Mike White is heading back to the jungle. The Season 37 runner-up and The White Lotus creator has joined the cast of the reality competition series’ Season 50 milestone. The new episodes will begin production in Fiji next month and air with the tagline “In the Hands of the Fans.” Season 50 is scheduled to premiere in February 2026.
Also returning for Survivor 50 are previous contestants Colby Donaldson, Aubrey Bracco, Cirie Fields, and Ozzy Lusth. Two contestants from Season 49, which airs this fall and concludes prior to the premiere of Season 50, will join the cast, as well. Other participants include Kamilla Karthigesu, Kyle Fraser, Rick Devens, Joseph Hunter, Jonathan Young, Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, Genevieve Mushaluk, Emily Flippen, Dee Valladares, Christian Hubicki, Charlie Davis, Chrissy Hofbeck, Benjamin “Coach” Wade, and Angelina Keeley.
White’s return follows the conclusion of The White Lotus Season Three, which brought murder, mystery, and deep-rooted trauma to Thailand. Its first two blockbuster seasons took place in Hawaii and Sicily at the possibly cursed chain of White Lotus hotels.
“If the Sicily season at times evoked various plot and character arcs from the first, then this new batch of episodes feels even more like White is trying to mix and match ideas he used in the two previous settings,” Rolling Stone’s Alan Sepinwall wrote in a review of the third season. “The end result is still extremely entertaining, thanks to White again assembling a top-notch cast that includes Walton Goggins, Parker Posey, and Carrie Coon, among many others, and thanks to White’s knack for finding creative ways to depict the oblivious entitlement of the hotel’s obscenely wealthy guests.”
Survivor could function as some emotional market research for White, but he won’t have any of the glitz and glam that his characters bask in before their vacation pushes unwanted feelings, and sometimes bodies, to the surface. At the end of the latest season, the creator hinted at switching up the locations for the already approved fourth installment.
“For the fourth season, I want to get a little bit out of the ‘crashing waves against rocks’ vernacular,” White said. “But there’s always room for more murders at the White Lotus hotels.”