Bridgerton is back, with its first new episodes in over two years. Which means, of course, that it’s finally debutante season again at Regency Mayfair. Young nobles will vie for the coveted diamond title handpicked by Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) – and eligible men will in turn compete for the heart of this shining specimen. In a missive marking the opening of the annual marriage market, pseudonymous gossip Lady Whistledown articulates the hopes of the show’s legion of viewers as well as its cast of characters: “Whoever makes the best match this year, hopefully their pairing brings some excitement.”
This is what you might call a self-fulfilling prophecy. As fans have known since BridgertonAt the end of the first season, Whistledown is none other than Penelope Featherington – the intelligent wallflower (played with enthusiasm and empathy by Nicola Coughlan) who has languished long enough without marriage prospects to be considered a spinster. Although the show, like the books on which it’s based, follows the successive courtships of the eight impossibly attractive Bridgerton siblings who are its closest neighbors, Penelope is its secret catalyst, the character whose writerly antics have always driven the plot. By resuming her long-neglected love life, the third season, the four-episode first half of which is streaming on Netflix (another four episodes will arrive on June 13), transforms her into a full-fledged heroine. She’s easily the series’ most compelling protagonist to date.
No one can deny that the Bridgerton children and their fiercely loving widowed mother, the Dowager Viscountess Violet Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell), are charming. The first season follows the debut of eldest daughter Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor), a prototypical diamond who manages to break the hardened heart of Regé-Jean Page’s handsome and destructive Duke of Hastings. The next season shifts focus to Daphne’s older brother, Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), who has been the family’s de facto breadwinner since he witnessed his father’s untimely death years earlier. Burdened by duty and determined to find a worthy viscountess, he woos the season’s perfect diamond, Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran), but ends up falling in love with her chatty spinster sister, Kate (Simone Ashley). Sex and ardor are abundant. But amid this predictable pyrotechnics — and familiar tropes like the love triangle, the enemies-to-lovers, and the fake-turned-real relationship — the characters themselves can be a little flat.
See more information: Everything to remember before watching Bridgerton Session 3
Penelope is different, in part, because we’ve already spent two seasons gradually getting to know her as her romantic arc takes off. We know well that she has a long-standing crush on her dear friend Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton). But there are many other things happening in her world. Trapped in a repressive, perpetually cash-strapped family led by her self-serving mother, Portia (Polly Walker), she conceives of Whistledown as a creative outlet and a way to declare independence from a family that has invested all of its resources in weddings. her nasty older sisters (Bessie Carter’s Prudence and Harriet Cains’ Philippa).
Bridgerton House, whose residents are kind to Penelope, has always been her escape. But in season two, her Wollstonecraft feminist best friend, Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie), discovers that she is Whistledown – and has therefore spread some damaging, though in many cases well-intentioned, rumors about Eloise and the other Bridgertons. Although the secret remains safe, their friendship is over; now Eloise is dating the catty Cressida Cowper (Jessica Madsen). That break would have been enough to stop Penelope from pursuing Colin, even if he hadn’t just returned from his latest stay in Europe looking more attractive and more worldly than ever. Now every nubile bride has her eyes on him, and our poor heroine doesn’t seem to stand a chance.
“I take comfort in knowing that you will always be here to take care of me,” Portia told Penelope in the season premiere. In fact, nothing scares Penelope more than the idea of spending her entire life under her mother’s control. The result is that she enters the season desperate to get married and has resigned herself to a marriage of convenience rather than a marriage of love. In a painful Pygmalion riff, Colin offers to help her get a proposal. “Charm can be taught,” he says.
If you watched all Bridgerton By now — or, in fact, consumed any pop culture romance narrative since the beginning of time — you should know that this couple is destined for more than a tutor-student bond. After all, their “will they or won’t they” kind of friendship is a storyline as old as those that drove previous seasons. And Colin, it must be said, is not substantially more exciting than his blandly ideal brothers. It is Penelope who makes all the difference.
She is the only character in the huge cast (with the exception of Queen Charlotte, whose origin story fueled a story of the same name). Bridgerton spin-off) who appears as a multifaceted person. His alter ego, whose publication requires a minimum of brilliance to execute, is fascinating. While Penelope may be quiet, awkward, self-conscious, and painfully innocent when it comes to the physical elements of romance, Whistledown is considered the better source—bold, knowledgeable, witty, and disconcertingly well-informed. While the latter is perceived as a threat by no less than an adversary like the Queen, it often seems that the woman behind the nom de plume is not noticed at all. Like Jane Austen, Penelope is signing up for a life that goes beyond her family’s living room.
So what should she do when her future starts to take precedence and it becomes clear that reality and fantasy can no longer coexist? Now that’s it an interesting dilemma. Bridgerton takes it seriously without sacrificing the dresses, balls, or soft-focus love scenes that the genre demands. Penelope and Colin’s season is also a season about her broken friendship with Eloise and her rebellion against her mother’s schedule (and her mother’s fashion sense, thank goodness) and her realization that she is capable of finding a partner who will satisfy you, body and soul. .
Coughlan deserves a lot of credit for the vividness and sensitivity with which the show chronicles Penelope’s transformation. Although her open facial expressions radiate a very real vulnerability, the spark of intelligence never leaves her eyes. One look reveals the war going on inside the character. With Girls, Lena Dunham expanded the then-small range of body types portrayed in TV sex scenes — an overdue choice that fueled years of often depressing discourse. As tasteful as it is, Couglan’s nudity seems, in some ways, even more radical. If Girls reminded us that people of all shapes and sizes have sex, so BridgertonBy giving Penelope the same warm, aestheticized pleasure that Daphne and Kate enjoyed, it is insisting that women who don’t look like Dynevor or Ashley have excellent sex with partners who truly adore them.
“You do not know me,” Lady Whistledown once informed her readers, “and rest assured, you never will.” It remains to be seen whether it will ever be unmasked to society in general. But in season three, viewers will get to know Penelope better than we’ve ever known any character on the show – and Bridgerton has never been better than with its true heroine in the spotlight.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
