‘Our last fight’: Oop, one ‘White Lotus’ team member is adamantly not returning for season 4

Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, the composer who won three Emmys for his eerie and mesmerizing music in HBO’s The White Lotus, has some surprising news. Tapia de Veer won’t be coming back for the show’s fourth season. Unfortunately, it seems like there’s no going back on this, as there is real conflict behind the scenes

This news came out in a recent New York Times interview, which also revealed a long-running creative disagreement between de Veer and the show’s creator, Mike White. Their conflict got much worse while working on the currently airing third season. De Veer and White had very different ideas about the show’s music from the beginning.

White originally wanted something more relaxed and sensual, like the music you’d hear in a nightclub in Ibiza. But de Veer wanted a darker, stranger, more experimental sound. This basic difference in style affected their collaboration throughout the show. De Veer said he was always trying to figure out how to fit his “weird music” into the series, which meant constant back-and-forth and compromise.

The White Lotus composer won’t return due to disagreements

The biggest fight happened over the Season 3 theme song, Enlightenment. De Veer made several versions, including some that kept the famous “ooh-loo-loo-loo” melody from earlier seasons. “I texted the producer and I told him that it would be great to, at some point, give them the longer version with the ooh-loo-loo-loos, because people will explode if they realize that it was going there anyway,” Tapia de Veer said to the Times. “He thought it was a good idea. But then Mike cut that — he wasn’t happy about that.”

Fans who loved the original sound were furious. De Veer was very aware of the backlash. He got tons of messages from upset fans and even calls from international reporters asking why the theme had changed. In response, he posted his own extended version of the theme on YouTube. He admitted this was a direct challenge to White’s choices—he wanted to give fans the familiar sound they missed and, in a way, show an alternative to what White had picked.

“I mean, at that point, we already had our last fight forever, I think.” De Veer said, “So he was just saying no to anything… I announced to the team a few months ago that I was not coming back, that I was leaving.”

According to de Veer, the tension between him and White had been building since Season 1. He compared their working relationship to a dysfunctional rock band—“the guitar player doesn’t understand the singer at all.” He said they constantly disagreed creatively, and while he admitted his style was unusual, he stood by his choices, pointing to the show’s success as proof that his music worked.

De Veer said that he told the crew and not 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.”

De Veer also described their dynamic as that of characters from the French film La Cage aux Folles—he saw himself as Albin, the dramatic diva, and White as Renato, the manager who was always trying to keep things under control. He said he often had to push hard to get his music into the show and had few allies on the production team. The final season was the breaking point after years of creative clashes.

Even though their partnership was difficult, de Veer said he was proud of his work, especially since his music had been criticized at first for being too intense and experimental. His three Emmy wins proved that his music had a major impact, and even though he left on bad terms, there’s no denying that de Veer’s music helped shape The White Lotus.