Lady Whistledown has been unmasked at last.
Spoilers ahead for “Bridgerton” Season 3 part 2.
In the second half of “Bridgerton” Season 3, now streaming on Netflix, Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) got their “happily ever after” — with plenty of bumps in the road along the way.
Set in Regency-era England, the show follows various members of the Bridgerton family as they find love. The first half of Season 3 followed Colin as he gave Penelope “lessons” on how to charm a husband, only to fall for her charm himself.
But, the whole time, Penelope’s secret alter ego of “Lady Whistledown” – the “Gossip Girl” like entity spreading the town’s secrets in written missives – hung over their heads. Colin hates Whistledown, so it was clear that this would be a problem when he found out his fiancee’s secrets.
The show teases out the reveal, letting Colin and Penelope plan their wedding and have a steamy romp first to consummate their relationship. After Colin finds out, Penelope offers to leave him, but he says that since they already slept together, he will do the right thing and marry her.
It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but after some time, he comes around and they patch things up. The arc of their relationship is paced well and brims with drama and emotion, as Colin takes time to react with hurt and anger, before progressing to eventual acceptance and support of his new wife.
It does seem odd, however, how much Penelope buckles down on Whistledown being a key part of her identity that she won’t compromise. If making observations about the world and writing about them is a key part of her, she could simply channel that into writing Jane Austen style novels instead of newsletter gossip missives. The show frames this like an important feminist issue — sure? Sort of? It feels like “Bridgerton” is grasping at straws a little, to make this storyline work. And the way it resolves feels too tidy.
Elsewhere, the second half of Season 3 is jam-packed with revelations about characters’ sexualities. Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) has a threesome with a worldly widow, Lady Tilley Arnold (Hannah New, “Black Sails”), and her friend, Paul Suarez (Lucas Aurelio), confirming that he’s attracted to men as well as women.
He breaks it off with them before the end, so they likely won’t be his love interests when he takes center stage potentially in Season 4, but it’s still a curveball, since all the characters are straight in Julia Quinn’s novels that are the basis for the show.
There’s another LGBTQ curveball for Francesca Bridgerton (Hannah Dodd). Season 3 sees her marry and prepare for a life with John Stirling (Victor Alli). This also happens in the books, but her eventually “happily ever after” on the page is with John’s cousin, Michael. In the show, she briefly meets John’s cousin, Michaela (Masali Baduza), indicating that Francesca may end up with a woman, in the end.
It’s still unclear what the show is doing with Eloise (Claudia Jessie) or Cressida Cowper (Jessica Madsen), Eloise’s story feels aimless, like the writing doesn’t know what to do with her. Fans have speculated that maybe they’ll end up together, although it seems unlikely that the show would make three Bridgerton siblings queer.
Cressida gets an oddly large amount of screen time, however – too much to make sense, if she’s not being set up to be a future love interest for a Bridgerton sibling. She gets more focus than some of the other Bridgerton siblings; a weird writing choice.
Lady Whistledown will have to keep everyone posted on how that shakes out in future seasons.
Overall, the second half of Season 3 is packed with juicy drama, and it remains addictively watchable.
