'Bridgerton' Concludes Season 3 with Long Due Reconciliations

Put on your comfiest walking shoes, friends – we’re about to start strolling down the long & winding road to Happily Ever After in the second half of Bridgerton’s third season. As I noted in my review of the season’s first half, what this series does well, it continues to do well. Beautifully, even! Each of the big storylines we follow this season – romances between Colin and Penelope, Francesca and Lord John, Lady Violet and Lord Anderson, plus the soon-to-be-unraveled mystery of Lady Whistledown’s identity – are engrossingly told. In the back half of the season, we also get the conclusion of Cressida Cowper’s plot line, a lovely reconciliation arc for Lady Featherington and all three of her daughters, the bisexual journey of discovery that the series has teased for Benedict since Season 1, and a stunning, delightful gender-bending setup for Francesca’s second chance at love in a future season. Plot, plot, and more tantalizing plot as far as the eye can see!

Once again, my main criticism is how poorly served the series is by cutting its eight episodes in two halves. The release of the season’s concluding four episodes reveals more evidence of how detrimental the month-long hiatus is. It’s a momentum-killer for all of the plotlines, and while it’s good news for Netflix that the move encourages viewers to rewatch the fourth episode to remind themselves of what’s going on, it’s bad news for storytelling. 

My remaining critiques of this season are primarily wish-list items. Let's run them down in ascending order of significance.

Bring back Lord Debling! His total disappearance from the story after his astute choice not to propose to Penelope was such a disappointment. I hope he can make a return in a future season and find the more administratively-oriented marriage he seems to want (or find a loving partner as adventurous as he is,\ and hire an estate steward instead). 

The more detailed presentation of Lady Danbury’s decades-long estrangement from Lord Anderson was a bit of a needle-scratch moment. Her agony and fury at her younger brother’s betrayal on the eve of her wedding to the awful (and thankfully deceased) Lord Danbury is very real and not to be set aside lightly. His actions determined the course of her life and trapped her in a terrible marriage for far too long. The revelation that her brother was a child of ten years at the time casts the entire situation in a different light. A little boy who didn’t understand the consequences of his actions can’t be loathed for all time. I can assign a more generous reading of this chapter by thinking of it as the emotional equivalent of lancing a boil and then scrupulously following a course of antibiotics. Lady Danbury’s immediate forgiveness of Lord Anderson’s actions suggests that she was ready to release that grudge. I assign a couple of bonus points for how nicely this moment paves the way for his nascent romance with Lady Violet to flourish. 

Cressida Cowper’s arc, concluding with her being carted off to some remote corner of rural Wales with her awful Aunt Joanna, is ghoulish. This season invested a lot of time in Cressida, and Jessica Madsen rose to the occasion, imbuing her performance with subtlety and the ability to put across Cressida’s flair for believable, quick tactical thinking. Cressida’s attempts to draw Lord Debling’s attention, her clever foiling of his plan to propose to Penelope, and her big swing at posing as Lady Whistledown – these are all solid moves, but they lack the strategic thinking necessary to plan for the moves that would need to follow them to succeed. I get that she’s a villain, but making it clear that she’s a survivor of an abusive family and then sending her to what amounts to a social prison is a bridge too far.

And finally, everyone, please sing the chorus with me: penetrative vaginal sex does not have to hurt the first time out, or ever! This is a harmful myth, and seeing it here is a particular disappointment given how skilfully the writers wove consent into the long-anticipated mirror scene in Episode 5. Pen and Colin are very clear about the significance of the bold step they’re taking – they’re not even married yet, but they love each other with too great a passion for prudence! And that settee is right there! – and their conversation about it was hot, centering mutual pleasure for two characters who have been dancing around each other for years! You love to see it! 

The scene is a powerhouse in several ways; by showing us how deep the love between Pen and Colin runs once they’ve declared themselves, it also sets up the pain of their conflict once he learns that his fiancée is Lady Whistledown. It’s great stuff that deserves not to have the shadow of an outdated myth hanging over it. Fortunately, the solution to this problem is obvious. We’re going to get First Time scenes between couples in future seasons, and omitting “this may hurt a bit, but it’s a necessary evil, I’m afraid”-type dialogue is such an easy move. 

As for what works, I don’t have another thousand words to spare, so I’ll just highlight my picks for the most successful and affecting arcs of the season, as they’re among my favorites across all three seasons of Bridgerton so far. The two big reconciliations – between Penelope and Eloise and the entire Featherington clan — were so meaningful. Pen and Eloise’s estrangement was heartbreaking, and their eventual return to collaborating and confiding in each other, ultimately finding their way back to chilling and talking about books, all brought a tear to the old eye. 

Bringing a full-on damp-with-tears hanky to the aforementioned eye, though: Portia and Penelope seeing each other in different lights, finding things to appreciate about each other, and ultimately bonding with Prudence and Philippa. It’s a testament to the writing and acting by Nicola Coughlan and Polly Walker (I knew something like this would pay off – you do not hire Polly Walker just to strut around being glamorous and imperious; she’s got depth!) that this arc works so well. Honorable mentions to Bessie Carter and Harriet Cains as Prudence and Philippa, too. It’s impossible to overstate the significance of their Dankworth-Finch being the place and time where Penelope comes forward to both apologize for hurting others and to claim her power as a writer and observer of the ton.  

We’re going to be waiting another two years for Season 4, and maybe the best thing about Season 3 is that it makes me confident that it’ll be worth the wait. For gentle readers in need of more, more, more Bridgerton content immediately, you’re in luck. My fellow contributor Megan Vick wrote a great piece about what to expect in Season 4; you can hear Megan, Ani, and me on next week’s podcast as we delve into both halves of the season and two out of four issues of my weekly costume design column, Bustling With Bridgerton, are available, covering Queen Charlotte and Eloise Bridgerton.  

Bridgerton Seasons 1 through 3 are available to stream on Netflix in their entirety, as is the Queen Charlotte prequel. Season 4 has already been greenlit.