If you’ve not yet managed to watch the newest season of The White Lotus, I have bad news. The theme tune has changed. And not necessarily for the better. The gorgeously weird warbling has gone: in its space is something a lot less identifiable and a lot more generic. Season three’s intro, dubbed Enlightenment, does not much resemble its previous two brethren – instead taking things off-piste with drums, handclaps and some ominous sounding flutes.
![[All of the Easter Eggs (so far) in the White Lotus series three]](https://static.standard.co.uk/2025/02/12/15/00/01_60_TheWhiteLotus_S03.jpeg?crop=8:5,smart&quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
Of course, the fans are raging. As they should be; it’s a certified banger that has its own cult following. When season two aired, streams of season one’s theme tune (dubbed Aloha!) increased by 200%; the Italian-influenced Renaissance was remixed by Tiësto and appeared in clubs around the world. “Where is the warbling lolololololollols MY HEART ACHES,” one person wrote on YouTube, beneath the track. They were far from the only person to try and put their grief into words.
![[Michelle Monaghan on The White Lotus season 3: 'The number of NDAs that I've signed for this show is crazy']](https://static.standard.co.uk/2025/02/11/14/50/01_52_TheWhiteLotus_S03.jpeg?crop=8:5,smart&quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
“Aw man… where’s the “woooo, woo ooh ooooooh, wooo ooo ooo ooooooh?” another wrote; while another person on Twitter observed that “When you have a banger theme that the show is known for, changing it is a criminally stupid decision.”. What’s behind the change?. Oddly enough, The White Lotus’ latest oeuvre has been composed by the same person who created both the season one and two intro jingles: Cristobal Tapia de Veer. And while he’s not spoken much about it yet, he has dropped hints in the past that season three was going to be different.
“For Thailand, I want to bring in some Eastern philosophy, something a little bit spiritual,” he told Spotify previously. “I love the Buddhist temples there, and funnily enough I have a collection of Thai gongs. I have 36 Thai gongs to make melodies with, so you can expect to hear some of those. I’d really like to go deep with it, make it take a journey.”. He opened up further in an interview with Variety, revealing that he initially thought the season two theme tune was “terrible” and talked about reworking the intro music for season three – taking inspiration from, of all places, TikTok.
“I think that the best song I heard in the last few years that I can remember is people harmonizing to a cat on TikTok,” He said. “There’s a cat, and somebody put some piano and then some girls started harmonizing, and then there’s all these versions harmonizing this cat, it’s super moving and so spontaneous and fresh that this is grabbing a lot more my attention than super-produced pop music.”.
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