I think Luke T can absolutely carry a season, as of now, I don’t think his character can, though. Also, there’s a reason as to why a Cinderella retelling tends to be told from Cinderella’s perspective - and personally, rather than focus on a character we haven’t seen yet, I’d rather they develop some of the characters already on the show.

I do think Benedict’s season will be popular given the audience, but I also would prefer to really care about what will happen to him before his season rather than feel very nonchalant about his fate.

As for Fran, I want to care more about Fran’s character first, let her come into her own, she can’t just be all about playing piano and sitting together quietly.

I personally think Eloise would make the most interesting, and probably funny, season. She’s still quite immature but of the three siblings left, she has the most personality (which is also why so many people fight about her character arc online). Also, as for actors and their availability, I’d rather have Penelope/Colin be there for Eloise’s season than Benedict’s.

What are “lesbian vibes”? Are we still stereotyping queer people?

I think JB wants to create a season that would be able to focus on queer love without straying too far from the books, which works particularly well for Fran as she’ll be a widow and widows are left alone.

Also, why would El be the obvious choice?

It does, but that’s love for ya - literally that’s the most important trope in romance books, it’s all about the right person. And we have to keep in mind that it’s a romance show, it’s most likely going to be cheesy, tropey and not as progressive as some people might like it to be but it’ll be fun.

As for the twins, I don’t think Eloise will go to Phillip’s place with the intention to marry him - I think she’ll just be bored and curious about the guy she’s been writing to. When she arrives at his place, she’ll realise that the vibe is totally off, that everyone’s sad and that there’s a huge disconnect between Phillip and the children. So she leaves but halfway home turns around because she realises that, for the first time in her life, she can make a difference in someone’s life, that she’s needed, and that she has the ability to help. I would like them to play the psychological angle more so than the parenting angle - she guides Phillip and the kids but doesn’t to the work for them; she’d also have a more meaningful relationship with just Phillip on top of the relationship with the children.

Also, she really doesn’t want to go back home and explain herself.

And she thinks Phillip is intriguing.

That doesn’t mean they’ll have to erase her feminist persona; they can weave it into her storyline, her conversations with Phillip, the way she talks to the children, having women’s rights groups gather in their home and hosting educational salons with her husband.

Me too. And I think even in the book she does have agency, add the show version and I think you’ll have one of the most interesting characters!

They need to up the romance but they also have 8 episodes to do that whereas the book could fit in 1, so I’m not worried about that. I think we’ll all be quite taken with Sir Phillip (including Eloise).

I think we need to remember that all of that happens within like two weeks, which just speaks to how much Phillip was willing to change and how much he needed someone to call him out but also show him love. I also think Marina not having responded positively to any of his approaches made him question himself even more and retreat further.

Also, I think his trauma is something he can work through by showing up every day (which he wants to do). By watching his children grow up being happy, he will eventually understand that he is not his father but a good father. By seeing that his actions are appreciated by his wife, that she feels loved by him, he’ll learn that he also is worthy of love.

No that’s totally fair.

I‘ve found that a lot of people (not you, necessarily) tend to get hung up on her apparently not wanting children while book!Eloise has them, whereas, I’ve found her to view children as something that would be getting in the way of other achievements, like in s1 she says something like “we have to make sure pregnancy doesn’t happen to us because we have greater things to achieve” but she didn’t seem completely against children, they just weren’t her priority and she knew that within their society, once you had them, you had to give up your own dreams as a woman - having both was virtually unheard of.

I feel like know that they’ve established (if only through the epilogue) that some women can have both, Penelope is a writer in her own right and has a baby, they could explore those themes - motherhood, being a woman, feminism, a more equal marriage,… - to a greater extend in Eloise’s season (among other things, but her book has a big focus on family and children and I would love for them to touch on that).

However, maybe I’m also not remembering some scenes where’s she’s more explicit, do remind me of them!

ETA: as far as the plot/falling in love goes, I think Phillip will fall in love with her through the letters, still not tell her about the children but also won’t ask her to marry him; she still sneaks away to see because she’s so bored at whatever ball. He then doesn’t want to pressure her in the mother role, however, he’s still looking for a mother for his children because he cares about them, they’re his number 1 priority. El still being unsure of kids but finding Phil to be really interesting, goes through the above struggle of trying to see herself as a mother and a woman in her own right, and eventually finds that she absolutely loves those kids and that they remind her of her own childhood. Eventually they’ll all get a HEA.

A one year old is cute but isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, especially if you’re in your teenage rebellion phase and think those things, especially those associated with Daphne, are stupid and generally ask yourself why people don’t care about the truly interesting things in life, like academia and books.

If we saw her in s3 with Polin’s baby, she’d probably be more chill because she’s already matured quite a bit but even beyond that, I think show!Eloise would have a lot of fun trying to answer all the questions 8-year-olds would be asking her.

And then your own kids are a completely different thing anyways.

I think they’re the ones that need each other the most and seem to be very willing to work on their issues to become better versions of themselves for each other, especially Phillip.

Given how much people change throughout their lives, I think that’s a really valuable character asset.

There was a similar discussion a few days ago, in case you’re interested https://www.reddit.com/r/BridgertonNetflix/s/cZtEyiKFbx

I was thinking maybe we’ll get VO of both, Pen narrates her own book, story,… while the LW column is still JA; but honestly, I don’t see how we’d get more juicy LW because even if QC approves, I don’t think it actually sits well with the members of the ton. And if people know who you are, you’ll wake up with literal shit on your doorstep after a while 😅

Ooh, that’s interesting - but I would much rather have the characters themselves narrate the letters or read them out loud. I think it would do more for their character growth, especially as we already got to meet Philip.

Maybe Pen will pen a column for a newspaper under a new alias about the ton that’s more informative rather than gossipy. Maybe she’ll write one of those stories released in chapters that somehow also reflects the main plot of the season, which would work for something Cinderella-like, and we’d get a voice over bit for that?

Not it doesn’t have to be taken into consideration because you can just retire the car w/out really needing to. They also could’ve given Max a drive-through penalty but didn’t feel that was appropriate given the incident.

To Eloise?

Considering the society of Bridgerton, being married to a title holder would give Eloise the freedom to keep fighting for women’s right without repercussions for her family because the ton doesn’t really get involved in married people’s lives. So, to keep the bones of the book character and the spirit of the show character, she’ll probably end up happily married, still fighting for women’s rights, writing her novel, and I could also see her acquiring some kind of higher education somehow.

Yabadabadoo - oh George you’re really quite something…

Maybe a bit melancholic at times but I think it fits the characters.

El (& SPC):

Between the Bars - Elliott Smith

Dog days are over - Florence + The Machine

Take Me Home - Jess Glynne

Mardy Bum - Arctic Monkeys

Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - Lana Del Rey

Delicate / Willow - Taylor Swift

Rich Girl - Gwen Stefani

Flowers - Miley Cyrus

Perfect Places - First Aid Kit (Lorde)

Ben (& S):

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (a man after midnight) - ABBA

Please, let me get what I want this time - The Smiths

Matilda - Harry Styles (for S)

Strawberry Wine - Noah Kahan

I will wait - Mumford and Sons

Love story / Enchanted - Taylor Swift

Mr. Brightside - The Killers

Do I wanna know - arctic monkeys

Here with me - d4vd

That’s fair. It worked for me because of the heir conversation and because of the epilogue style but I can understand that it might have come as a surprise to others based on what we’ve been shown before.

Pen did say that any one of the sisters could give birth to the future heir, so she did see herself eventually having a child.

Also, I think the way we think about parenthood nowadays just wasn’t really a thing during that era - you were a mother or a father but it wasn’t really different to being a woman or a man to society. That’s why Daphne & Simon’s story focused on the child topic as they deviated from the norm, whereas Kanthony’s story didn’t and we got the baby announcement in this season rather than an epilogue.

It’s almost unimaginable to many of us nowadays because we’re tend to plan children, but Regency’s version of “death, taxes and __” would’ve included “babies”.

ETA also I assume we’ll get more family/married life and conversations from them in s4; they didn’t have any of that for season 3 due to were they left off, which made sense for the story knowing they’d be coming back. The epilogue was there for the heir thing, I think.

They could, but does it matter? Them being so happy about the child kinda implies that they wanted to be parents as they would’ve shown us a different kind of scene otherwise.

If it were Eloise, for example, we probably would’ve gotten a whole story line about coming to terms with and finding joy in pregnancy and motherhood and the trauma she has from Hyacinth’s birth; for Francesca it would probably focus on her really wanting a child and the weight it might have on her marriage, or about having to raise the child on her own, should they give her a kid with J. But for Polin, children weren’t really an important part of their story, and given that having children was the norm, the way they approached giving them one feels very appropriate.

I think the acting was beautiful, but I don’t think I’d be excited about more of their characters if I didn’t already have an idea about what’s still to come. The quiet love is beautiful but not really exciting enough for 8 episodes.

I think that they would save a pregnancy and birth for a character for whom children are a bigger thing in their character arc, like with Francesca and her infertility or even Eloise and her fear of child birth.

Exactly, if people didn’t have children they either were truly having troubles with infertility or didn’t have sex. Even Simon‘s method wouldn’t have worked forever if they could otherwise have children easily.

If they follow the books to an extend, I think there are several scenes where Eloise asks Philip whether he loved Marina. If they expand on this, I think rather than have him say “no” flat-out, they can have him say something like “not romantically, but I did appreciate her as a friend, mother to the children,… have you ever been in love before?” and she’ll say something like “hm, maybe/possibly, but if I did then not in a way that matters now”. Or she’ll say something like “someone did make me believe that love could exist even for me, but it never felt like this”.

Because, while they do acknowledge old flames on the show, at the end of the day, they also make it very clear that the love interest in their own season is the actual true love for each sibling - as that’s basically the concept of the show.

I do think her reaction did let the audience know that she has, at the very least, experienced a little bit of romantic love.

I don’t think she could’ve said anything to Colin because I’m not quite sure she herself even realises what she felt, I think for her the whole Theo situation and the heartbreak that came with it was a combination of the loss of many things; a bit of a crush, a friend, someone that listed and talked to her about the things important to her, something that was her own thing beyond the ton, a bit of rebellion. It’s rather likely that she never separated the crush from the rest of the situation and that she’ll only realise that she felt something a bit like this before once she does fall in love all the way.