This season, The White Lotus decamps from Hawaii to the sunny shores of Sicily with new characters and a very Italian opening-credits sequence. Back on Maui, the show got much of its creeping dread through a heavily meme’d, Emmy-winning score, introduced in the credits, that incorporated haunting flutes, moaning, and drumming. This time around, the opening sequence establishes a new vibe: an operatic melody set over tranquil scenes from Baroque Italian frescoes that morphs into a remixed version of the melody from the first season — complete with a Eurodance-style beat drop — and scenes of debauchery. It’s all in line with the new season’s fascination with American fantasies about Italy, which are tinged with jealousy, horniness, and violence. The season is, as creator Mike White put it to me, “a sex comedy with teeth.†In advance of the second season’s premiere on October 30, we’re providing a first look at your introduction to the White Lotus Hotel and Resort’s outpost in Taormina.
The Sound
Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who wrote the music for the first season, returned at White’s insistence, drafting music inspired by the sounds of a classical Italian opera with a voice (recorded and then pitched digitally) singing over a harp. Then, a new version of the melody from the first season enters, also with a digitally altered voice, which Tapia de Veer says signals the arrival of the new guests at the resort. Finally, things accelerate into what feels like a dance track — a beat drop in the mode of artists like Daft Punk — inspired by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s use of electronic dance music in his own work, such as his opening credits for The Young Pope. And Tapia de Veer wants you to dance to it: “That’s the short version that’s on the show, but there’s going to be a longer-than-four-minute version available,†he added. “That’s going further into the darkness, which reflects the way the show goes when things get a little bit out of control.â€
Originally, Tapia de Veer wasn’t planning to write the season’s full score, as he was busy with other projects. But after writing the new theme, he suggested he could collaborate with his manager — Kim Neundorf, also a musician — as a team to develop the rest of the White Lotus season-two soundtrack. That score, he promises, includes more of an acoustic vibe than the heavily electronic theme, though it takes a turn for the darker in later episodes. “The new sound has some recognizable elements,†Tapia de Veer said, “as well as really interesting new stuff that came out of working together.†Look out for serene guitar versions of melodies you’ll recognize from season one as well as a piece of music meant to sound like “skittering mice†for the meddling young Italian women played by Simona Tabasco and Beatrice Grannò.
The Look
The design of the new title sequence also comes from the minds of the original’s: Katrina Crawford and Mark Bashore of the studio Plains of Yonder. As with the music, they brought over ideas that motivated the first season’s designs and remixed them to fit the new themes. Where season one had tropical wallpaper of the kind you might find in a Hawaiian resort, season two features scenes from frescoes you might find painted on the wall of a (very upscale) Italian one. In fact, White suggested that Crawford and Bashore model the new credits off frescoes painted onto the walls of a villa in Palermo, where the show filmed later in the season. They took high-def photos of the intricate designs, then reworked and animated the details. “There are these incredible 16th-century frescoes in every room of the villa,†Crawford said. “They have these trompe l’oeil designs, so it’s as if you’re looking out into scenes in a countryside. There’s this cool voyeuristic thing happening to fit the themes of the show.â€
They cut the imagery to the music Tapia de Veer provided, so the designs start off pastoral and get increasingly frenetic. As the sequence introduces the actors’ names, the scenes tell you a little bit about each of their characters’ personalities — you may catch that Jennifer Coolidge’s, which appeared next to a monkey in the first season, is near one again this time, though the monkey is held captive by a blonde woman. (Is that Tanya, or is she the monkey?) Then, as the theme from the first season returns, things get more eerie and, frankly, horny. You’ll notice a man looking off toward the sea with a castle on fire in the background (Crawford and Bashore added the shimmering flames and smoke), then the camera moves to reveal two sailors, who look like they’re in the middle of a blowjob. “One HBO executive said, ‘Is that what I think it is?’†Bashore said. “And we just left it at that,†Crawford added.
By the time the beat drops, things are downright chaotic. There is an erupting fountain; a rapid-fire sequence of characters stabbing, being stabbed, or falling; and some mythological motifs, including a representation of Leda and the Swan. There’s even a pool of water — full of white lotuses, of course — surrounded by revelers that appears next to the credit for White himself. As the music resolves into a strumming guitar and choral melody, the credits cut up to a detail on the ceiling of a group of nymphs. That’s a reworked version of a room at the actual villa with the background changed from green to red and a few more nymphs and animals added for good measure. “We liked the vibe of going back to the classic Italian for the finale,†Bashore said.
The nymphs might have multiplied, but the cracks in the ceiling were there in the original villa. “Our still photographer was always trying to make things beautiful photographing this villa,†Crawford said. “And we had to be like, ‘No, keep the cracks!’ They are a symbol for this whole thing.â€