“Bridgerton” has always been at its best when it’s felt loose and free. Sure, there are moments of tension every season — it is a romantic drama, after all — but the show soars when it taps into the joy of new love, the silliness of siblinghood, or even the feverishness of a sexual awakening.
That’s why Benedict Bridgerton has always been one of the show’s biggest assets. Effusively and charmingly played by Luke Thompson for four seasons now, Benedict is the Bridgerton you want to get a drink with. He’s the one you’d call to bail you out of jail. And he’s the one you’d spill your secrets to, a little drunk, sharing a cigarette on some old backyard swing. And while his free-wheeling nature may have earned the second son a reputation as both a rake and a flake among the ton, the audience has grown to love Benedict that much more because of just how boldly he wears his heart on his sleeve.
But what happens when that heart — the one Benedict has so freely given to all sorts of lesser characters in the past — falls for someone society tells him he can’t have? And what happens to “Bridgerton,” a show that’s never shied away from putting its romantic leads through it, when it’s forced to throw its most likeable character into a dramatically dark and unyielding funk?
The answer to both questions, it turns out, is a collective loss of light. After asking illegitimate daughter-turned-maid Sophie Baek (the very lovely Yerin Ha) to be his mistress in the season’s fourth episode, Benedict is quickly plunged into a world of uncertainty and fantasy, spurred on not only by his lack of knowledge about Sophie’s true background and self but also his lack of understanding of the world as a whole. It’s easy enough for a gentleman to try to woo a lower-class woman to become his mistress, but is that a true expression of love? Would a child born of that love become a Bridgerton? And what emotional turmoil is Benedict causing Sophie even by putting the question to her in the first place?
When Sophie inevitably says no, it’s because she knows the toll being Benedict’s mistress would take on her, even if she believes all his promises of financial stability and romantic love. And after a come to Jesus conversation with big brother Anthony (played excellently and unsympathetically, as always, by Jonathan Bailey), Benedict resigns himself to a lifetime of amorous torture as well. What’s the point of looking for true love, Benedict asks his mother at one point, if you’re not allowed to fully seize it when it presents itself?
While it all works out in the end — it is “Bridgerton” we’re talking about after all — the questions of class, status and propriety raised by Sophie and Benedict’s coupling are some of the thorniest the show has tackled to date. Previous conflicts on “Bridgerton” have included asshole dads and secret identities, but figuring out a way to crack Regency–era social norms (both in the writers room and on screen) is a much tougher proposition. Given that the show has built a universe in which racism doesn’t seem to exist, suggesting that social class is an insurmountable barrier feels like a flimsy premise.
The show does its best to suggest the consequences of Benedict’s potential actions, calling out potential damage to the marriage prospects of the younger Bridgerton daughters and a kind of cutting-off the family would have to engage in, but it all seems a little trivial.
By choosing to (wisely) stray from the show’s very white, very straight source material, “Bridgerton” has managed to create a whole new set of problems for itself. That’s evident in the tortured twists and turns the show takes in the Season 4 finale to turn Sophie into a “legitimate” bride for Benedict, but also in what it appears to be setting up for Francesca in Season 5. With (spoiler alert!) John dead from a headache, Francesca has been set adrift, with only her friendship with her late husband’s cousin Michaela to anchor her.
But the quiet Bridgerton’s gaydar is absolutely non-existent and Michaela’s better at fleeing from feelings than she is explaining them, so what are the gals to do? And even if the two can find each other in seasons to come, will viewers once again be forced to reckon with the fact that the women shouldn’t be together in the eyes of the ton or even the world at large?
For a show that leans so heavily into fantasy when it comes to race, time and the size of the Bridgertons’ kitchen, bringing the harsh realities of the world into sharper focus can feel like a bit of a buzzkill. While “Bridgerton” can dodge having to do a truly deep dive with short-ish seasons, copious amounts of characters and storylines, and endless pageantry, that doesn’t mean that it’s not upsetting to realize that while Sophie may have managed to rise above her social rank, every other servant, worker, maid and footman in the show’s world is still very much stuck in theirs.
Love may have conquered all in Benedict and Sophie’s case, but for everyone else seeking to swoon “above their station,” it’s only a pipe dream.
“Bridgerton” Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.