This all started when Juan Cristóbal Tapia de Veer sat down with the New York Times on April 2, 2025, before the season 3 finale aired to air his grievances against Mike White. It was then that Tapia de Veer confirmed that, despite having scored “The White Lotus” for three seasons and writing its theme songs, he wouldn’t be back for future installments.
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“I feel like this was, you know, a rock ‘n’ roll band story,” Tapia de Veer told interviewer Callie Holtermann. “I was like, OK, this is like a rock band I’ve been in before where the guitar player doesn’t understand the singer at all.”
Not only that, but apparently, Tapia de Veer didn’t directly tell White he didn’t want to come back to the show (which, if I’m being honest, is shady as hell). “It’s kind of weird right now because I announced to the team a few months ago that I was not coming back, that I was leaving,” Tapia de Veer revealed. “I didn’t tell Mike for various reasons; I wanted to tell him just at the end for the shock and whatever. Except I told the whole editorial team and music editor and producer and all that, but I didn’t think that they were going to tell him. At some point he heard about that.”
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Tapia de Veer, like White after him, didn’t hold back about the creative differences that led to his decision to leave the project, honing in on a few things. First, he alleged that White didn’t like the season 1 theme song and tried to cut it; then, when the season 2 theme “Renaissance” went majorly viral, Tapia de Veer wanted to build upon that song for the season 3 title theme, “Enlightenment.” Tapia de Veer also claimed that he wanted to give the show the version that had, as he put it, the “ooh-loo-loo-loos,” which makes sense if you’re even passingly familiar with either of these themes. White, however, had other ideas. “But then Mike cut that — he wasn’t happy about that,” Tapia de Veer stated.
“I mean, it is what it is,” Tapia de Veer added, sounding very much like he does not believe it is what it is. “You know, I was watching the Emmys, and it’s like, there’s one thing I’m pretty proud of and that is I feel like I never gave up. Maybe I was being unprofessional, and for sure Mike feels that I was always unprofessional to him because I didn’t give him what he wanted. But what I gave him did this, you know — did those Emmys, people going crazy.”
“The White Lotus,” which will employ a different composer in the future, is streaming on Max now. You can see how we ranked the show’s first three seasons here.
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