The show, which ends its third season on Sunday, has built one of the largest audiences of any HBO series.
“The White Lotus” and “Succession” have a lot in common.
Both HBO shows skewer the rich and premiered to low expectations before catching fire, delighting viewers, critics, Emmy voters and anyone capable of creating and packaging a meme. The creators of both shows — Mike White with “The White Lotus” and Jesse Armstrong with “Succession” — are hailed as bona fide auteurs because of the success.
But there’s one significant difference between them: “The White Lotus” has developed a much bigger audience.
The third season, which concludes Sunday night, is the series’s most popular yet, according to internal HBO statistics and Nielsen, the research firm. The final viewership totals for the season appear poised to catapult “The White Lotus” into the upper tier of HBO’s most popular shows.
Here’s some context. The first season of “The White Lotus,” which premiered in July 2021, had an audience of about nine million in the United States, according to HBO’s stats, which include viewership on cable television and the company’s streaming service, now called Max. That was roughly the same size as the audience for the fourth and final season of “Succession,” which wrapped up in May 2023.
The second season of “The White Lotus,” which debuted in October 2022, shot up to more than 15 million viewers, and this season is on track to have at least 18 million, an HBO spokesman said. Depending on how many more viewers catch up on the final episodes, that figure could grow closer to 20 million.
That would be in line with the second season of “Euphoria,” the HBO hit that earned over 19 million viewers when it premiered in January 2022. (The third season of “Euphoria,” now in production, is likely to be its last.)