Dear gentle reader, the wait is over. Bridgerton's fourth season… isn't here yet, but we now have confirmation as to whose season it is: none other than the second oldest Bridgerton, Benedict played by Luke Thompson.
The Netflix series' X (formerly Twitter) account announced, “It has been brought to this author's attention that perhaps it is time to unmask the newest suitor of the marriage mart… Benedict Bridgerton's story is coming next season.”
The Gentleman Bridgerton, Benedict
The fourth season will feature Benedict, who's not yet ready to settle down any time soon. That is, until he meets the Lady in Silver SPOILER ALERT if you're not a “gentle reader,” but if you are then you know her as Sophie Beckett who he meets at his mother's masquerade ball.
If you remember, the third season ended with the ton leaving for the countryside. Lady Violet Bridgerton, the dowager Viscountess Bridgerton, is famous for her masquerade balls. It's the one event her children — even the most rebellious ones — dare not miss.
Bridgerton has been Netflix's premiere Regency drama since it premiered with the first season in 2020. The most recent season was based on the fourth book, Romancing Mr. Bridgerton, Colin (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington's (Nicola Coughlan) love story.
It should have been Benedict's turn if the show followed the books chronologically, but with both Newton and Coughlan already in the show since the first season, the showrunners decided to skip to their love story in order to give time for Benedict's character to mature and… have fun.
Now, he'll have season four's eight episodes to fumble and bumble his way into falling in love. The premiere date has not been announced yet.
Patience is a virtue
That's because there's a two-year wait. Showrunner Jess Brownell had confirmed the fourth season last month and said that it takes the cast and crew eight months to film.
“We are working to try and put the seasons out more quickly… and then they have to be edited, and then they have to be dubbed into every language. And the writing takes a very long time as well, so we're kind of on a two-year pace, we're trying to speed up, but somewhere in that range,” Brownell said.
I'm pretty sure Netflix will give Brownell all the time they need. After all, according to the streamer's internal rankings, the third season's first half garnered 45.05 million views in only its first weeks of release worldwide. The views are calculated by dividing the total hours watched by running time. This means a total of 165.2 million hours of viewing time globally.
So to somewhat stave off our impatience for season four, what can we expect to see in Benedict's story?
Brownell said that his story will continue his “learning exactly how he wants to exist in the world. There's a moment towards the end of the season where Benedict is talking to Tilley (Lady Arnold played by Hannah New) about how he doesn't want anything serious, and Tilley, in a very powerful way says to him, ‘That's OK, but it was really nice to want something for once.' And there's a look on Benedict's face that I think Luke Thompson delivers really beautifully, where you can tell that that hits him in a deep way.”
See the world, be in a throuple?
She continued, “I think Benedict is someone who experiences a lot of breadths in his life in terms of a million different experiences, but he's never really committed to anything. I think what he’s starting to realize is that he also craves depth, and so Benedict reconciling breadth with depth is something we're going to dive into pretty deeply in future seasons.”
In the second season, Benedict starts studying art at the Royal Academy Schools. Later on, he realizes that he may have been accepted only because of his older brother, Lord Anthony's (Jonathan Bailey) donation, sending him into a tailspin of self-doubt. And in the final episode, he decides to talk to Anthony about his donation and his plan to stop studying.
“You were trying to help in your own misguided way, perhaps because you sensed the truth, which is that I'm simply not good enough,” he tells his older brother.
Anthony, for his part, just replies, “If you want to paint, paint. It is one of your many talents. Chief among them, your natural gift for seeing what others need, even when they cannot see it themselves. It's a gift that has taken me far too long to recognize, but I would not have done… if it were not for you.”
The agony of being understood… and a Bridgerton
This is probably the first time Benedict felt seen. And coming from his older brother, it's a big thing. Anthony was born to succeed his father as Viscount and be the head of the family. With their father dying when they were all still young, he's had to bear that responsibility for a long time and Benedict watched him do it. As the second and younger son, he didn't have a lot of responsibilities and for a while was happy with that.
Seeing Anthony fall in love and get married may have spooked him in season two, which led to his exploration of what else the world has to offer before he settles down in season three. This exploration led to the encounter with Tilly and Paul Suarez (Lucas Aurelio).
“I do think that he’s a character who would naturally be more about connection than he would be about gender… Benedict has always been an unconventional character who lives a little bit outside of society in terms of his comfort,” Brownell told The Hollywood Reporter.
Who stays, who leaves, who tells the story…
With Thompson starring in the fourth season, the rest of the Bridgertons and the close-to-the-Bridgertons will most likely be back. We may be able to see glimpses of Colin (Newton) and Penelope (Coughlan) since they live near the Bridgerton home.
Lord John (Victor Alli) and Francesca Stirling (Ruby Stokes) were on their way to the highlands of Scotland. Eloise (Claudia Jessie) went to stay with them, but did promise Benedict she'd attend their mother's masquerade ball. It's maybe safe to say that we'll see all three come back as well.
We may not see two Bridgertons and their spouses: Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page) and Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor), the Duke and Duchess of Hastings; and Anthony (Bailey) and Kathani “Kate” Bridgerton (Simone Ashley), the Viscount and Viscountess Bridgerton. Page hasn't returned since his story ended in season one and I believe Dynevor is busy with other projects. Bailey and Ashley's characters announced in season two that they will spend some time in India.
But there will still be adult supervision with Lady Violet (Ruth Gemmell), as the matriarch, definitely coming back as well, together with her best friend, the formidable Lady Agatha Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) and her brother, the dowager viscountess' maybe-suitor Lord Marcus Anderson (Daniel Francis). I'm hoping Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) will also make an appearance.
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