. The latter is a prestige TV show which examines privilege and ends with death. Both have jokes. After a summer which felt like a full return to continental breaks, and therefore a full return to documenting those continental breaks online, we are primed to see some rich people make fools of themselves abroad. What's Italian for schadenfreude?
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
