Note: This story contains spoilers from “Bridgerton” Season 4, Part 2.
The line heard around the world from “Bridgerton” Season 4 was the final thing Luke Thompson’s Bendict uttered to Yerin Ha’s Sophie during their steamy staircase moment that left off at Part 1: “Be my mistress.”
While the ask prompts Sophie to swiftly collect herself and leave without a word, Benedict is still catching up on just how hurtful it was when Part 2 picks up with him seeking a “yes” or “no”answer from Sophie, with Thompson noting “it takes him a while, I think, to really understand how that is so wrong.”
“It’s such a deep block he has about giving someone everything, which essentially is what falling in love is really, up to a point,” Thompson told TheWrap, pointing to the trauma in Benedict’s past of watching his mother grieve that might be responsible for that block. “Throughout the whole of the second part of the show, it takes him time to finally … [give] Sophie everything … I think it’s a very slow process.”
Sophie’s not exactly sticking around after that ask, though, with Ha noting “the walls are higher and thicker than ever before” as she’s similarly taken back to her childhood and her mother, reflecting “everything that she promised herself she wouldn’t become.”
“She has her walls up already, from the very beginning of the season — she’s quite guarded, and I feel like he’s softened her up a tiny bit by then, but that question, I think, makes her realize how much she’s actually let herself go a little bit too much,” Ha told TheWrap. “I always say that her mantra throughout her life is ‘know your place,’ which is what Araminta was always telling her.”
As Benedict attempts to figure out how to make their connection work as a real relationship, their difference in stations prompts some difficult conversations for Benedict with both Violet (Ruth Gemmell) as well as Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), which shakeup dynamics for the family in a way that Thompson relished playing, explaining that when they kicked off Season 4, he said “it’d be really nice to see what makes Benedict angry, or what makes him really sad.”
“He’s always been there for his family — he has sort of tabs on everyone in that family, and he’s, in some ways, been part of the glue that sort of holds it all together a little bit,” Thompson said. “The people that you hold closest … you don’t want to hurt them.”
Ultimately, Benedict’s love leads him back to Sophie, who’s also listened to her heart and let down her walls again, leading the pair to resume to their steamy moment, uninterrupted this time, and by Episode 6, the pair share a sweet date in the green house. It’s during this time together that Benedict comes out to Sophie and tells her he’s been with men in a moment that Thompson notes is refreshingly without repression nor shame.
“It’s a really lovely scene, because it is … on some level, a coming out scene, but I think what’s lovely about it is how gentle and subtle it is actually,” Thompson said. “It’s not actually about him — it’s actually becomes about her and being honest with her. that’s a really nice take or spin on a coming out scene … a quite refreshing way of tackling it.”
It’s a more than welcome reveal for Sophie, who responds to his admission by saying, “love is always a thing to be proud of.”
“She’s dealt with rejection from love for her whole life, so to hear it come from Benedict, she’s more about celebration rather than feeling shame, and she wants to assure him that there’s nothing to be ashamed about,” Ha said. “Actually, feeling love with someone … it’s such a blessing, and she just wants to remind him of that and make sure he doesn’t feel any less as a person.”
It’s not until Episode 7 that Benedict finally realizes that Sophie is his lady in silver in a “beautifully orchestrated” moment that Thompson notes is linked to the heightened emotions felt by the Bridgerton’s after John’s funeral.
“Poetically speaking, I do think it’s the death that is a real wake up call. When deaths happen close by like that, they really are moments in life when you suddenly sort of think, ‘Oh, God, what am I doing just wasting time like this?’” Thompson said, noting the “tiny pin drop” is all Benedict needs to “finally put the whole puzzle together.
“Benedict actually is a character who sort of spent a lot of his time thinking that commitment can down the road … so I think it actually comes out of … that whole episode and the upset of someone close to you dying like that,” Thompson continued. “Things end — you can’t delay life forever.”
That realization happens as Araminta (Katie Leung) enacts her cruel will on Sophie again by putting her in jail for stealing her shoe clips and impersonating a woman of nobility during Violet’s masquerade ball, though Benedict and Violet swiftly rescue Sophie and bring her to Bridgerton House as they sort out what’s next.
By the time they’re home, Sophie and Benedict, now with her identity as the lady in silver, they profess their feelings once again and share another steamy moment in a bathtub that differs from their initial Episode 5 intimacy scene.
“The first time … even Lizzy [Talbot] was describing it that we’ve never really seen a whole costume come undone, or it is a bit more rougher and raw in that sense, it’s not as clean and pristine as perhaps some of the other intimacy scenes,” Ha said. “The bathtub scene, I think, was very much a different tone. Even shooting it, I felt like it was quite a different energy in the set. It was more about like him taking care of her.”
Thompson noted that the bathtub reiterates a water motif for the couple, pointing out that “even in their first meeting, they talk about this analogy of swimming in water.”
Armed with their love and Sophie’s discoveries about what was actually in her father’s will, Sophie, Benedict and Violet take part in a heated confrontation with Araminta, in which they agree that Araminta will back down from her attacks on Sophie and corroborate the white lie that Sophie is the legitimate daughter of one of the Earl of Penwood’s cousins, a fib that falls in line with the happy life he wanted for her.
“She spent so much of her life feeling like she’s not deserving of it, and when there’s she sees people behind her supporting her, I think she starts to realize there’s actually people who do see the light in her, and she does give light to other people that she didn’t think she could,” Ha said.
With Queen Charlotte accepting that fib as the truth, Sophie and Benedict hit the dance floor in what Ha calls a “full circle moment” after previously distorting her identity to attend Violet’s masquerade ball.
“Even with Posy, with her lover next to her, that turn sequence almost feels like we’re tying it all together,”Ha said. “She can spread her wings, and she doesn’t have to feel hidden anymore — she is seen by someone.”
Benedict doesn’t waste any time as he proposes to Sophie on the dance floor, and the pair get their happy ending at My Cottage. “We had such a brilliant time there … when Benedict and Sophie first really spend loads of time together, so to go back there, and to see the Crabtrees in the crowd, it felt like a real victory lap,” Thompson said.
Moving forward Thompson said he’d “like to hope that they spend a lot of time at My Cottage … because that was “sort of first fell in love as Benedict and Sophie.”
“Bridgerton” Seasons 1-4 are now streaming on Netflix.
