Note: This story contains spoilers from “Bridgerton” Season 4, Part 2.
“Bridgerton” Season 4, Part 2 threw fans a curveball with the untimely death of John Stirling (Victor Alli), making way for a funeral-centered Episode 7 that put Hannah Dodd’s Francesca in the spotlight.
The tragedy speeds up the love story for Francesca as she inches closer and closer to a love connection with John’s cousin, Michaela (Masali Baduza), who was revealed to be gender-swapped from the books at the end of Season 3. Despite the death happening at the start of Julia Quinn’s book focused on Francesca, showrunner Jess Brownell said “it felt like the right time in the story” to see John pass after seeing their marriage flourish in Part 1.
“We’ve been able to spend a nice amount of time with Fran and John and understand what’s special about their bond, but we also wanted to make sure that we had adequate time to grieve him,” Brownell told TheWrap. “I think putting the funeral in Episode 7 allows us to devote a full episode to that grief while still allowing our happily ever after to get on track with Benedict and Sophie in Episode 8.”
Not only did placing the funeral at the end of Benedict’s season serve to help Brownell and the team to “space out Francesca’s story across multiple seasons,” but it also helped heighten the stakes of what Benedict and Sophie would lose if they didn’t try to make their relationship work.
“Benedict and Sophie have such a great obstacle to their love story, and a death like that, the loss of someone so beloved, it does force people to shift their perspective,” Brownell said. “Going through that experience is really the thing that allows Benedict to go, ‘love is more important than anything at the end of the day.’”
John’s death follows progress made by Francesca in knowing her own desires, with Brownell noting the “pinnacle” storyline served as a “larger stand-in for this idea that Francesca thinks everything in her life is supposed to look a certain way,” adding that Francesca had some fear in embracing the “ways in which she’s different, or the ways in which her relationship with John is different.”
“By the end of Episode 6, before she loses John, she’s really at a place where she feels like everything in her life is just right,” Brownell said. “She’s come to embrace that the slow passion that has grown between her and John is exactly what she wants and needs. The friendship with Michaela is feeling good. Everything in her life is feeling really good, which unfortunately puts her in as vulnerable a position as possible when she does lose John.”
Despite the events in Francesca’s book already being portrayed, Brownell remained tight-lipped whether that means that Francesca will lead Season 5 over Eloise (Claudia Jessie), noting that both characters are “primed” for upcoming seasons.
“We’ve planted some seeds of growth for both Eloise and Francesca in the end of the season,” Brownell said, pointing to Eloise’s growth vis-à-vis Cressida and Hyacinth to embrace “women’s right to choose love on their own terms, even if it’s not quite what she wants.”
Brownell added that Cressida’s return prompts Eloise to realize how caught up she was in Penelope’s life last season that she didn’t see how dire Cressida’s situation was and how marriage and romance “was actually the only path forward for her in which she could take any agency in her life.” “Eloise, through that situation, is starting to grow towards seeing the ways in which marriage can be useful for women, even if she’s not yet there herself,” Brownell said.
With that said, Brownell noted that both Francesca and Eloise “are primed for seasons” and “all will be revealed sooner rather than later.”
“Bridgerton” Seasons 1-4 are now streaming on Netflix.
