Bridgerton ’s New Season Makes a Key Change From the Book. The Result Is Agonizing.
Between its indulgent love scenes and its familiar deployment of soap-worthy drama, Bridgerton, Netflix’s hit adaptation of Julia Quinn’s period-romance novels, knows how to get viewers’ hearts racing. The first two seasons struck a chord with fans for the series’ sexy, yet comforting, Regency-era spin on classic romance tropes: Season 1 featured a fake relationship, Season 2 an enemies-to-lovers story. Now, Season 3 follows the third Bridgerton son, Colin (Luke Newton), and his friends-to-lovers relationship with Penelope (Nicola Coughlan), the wallflower girl-next-door—who also gets her own “ugly duckling”/”beautiful all along” storyline. But, instead of the familiar warmth of a smooth-sailing love story, the first four episodes of this season (released as Part 1, with Part 2 coming in June) deliver some key changes from the book—ones that appear designed to keep anxious viewers on the edge of their seats. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I felt stressed watching the first half of Season 3, but frankly, I’m loving it.
Let me explain. Colin and Penelope were always going to be the endgame. You don’t have to have read the books to know it; Penelope’s blatant unrequited love for Colin was on clear display for two full seasons. But Season 3 taunts us with just how torturous their courtship will be, because Penelope has a massive secret: She is the ton’s infamous anonymous gossip columnist Lady Whistledown, as Penelope’s best friend (and Colin’s younger sister) Eloise discovered at the end of Season 2. In the latest season, we already know that Colin and Penelope will both fall in love, but, owing to the general rules of narrative logic, it becomes quite obvious that it’s only a matter of time before he will find out this deep, dark secret of Penelope’s. Just as our heroine finally gets the boy she’s been pining after since childhood, this looming reveal threatens to derail everything.
It’s not just that gossiping about the ton is looked down upon—Whistledown has specifically published some rather nasty things about Colin’s past paramour, Marina. Not to mention, one of Whistledown’s most recent issues was dedicated to badmouthing Eloise. (Though Penelope slandered her best friend in print as part of a misguided attempt to protect Eloise from the queen’s suspicions that the Bridgerton girl was Whistledown, it still effectively ruined the girls’ friendship.) All of which is to say, it’s personal for Colin: He has a massive grudge against Whistledown, whom he finds abhorrent, ruinous, and deserving of equally devastating comeuppance.
You see the problem: We know Colin and Penelope will fall in love, we know Colin will find out the terrible secret, and we know the secret will unmoor him. The only thing left for these first four episodes to do is to have us pull out our hair, waiting in sweet agony for these plot points to inevitably unfold.
But first, the series cuts some of the agony with the cliché, yet swoonworthy, romance that most fans tune in for. In Episode 1, when Colin returns from a summer of gallivanting (and bedding many women) across Europe, he finds that some things have changed—namely, that his absence from Penelope made his heart grow fonder of her. Meanwhile, Penelope has decided to pull out all the stops this social season in order to secure a husband and avoid becoming a spinster. To make up for an insult against Penelope that she overheard him casually throw out last season, Colin offers to coach Penelope on how to appear as a desirable match. Naturally, he does too good of a job—Penelope attracts the attention of a suitor, Lord Debling (Sam Phillips), as well as Colin himself. In typical romance fashion, this process of engineering Penelope to be attractive makes Colin realize he saw her as such all along. As the pressure of Eloise nipping in Penelope’s ear about her dastardly secret mounts, and Colin’s jealousy boils over, he ends up proposing at the end of Part 1.
If you were biting your nails in concern for when Colin would find out, you wouldn’t be alone. There are a few times where Eloise, seeing that Colin and Penelope are growing closer, seems ready to burst at the seams, stuck between protecting her old friend and her brother. At times, an unknowing Colin lambastes Whistledown’s character in front of Whistledown herself. By the time Penelope takes Colin’s hand in acceptance of his proposal—after a spicy tryst in the carriage home from a ball—there’s so much for her to lose. When will he find out? What will he do when he finds out? We know they will end up together, but how much sobbing and turmoil will we have to sit through before they do? The stress! I could barely take it, especially knowing that things would presumably only get worse in Part 2, as Penelope must grapple with telling Colin the truth after she has already accepted his proposal.
The series’ dragging out of this drama might surprise fans of the books. In Romancing Mr. Bridgerton, the fourth book in the series upon which Bridgerton is based, the story is quite different. For one: Colin’s competition in Lord Debling does not exist. That was a blessed little bit of plot reconstructing to give us a glimpse of Colin in all his jealousy. However, the show’s larger deviation from the source material is in delaying the big discovery. In the book, Colin has already found out the truth about Whistledown by the time he and Penelope have that infamous carriage scene. He proposes already knowing the truth. What follows is stress from outside factors, but not between the two. Sure, Colin is upset about Penelope being Whistledown, but any ire he has for the gossip doesn’t compare to the fear he has for Penelope’s safety and reputation. Instead of arguing in the platitudes of “How could you do this?” that I’m sure we are to expect of the series, the book’s couple argue about the meaning of Whistledown, which Penelope proudly considers her life’s work. There isn’t this massive secret looming over their highly anticipated union.
It’s easy to see why the show’s writers made these changes; who can argue with more dramatic television? And for those like me, who prefer their romance to have a bit of danger, thrill, and high stakes to it, the tension of the couple’s precarious future is welcoming. Again, given the basic rules of TV logic, we know Colin and Penelope will eventually end up together. But we don’t know how they will move forward together once the skeleton in Penelope’s closet is dragged into the middle of the dining room for them to see. I’d recommend you watch the season in small bursts, rather than bingeing it all in one go. But bring on the agony, I say. I’m ready to see this TV couple be put to the test and come out stronger for it.
