20 Thoughts I Had While Watching Bridgerton Season 4 Part 2
We have many, many feelings
Every season, I tell myself I'll be measured about Bridgerton. Civilised, even. I'll watch it at a sensible pace, perhaps over several evenings, with a glass of something nice and a dignified level of emotional investment. And every season, without fail, I am absolutely feral by episode three.
So here we are. Twenty thoughts, fully unhinged, entirely spoiler-heavy — because if I had to go through the John Stirling tragedy to sex in the bathtub pipeline alone, the least you can do is read about it.
We waited a whole month for THIS opening? Netflix, with all the grace of a Regency-era footman, dropped Part 1 on January 29th, left us dangling off a narrative cliff for four agonising weeks, then had the audacity to open Part 2 with a man casually juggling mistresses? Excuse me.
"A small headache." SIR. Nobody warned me sufficiently. I feel this must be stated clearly. John Stirling is the sort of gentle, devoted, wonderful husband that you allow yourself to adore precisely because the story is setting you up for total devastation — and then the devastation arrives, and it's worse than you expected, and you are simply not okay. "Only a small headache," he said. A SMALL HEADACHE. The audacity of this show.
The Bedroom Scene in Episode 5 Was…A Lot. Before we get to the tub, let's acknowledge the bedroom. Sophie's fear of repeating her mother's fate — illegitimate child of a nobleman, abandoned, reduced to servitude — means penetrative sex is off the table. So what do two madly-in-love people with unresolved class tension and four episodes of pent-up longing do about it? They sleep together, obviously.
Benedict Confessing His Queerness in the Greenhouse Was Awesome. In what is possibly the most quietly radical scene the show has ever done, Benedict takes Sophie to his greenhouse and tells her, in full, who he is — that he has loved men and women, that his queerness is not a phase or a past indiscretion but him. And Sophie's response is to simply accept it, to love it as part of him. Showrunner Jess Brownell was clear: "Just because someone ends up in a heterosexual-presenting relationship, that doesn't negate their queerness." Representation, emotional honesty, AND rose petals? In this period drama? Yes!
Araminta Is the Best Villain Since... Well, Any Villain There's a particular type of wickedness reserved for women who are cruel to other women for sport, and Araminta embodies it with such commitment that I found myself wanting to applaud the performance while also wanting to throw something at the screen. The fact that she stole Sophie's dowry — willed to her by her late father — is the kind of detail that makes you genuinely livid on behalf of a fictional character.
"Is That an Automated Roasting Spit?" Varley — formerly Lady Portia's long-suffering butler, now allied with the enemy — enters the Bridgerton household and is immediately undone by... the kitchen equipment. Varley's wide-eyed bewilderment at how the Bridgertons live is perhaps the most relatable energy in the entire season.
She Is Standing in Front of Her Own Portrait, Benedict Sophie sneaks into Benedict’s study and unearths his large, prominently displayed, lovingly rendered painting of the Lady in Silver. Sophie, who IS the Lady in Silver, stands directly in front of it. Benedict enters. They have a charged, yearning, barely-controlled encounter. He does not clock it. This man painted her face from memory across an enormous canvas and still could not pick her out of his own household. I love him. He is genuinely ridiculous. Sir, your own household employed her. She was RIGHT THERE. The obliviousness is both baffling and somehow irresistible — which is, I suppose, the whole point.
Posy's Redemption Arc Has Me Wanting to Write Her a Personal Apology For most of the season, Posy (Isabella Wei) was essentially Araminta's decorative accomplice — vapid, loyal to the wrong person, irritating. And then everything unravelled, Araminta's schemes collapsed, and Posy emerged blinking into the light of a better storyline. By the finale, Eloise — Eloise, the woman who has spent four seasons making fun of the marriage mart — is actively coaching Posy toward a suitor named Lord Barnaby, and Posy is dancing at the ball and sitting front-row at the wedding, apparently thriving. A fully-deserved glow up.
The Pendant. THE PENDANT. After episodes of Sophie right under his nose, what finally unlocks it for Benedict is finding her lost silver pendant in his room — the one the Lady in Silver wore at the masquerade — and the click of realisation happening in real time on Luke Thompson's face. He tears through the house. She's gone. I mean yes, this was very different from the book (for those who don’t know, he finds out while she’s blindfolded and playing hide and seek with the girls and then storms off in anger). I prefer this one for sure.
Eloise, I Cannot Wait For You To Fall In Love. After her conversation with Hyacinth and Cressida, I truly believe her view on marriage has softened and she might start to be more open about the idea of it. I’m manifesting the next season to be about her.
Sophie Unearthing Her Own Hidden Will Is the "I Did It Myself" Ending We Needed The showrunner was deliberately careful that Sophie gets to save herself. Not rescued entirely by Benedict, not handed legitimacy by the Bridgertons — Sophie finds her father's hidden will, which reveals that Araminta quietly siphoned away her entire inheritance while pocketing additional money to "house" her. The look on Sophie's face when she understands the full scope of what was stolen from her is devastating and then defiant in equal measure.
The Proposal Happened on a Dance Floor in Front of Everyone and I Would Not Have Had It Any Other Way After everything — the mistress offer, the jail cell, the pendant, the will, the Queen's interference — Benedict gets down in front of the entire assembled ton and proposes to Sophie on the dance floor. Publicly. Fully committed. No hedging. After a season of not being brave enough to say what he meant, he finally said it at full volume in front of London's entire social establishment.
The Post-Credits Wedding at the Cottage Is the Only Ending That Made Sense The wedding was almost the finale's centrepiece. Then the showrunner realised the true ending — the full-circle ending — was Sophie and Benedict kissing in the gazebo where they first met at the masquerade ball, now unmasked, now engaged, now themselves. So the wedding became a post-credits gift: intimate, at My Cottage, with the portrait Benedict painted of Sophie-as-Lady-in-Silver hanging on the wall. The Lady in Silver, finally named.
Gossip as a Superpower, Actually Alice Mondrich weaponising Ton gossip to save Sophie is the most satisfying plot development this show has delivered since Penelope was revealed as Lady Whistledown. There's something deeply pleasing about a narrative that takes the social currency of rumour seriously — not as something frivolous, but as the actual mechanism by which power moves in this world.
Penelope Retiring From Lady Whistledown Is the End of an Era Nicola Coughlan's final scenes as an active Lady Whistledown are achingly tender. She spent three seasons building the persona, wielding it, protecting herself with it, nearly destroying her marriage over it — and now she's handing it over to... someone else. I did genuinely tear up a little.
Who IS the New Lady Whistledown Though? A new pamphlet appears and a new voice emerges. The show has done what the best soap operas do: given us an answer and seventeen new questions simultaneously. My money is on Eloise.
Francesca and Michaela Are Going to Destroy Me in Season 5 The groundwork being laid here is so careful and so tender. Francesca, in a marriage she is genuinely fond of but not entirely fulfilled by, finding unexpected kinship with Michaela — John's cousin, vivacious and full of life in all the ways Francesca is reserved. The show is setting up a queer love story for Season 5, and based on the emotional precision with which it's being handled, I am already pre-emptively devastated.
Violet Bridgerton for Queen, Actually Ruth Gemmell has been quietly delivering some of the most nuanced maternal performances on television for four seasons now, and this is the season she truly comes into her own. The grief she carries — the love she channels — the way she simply shows up for each of her children without making it about herself. And then there's Lord Anderson in the garden, and Violet getting to want something for herself, and I think I genuinely exhaled for the first time all season.
Queen Charlotte Sweeping In to Approve Everything Was Always the Only Possible Ending The Queen sees through the entire scheme — the fudged lineage, the diplomatic fiction that Sophie is a "noble cousin" of the Penwoods — and chooses to accept it anyway, because the gossip is simply too delicious to waste and because she is, fundamentally, on the side of a good match. Golda Rosheuvel cackled her way through those scenes with the energy of a woman who knows she is the best character in the room and has decided to enjoy it. She is correct. She always is.
"God F*ing Dammit, Bridgerton Season 4, You Ruined Me"** A verbatim quote from the internet, and the most accurate critical assessment of Part 2 I have encountered. This season started as a Cinderella story with a cheeky wink — shoe clips, masquerades, a stepmother who was straight-up evil — and ended as something that genuinely moved. John Stirling died. Francesca lost a baby she never had. Sophie found her father's hidden will. Michaela left without saying goodbye. Benedict finally got brave. And Violet chose herself. It was great.