The White Lotus Meets Yellowstone In Netflix’s The Hunting Wives

It seems like no other streaming platform churns out thriller shows faster than Netflix. 2025 alone had Black Rabbit, The Beast in Me, the final season of You, and the award-winning Adolescence, among others.

However, with the exception of You, these aforementioned shows are all miniseries, and most of them won’t be remembered within a year’s time. Despite Black Rabbit‘s star-studded cast, it was deemed skippable upon arrival, and even though it was a critically acclaimed show with high viewership, does anyone even remember the ending of The Beast in Me?

Basically, few Netflix thrillers have the buzzy water cooler potential we want from the genre’s offerings, which makes The Hunting Wives a welcome standout. Premiering on July 21, 2025, The Hunting Wives seemingly came out of nowhere, but it instantly hooked audiences with its salacious storylines and central murder mystery, becoming the show of the summer.

This isn’t dissimilar to The White Lotus season 1, which proved an immediate hit for HBO when it premiered in the summer of 2021. Now, The White Lotus is one of HBO’s current flagship series, and the mass speculation on which character will die grows bigger with each season.

In The Hunting Wives, the protagonist, Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow), becomes embroiled in a murder investigation after befriending an elite group of rich and dangerous women when she moves with her family from Boston to East Texas. The Hunting Wives makes Texas a character in and of itself, drawing an easy comparison to Yellowstone and its relationship to Montana.

Yellowstone was yet another sleeper hit, and ran for five incredibly popular seasons. If The Hunting Wives plays its cards right, it could follow in the Taylor Sheridan series’s footsteps.

The Hunting Wives Is The Perfect Blend Of The White Lotus & Yellowstone

TV will never stop mining the sordid lives of the wealthy for content, but The Hunting Wives and The White Lotus stand apart, not only for being two of the best shows on the subject, but also two of the most fun.

Though The Hunting Wives doesn’t take place at a luxury resort, the affluent community of the titular clique is just as insular. There’s a simmering tension between Margo Banks (Malin Akerman) and her friends and the neighboring working class, similar to that between the White Lotus’s upper-crust guests and the workers who serve them, and in that series, that tension threatens to — and does — bubble over, leading to fatal consequences.

The Hunting Wives and The White Lotus have also earned notoriety for their graphic sexual content. The White Lotus season 2, in particular, featured infidelity as a central theme, and in The Hunting Wives, almost every character is cheating on their spouse, some carrying out multiple affairs.

Both shows have courted controversy with their explicit scenes, but to label The Hunting Wives‘ spiciness as cheap shock value would be a mistake. Very few series have depicted female lust and desire as unapologetically as the Netflix series, particularly concerning LGBTQ+ characters. Yes, The Hunting Wives is “trashy” fun (in the best way possible), but like The White Lotus, its graphic scenes have something to say beyond gratuity.

However, despite their similarities, it’s unlikely that The Hunting Wives will ever achieve the prestige status of The White Lotus. This was also the plight of Yellowstone, a hugely popular, game-changing series that failed to earn the critical acclaim or awards success of its contemporaries.

The two series have also both been dubbed “red state entertainment,” with their setting and characters much more outwardly conservative than what’s typically seen in other buzzy dramas. While The Hunting Wives certainly isn’t a Western like Yellowstone, both shows feature melodramatic storylines about ruthless characters stopping at nothing to get what they want — Kevin Costner himself even called Yellowstone a soap opera, and this is a compliment.

The main characters of Yellowstone fight to protect their land while those in The Hunting Wives fight to protect themselves, but either way, the bodies pile up. By the end of The Hunting Wives season 1, there are enough corpses to fill the Yellowstone train station.

The Upcoming Hunting Wives Season 2 Could Make The Show Even More Iconic

Longevity is the key to both The White Lotus and Yellowstone‘s success, and thankfully, it looks like The Hunting Wives is following in their path. Though it took a surprisingly long time for its renewal, Netflix officially greenlit The Hunting Wives season 2 in September 2025.

Specific plot details for season 2 remain scarce, but we do know that Margo and Sophie will be thrown back together as they confront “old secrets and new foes“. The new foes part especially makes sense given how few main characters survived The Hunting Wives season 1. Thus far, the new cast members include John Stamos, Dale Dickey, and Cam Gigandet.

Perhaps even more exciting are the teases about the new season coming from Brittany Snow. The Sophie actress claims that The Hunting Wives season 2 will be even “crazier“ than its predecessor and described a certain character’s death as a “wild play“.

The Hunting Wives season 1 was an absolute ratings juggernaut for Netflix, and with promises of an even more shocking season 2, the viewership numbers are all but guaranteed to climb. If The Hunting Wives can keep increasing its audience, it has the potential to achieve the icon status of The White Lotus and Yellowstone.

The Hunting Wives Would Benefit From Finding Franchise Potential

In the ever-crowded streaming landscape, shows need to stand out, and one way to do so is to find franchise potential. Shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead remain in the pop culture conversation long after their original series ended because they continue to expand their respective universes.

The White Lotus did so not through spinoffs but by growing from a limited series to an anthology drama, with each season taking place at a different location and featuring a new crop of guests and resort employees. Given that The Hunting Wives is so tied to its East Texas setting, this would be a difficult formula to replicate, but there’s no denying that the expansive world of The White Lotus contributed to its cultural relevance.

On the other hand, Yellowstone is a series entirely rooted to a singular location, but Taylor Sheridan has turned it into one of television’s biggest franchises. The Dutton family saga is ripe for multiple series, which thus far includes prequels 1883 and 1923 and spinoffs Marshals and the upcoming Dutton Ranch, which are centered on John Dutton’s adult children.

The main characters of The Hunting Wives may not have the deep-rooted lore of the Duttons, but there are still ways the story could be expanded. Coming from humble beginnings, Margo clawed her way to riches, and a prequel series centered on her scrappy journey has the potential to be great. Meanwhile, Deputy Wanda Salazar (Karen Rodriguez) and Deputy Walter Flynn (Hunter Emery), who are thankfully returning for season 2, are fan-favorite characters with enough chemistry to power a police procedural-style spinoff.

Of course, these are just ideas, and if The Hunting Wives never expands past its main deliciously sordid story, it’s still left an indelible mark on TV. Here’s hoping that the “crazier” season 2 finds an even bigger audience.

Release Date

July 21, 2025

Network

Netflix

Directors

Julie Anne Robinson

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  Brittany Snow

  Sophie O’Neill

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  Malin Akerman

  Margo Banks

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