‘Bridgerton’ Showrunner Jess Brownell Talks Season 3 Finale & The Surprising Twist To Francesca’s Love Story - Deadline

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from Bridgerton Season 3, Part 2 — including the final episode.

Dearest gentle readers, the wait for more Bridgerton is finally over.

And, boy, there is a lot to unpack in these final four episodes of Season 3. As showrunner Jess Brownell told Deadline, “the back half is markedly different from the front half in terms of the way the tension builds.”

Below, Brownell takes a deep dive into the final four episodes of Bridgerton Season 3, particularly the final episodes, which brings Penelope and Colin’s story to a satisfying close while setting up plenty of thread for future seasons.

On Penelope & Colin

When we left Colin and Penelope in Part 1, they seemed to be on Cloud 9. Colin held his outstretched hand toward his carriage, beckoning for Penelope to come inside his home, despite the late hour, to announce their hasty betrothal. It’s hard to feel excited for the happy couple, though, knowing Penelope’s secret identity as Lady Whistledown could be revealed at any moment.

“I think we’re living more in a playful rom com space and in Part 1, and then when we get into Part 2, there are so many secrets threatening to come out — you have the tension with Whistledown, the tension between Penelope and Eloise with the added complication of Eloise learning Pen is interested in her brother,” Brownell said.

The couple is able to live in their engagement bliss only for a moment before Colin knows the truth. The reveal comes after two joyful, if a little tense, episodes in which Penelope tries to figure out how to tell Colin the truth. Of course, pressure is coming from all sides as Eloise threatens Penelope that she’ll tell her brother herself, if Penelope doesn’t come clean.

Only, Penelope doesn’t have to come clean after all, because once Colin follows Penelope to her printing press, he knows she is Lady Whistledown.

“We held back on Colin finding out about the Whistledown piece too early, because it felt like we had played out the search for Whistledown for two seasons, in Season 1 and 2. So we wanted to rest that story just for a moment and really enjoy Penelope’s search for a husband,” Brownell said, explaining that the writers wanted Lady Whistledown’s identity to feel “like a ticking time bomb” hanging over their heads.

She continued: “What it allowed us to do was to spend some time in the love bubble with Colin and Penelope…before we have to create real conflict between them. Normally, in Season 1 and 2, we had to create conflict directly between the main couple, but because you have this gun that is threatening to go off, you can just enjoy Colin and Penelope, knowing some tension is to come.”

Love Matches for Future Seasons

In a departure from previous seasons, Penelope and Colin’s isn’t the only love story unfolding in Season 3, which has also begun unraveling Francesca’s rather complicated journey toward a happily ever after.

In addition, the season sees Benedict quite infatuated with a woman named Tilly Arnold, who opens Benedict up to exploring his sexuality when she encourages him to engage in sexual activity with herself and another man. Then there’s Lady Violet Bridgerton, who seems to have her eye on Lady Danbury’s brother, Lord Anderson.

The final few moments of the finale set up for more to come on al fronts, as Brownell says they balanced the stories “with much difficulty.”

“The overall theme of this season is about stepping into your true self, and so that’s something that I think you’ll see across almost every storyline,” she said, adding that there were “a number of practical reasons” for beginning to tee up those future stories in the middle of Season 3.

“As the older siblings have gone off and gotten married…we want to make sure that the Bridgerton drawing room still feels full,” she explained. “So, some of those younger siblings, we thought it was time to start bringing them to the forefront.”

On Gender Bending Francesca’s Story

One of the bigger twists from the final episode is the writers’ decision to gender-bend Francesca’s love story. Book readers will know that, as Brownell says, “her story has a few more twists and turns than the rest” — meaning that after she and John get married, he dies of a plague and she eventually marries his cousin Michael, who inherits John’s title after his death.

Well, in Shonda Rhimes’ adaptation, Michael Stirling is actually Michaela Stirling. And in case anyone had any doubts about the direction Francesca’s story will be going, Brownell says: “I have been pitching the Francesca queer story from the beginning.”

“When I read her book, I, as a queer woman, really related to her book. Maybe in a way Julia Quinn didn’t intend, but a lot of Francesca’s book is about feeling different from her family and from the world around her and not really knowing why,” she said. “In the book, I think it’s mostly just about being introverted. But I think for a lot of queer people, not every queer person, but a lot of queer people, that sense of feeling different from the time you’re young, is part of our stories. So it felt like a natural one to gender bend.”

Brownell refrained from giving any details as to how, exactly, the story will play out. Since John’s cousin is a woman, it’s not likely she would be able to inherit his title upon death in the Regency Era, unless the provisions set forth when the title was created allowed for such unusual circumstances.

This could mean the writers will take further liberties with Francesca’s story. Or, perhaps, they will find a way for her to inherit the title. No matter what, Brownell says that this is no “queer tragedy.”

“There are certain elements of her story, historically, that allow us some wiggle room in terms of creating a happily ever after, which we very much want to have,” she said. “I think when approaching a queer story, it’s very important to me that in this world of happily ever afters that we are able to see a queer happily ever after and not let it be queer trauma.”

On Benedict & His Sexual Exploration

Brownell also teases that audiences haven’t seen the end of Benedict exploring his sexuality.

In the final episode, Benedict turns Tilly down when she proposes they stop seeing other people, explaining that it’s the first time he’s felt empowered to be free of society’s constructs and explore his desires in his own way.

“I think, for me, when we talked about Benedict’s storyline this season in the room, so many of us, including myself, felt like he reads as a queer character in Season 1 and 2. So we felt like we wanted to make sense of that,” she says of the decision for him to agree to Tilly and Paul’s advances. “I think his story, in many ways, across all the seasons, has been about learning how to be his true self when he doesn’t feel like he completely fits into the world of the ton. But he hasn’t been sure in the past about how exactly to navigate that feeling a little bit like an outsider.”

Benedict’s relationship with Tilly, while over for now, will stay with him as he figures out what’s next. Brownell describes Tilly as “someone who also is of society but feels a little bit outside of it, [but] she’s very in control of the way she navigates and circumvents the rules” — which Benedict could learn a thing or two from.

The very end of the episode teases that Benedict’s love match, Sophie, may be making her grand entrance soon, as Eloise — who is off to Scotland with Francesca — promises to be back in time for their mother’s famous masquerade ball. That is, of course, where Benedict and Sophie first cross paths in the books.

But, Brownell adds: “I think we will continue that storyline of him exploring his fluidity going forward. This isn’t the end of that. As far as Sophie, I can’t say quite yet when she’s popping up, but will be announcing more soon.”

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