Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Bridgerton Season 3, Episode 1.
The Big Picture
Colin and Penelope’s slow burn romance faces obstacles as Penelope grapples with feelings and Colin remains elusive.
Francesca’s indifference to her debutante season contrasts with her family’s romantic pursuits, sparking concern from her mother.
Penelope’s glow-up creates buzz at the ball, but a tear in her dress and her past confrontation with Eloise leave her feeling isolated.
Welcome back, esteemed members of the ton, to another season of Bridgerton. It feels as though it’s been an age since we last caught up with the Bridgerton siblings in their quests to find love — 26 months, to be precise, though we did have the beautiful, sweeping, and delightfully swoonyQueen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story to hold us over — but here we are at last, ready to dive into the super slow burn romance that is Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan). But is it going to be smooth sailing for the couple? Considering she’s been pining for years, and that Season 2 ended with Colin claiming he’d “never court Penelope Featherington,” it’s safe to say: of course not.
As we, the audience, return to the world of Regency-era Bridgerton for the first time in two years, so too does the ton return to London for the season in the opening moments of Episode 1, “Out of the Shadows.” Wherever the ton is, of course, so is Penelope’s alter ego, Lady Whistledown (voiced by Julie Andrews), and she arrives back in town delighted to see all of London society once again engrossed in her latest column. For all that Penelope’s identity as Lady Whistledown has caused a falling out with her best friend Eloise (Claudia Jessie), that doesn’t seem to have dulled Penelope’s quill — or her keen sense of observation as she lays out this year’s most eligible debutantes.
Bridgerton
The eight close-knit siblings of the Bridgerton family look for love and happiness in London high society.
Release Date December 25, 2020
Creator Chris Van Dusen
Main Genre Drama
Seasons 3
Studio Netflix
Francesca Finally Makes Her Debut in ‘Bridgerton’ Season 3
Image via Netflix
One of these debutantes is, of course, Francesca Bridgerton (Hannah Dodd), who is ostensibly getting ready for her presentation to Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) while her anxious mother Violet (Ruth Gemmell) and siblings Eloise, Gregory (Will Tilston), Hyacinth (Florence Hunt), and Benedict (Luke Thompson) wait outside. None of them can figure out why Francesca is being so quiet until Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) and Kate (Simone Ashley) arrive, hand in hand, and Kate suggests if all of them are standing here, and someone down the hall is playing piano, then it stands to reason Francesca is not in her room after all.
Sure enough, they find her playing in the drawing room, and despite her mother and Hyacinth’s shock that she would be so casual on a day as important as her presentation, Francesca insists it’s just another day and leads the way out of the room. Violet’s shock quickly turns to horror when Benedict points out Francesca was playing a funeral march when they walked in. With us now having followed the Bridgerton siblings for three social seasons, it’s interesting to track how each of the sisters reacts to her coming out: Daphne exhibited eldest-daughter perfection, while Eloise proceeded with nothing short of disdain. Hyacinth is over the moon about her turn. But Francesca, at least for now, exhibits something we don’t see too often in either shows or in romance novels: indifference. She doesn’t hate it, she doesn’t love it, it holds about as much excitement for her as a dental cleaning. Or at least, that’s how things appear as the family heads off to present her to the queen.
But while most of the family prepare to leave for court, there’s one Bridgerton who remains unaccounted for — Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon (Regé-Jean Page), we presume, are off at their home in Clyvedon — and that is the world traveler himself, Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton). But never fear, he’s arrived back in town just in time, rocking a Prince-Eric-meets-pirate swagger and setting the hearts of every young woman in the neighborhood aflutter, including Penelope’s, as she watches his homecoming from the square between their houses. The brothers ride over to the presentation together, and Anthony and Benedict lovingly roast Colin over his leading-man glow-up (though not in so many words). Their words roll right off of him though, and rather than regaling them with tales of his travels, he remains as elusive as every trust fund college grad that took a gap year to backpack and “find himself.”
At the palace, the debutantes are presented to the Queen, who is nearly bored to tears. Though Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story did a beautiful job of illustrating how Charlotte could go from being the fiery, passionate teenager she was to the queen we see today after decades in a monotonous system, the show also now brings up some interesting questions we didn’t have before. For instance, Charlotte bemoans the lack of “interest” in the crop of debutantes, but what sort of entertainment is she expecting from the same presentation year after year? As someone who has lived in this world for most of her life, surely she is better poised than most to realize these poor girls are cogs in that same system, forced to convey only the strictest, most well-behaved model of English womanhood. The more the season progresses as well, the more baffling Charlotte’s characterization becomes, particularly in light of the prequel series.
Portia Featherington Lies to Save Her Family in the ‘Bridgerton’ Season 3 Premiere
But while the Bridgertons have a cozy day with their family, the same cannot be said for Penelope, who is trapped inside listening to her sisters Prudence (Bessie Carter) and Phillipa (Harriet Cains) brag about their weddings to one another while their besotted husbands look on, until their mother Portia (Polly Walker) announces that all their financial troubles have been settled thanks to some money “left to them by their Aunt Petunia.” While there apparently was an Aunt Petunia, Portia’s story is only to serve as a cover-up for her taking the money Jack Featherington (Rupert Young) stole in Season 2. While this lie will almost certainly come back to bite them later, we hopefully won’t need to spend an inordinate amount of time on the Featheringtons’ money troubles this season as we did in the last.
The Featherington women head out to a garden party arranged in the Queen’s honor — albeit without the Queen in attendance — where Colin proves to all the young ladies that the only thing he picked up on his gap year trip is an extraordinary amount of rizz. Penelope is caught between a rock and an awkward place, as she goes from having to watch Colin flirt with other people to coming face to face with Eloise… and her new BFF Cressida Cowper (Jessica Madsen). Though Eloise stops Cressida from being outright cruel to Penelope, she has nothing to say to her former friend, leaving Penelope standing alone. Also feeling awkward and alone is Francesca, who might be surrounded by her peers, but finds she has little in common with them and their lofty dreams of an ideal husband when all she really wants is a home of her own and a kind man to share it with.
Francesca’s practical approach gives Violet cause for concern, as all the Bridgerton matriarch wants is for her children to find love as she did. She vows to Kate that she will not interfere with her daughters this season (we’ll see how long that lasts) and promises that she will move into a dower house in order to let Kate fully assume her role as Viscountess. Kate assures her there’s no need to bring that European nonsense into this now partially-ethnic household, and that she can stay as long as she needs to.
Penelope Takes Her Life Into Her Hands in the ‘Bridgerton’ Season 3 Premiere
Following a snide comment from Cressida’s mother (Joanna Bobin), Portia abruptly reveals that the last Lord Featherington bequeathed the family estate to whichever of her daughters is first to produce a male heir, a bombshell announcement made all the more suspicious by Prudence and Phillipa’s shocked reactions. While Portia tries valiantly to save face, Colin finally finds Penelope and tries to pick up the friendship where they left off, but is left surprised by her cold, vague, polite responses. Fortunately for her, the entire family has had enough, and they head out soon after, with her sisters now each determined to become the lady of the house. Portia lets the two of them squabble, believing Penelope is not even a contender, and tells her daughter that she’s happy she will always be there to care for her. The prospect of a life spent with only her mother for company lights a fire under Penelope: our girl is finally ready for her leading lady glow-up.
After hitting a wall with Penelope, Colin attempts to get the truth about the situation from Eloise. While he still doesn’t get the full truth from her, it’s clear Eloise is still hurting from Penelope’s misguided attempt to protect her last season by nearly ruining her in the Whistledown column. The hurt rises to the surface when the two women run into each other at the modiste and Eloise rebuffs Penelope’s attempts to apologize, though she doesn’t have a particularly good answer — or any answer at all — about why she would befriend Cressida of all people.
Elsewhere, Will (Martins Imhangbe) and Alice Mondrich (Emma Naomi) are also experiencing some major changes, with the news that Alice’s great-aunt Lady Kent has died, and left her entire estate to their oldest son, making him the next Baron of Kent. Though the pair were first introduced as friends of Simon’s in particular, I love that the series has kept them around and keeps finding new ways to keep them woven into the plot of the larger series. Through all the romantic drama Bridgerton has to offer, the Mondriches are a counterpoint, showing what a happily married couple looks like years into their relationship — not without their ups and downs, but still affectionate, loving partners.
And speaking of affectionate, loving partners, the episode then cuts to what I can only describe as a very sexy apology for the fact that we barely got to see what a happy Kate and Anthony look like in Season 2, since so much time was taken up with extraneous drama finding ways to keep them apart until the last possible second. But happy they are, and also very engaged in this whole business of making an heir, despite having Lady Danbury’s (Adjoa Andoh) ball to prepare for. Kate wants to make a good impression at her first ball as Viscountess, but if you ask me, Anthony’s the one who needs to be worried: after all, he’s the one who spends the scene, ahem, talking with his mouth full.
With her new emerald green dress, and a new, more stylish hairdo, Penelope unveils her glow-up at the ball, to great success. It’s amazing what a dress that actually fits, in a shade that actually suits the wearer, will do for a person. Even Colin manages to stop talking about his Eurotrip long enough to notice. A trio of men approaches Penelope and attempt to engage her in conversation, but perhaps unused to the attention, she slips up, trips over her words, and talks for too long, which annoys the men and causes them to leave, as how dare a woman not perform to their simpering expectations?
Penelope Catches an Eligible Lord’s Eye in ‘Bridgerton’ Season 3, Episode 1
Image via Netflix
But Penelope hasn’t only caught the eyes of the men in the room. Eloise can’t stop glancing over at her, and even Queen Charlotte has taken notice. Lady Danbury reminds the Queen that, Penelope’s new look aside, Charlotte has yet to select a diamond for the season — a trend that has been in place for only two years and has now suddenly become an expectation. Charlotte asserts that diamonds are precious because they’re rare — they’re not, they’re beautiful, but also so common they’re used to make drill bits — but Lady Danbury, wanting to stir the pot a little, acknowledges that Charlotte only picked the diamond last year, and that it was Lady Whistledown who did so the first time, the implication being, of course, that only Lady Whistledown was successful in predicting the season’s best match. That lights the necessary fire under Charlotte, who doesn’t say much, but the gears in her head are whirring. You know what is a precious, rare, and delicate stone? Emeralds. Just saying.
Like Penelope, poor Francesca can’t catch a break either. But where Penelope talked too much, Francesca hardly says anything beyond the necessary politeness, even as she’s cornered by a trio of Lords who all but demand she rattle off her Bumble profile for them. She slips away and tells Anthony she wants to be left alone for a while, and in a sign of how much he’s grown as a person, he actually lets her go. Perhaps it’s because he’d rather dance with his wife than chase his sister around the ballroom.
Francesca finds Penelope standing off to the side and admits to her that she doesn’t particularly like attracting notice. Penelope agrees that that’s probably difficult for someone from such a notice-attracting family, but tells Francesca not to become a wallflower, and tells her she’s lucky to have the attention at all. Francesca takes her words to heart but also encourages Penelope to come off the wall as well. Penelope takes her friend’s advice if only to go as far as to get a bowl of ice cream, but there she meets the tall and handsome Lord Debling (Sam Phillips), with whom she shares a much more natural banter.
But because Cressida can’t let anyone have anything nice, she “accidentally” steps on Penelope’s gown and tears it. Lord Debling graciously heads off to find a maid to help, and Cressida taunts Penelope about the cheapness of the fabric. Never mind the fact that the two shop at the same modiste, but it’s very rich for someone whose every dress looks increasingly ridiculous to call someone else’s dress “cheap.” Eloise, at the very least, has the decency to look embarrassed, but Penelope storms out before her former friend can try to apologize.
Colin finds her crying outside and tries to comfort her by complimenting her dress. He is shocked when his charm doesn’t work on her the way it seems to have worked on everyone else, and Penelope attempts to leave again, rebuffing his attempt to find her a chaperone and telling him that, as a spinster, she doesn’t need one. While by and large the updates made to the series from the books have served to make the books work better in the medium of television, this assertion of Penelope’s brings the two into jarring conflict. In both the books and the show, Penelope was presented to society a year early — say, at 17 years old. The book features a major time jump before Colin and Penelope’s story kicks off, and she is 28 for most of it. The series reminds us this is her third year out, making her 20 at most. A woman at 28 might firmly be on the shelf, but 20? Hardly a spinster. It’s possible to write her comment off as self-deprecating rather than objective fact, but it does make me wonder why they wanted to keep the spinster storyline in adaptation rather than just the wallflower-in-bloom aspect of the plot.
Following her spinster outburst, Colin finally clues into the fact that there might be something wrong between the two of them, and she finally reveals the reason she is so upset with him is because of how vehemently Colin told everyone he would never ever court her. He attempts to move the conversation somewhere more private, but Penelope has had enough and heads home to write the next issue of Whistledown, sparing no Bridgerton in the process.
The next day, Portia gets a visit from Henry Dundas (Edward Bennett), the same man who delivered the life-changing news for the Mondriches. He tells her his job oversees lines of succession, and he’s come to follow up with her claim that the family estate will go to whichever daughter is the first to have a son. He implies that he knows the document is forged, and all but sets a ticking clock for the Featherington women to ensure one of the girls has a son before he uncovers that fact. If Mama Featherington wasn’t overly invested in her daughter’s reproductive habits, she certainly is now.
While out for a walk in the park, Eloise finally calls Cressida out on the cruelty of ripping Penelope’s dress, reminding her it would probably be easier for her to find a husband if she was a nicer person — worth noting too, that no one is calling Cressida a spinster, and she’s older than Penelope — and Cressida admits that husbands aside, it’s also been difficult for her to find a friend. It’s probably got something to do with that whole “seeing all other women as competition” thing she’s got going on, something she at least has enough self-awareness to acknowledge.
The two of them make for a strange pairing. It’s as though in her loneliness, Eloise forgot about how Cressida has previously tried to undermine both Daphne and Penelope’s families. Yes, Cressida admits she’s fallen prey to society pitting young women against each other, but her actions directly impacted people Eloise supposedly cared about. It would probably also be easier for Eloise to find other friends if she wasn’t still prone to waving her “not like other girls” flag. Lady Bridgerton might have let her daughters pursue their various interests, but it’s infuriating to watch Eloise sneer at other girls for enjoying embroidery when it’s one of the few hobbies they probably have access to, and to claim she thought she was the only one who noticed how all the girls have to compete with each other. The difference is, the other girls have friends. Eloise only has the one. Hopefully, that gets unpacked more this season, because for now, Eloise is becoming harder and harder to read.
Back at Bridgerton House, Anthony finds Kate in the study catching up on some paperwork. Before he can whisk her back to bed, and back to the business of heir-making, Kate suggests that the pair of them extend their honeymoon a little longer, leaving the duties of Viscountess to Violet, and presumably the estate management to Benedict, who took care of it while they were away the first time. Kate is burnt out from having to take care of Edwina for so long and wants just a bit more time to be selfish, something Anthony readily agrees to. It’s such a sweet scene that it almost makes you forget that this is the show’s built-in reason why Ashley and Bailey won’t be around much this season, as booked and busy as they are.
Elsewhere in the house, Violet tries to get Francesca to talk about how she liked her first ball, tries to encourage her daughter to be open to the idea, and wrongly assumes Francesca is afraid of meeting anyone. Francesca assures her that is not the case, but she isn’t holding out for the same sort of all-consuming love and passion that everyone in the family has experienced thus far. Violet looks like she doesn’t know what to make of this, and I am begging a single person in this show to take Francesca and her wishes seriously. Just because she is quiet and practical, and not snarling about the bane of her existence and the object of her desires in the face of the first person she finds attractive, doesn’t mean she feels any less keenly.
And speaking of Bridgerton’s finding love, Colin heads to Penelope’s to apologize for the night before, and to tell her that he values her friendship, and certainly isn’t ashamed of her. Penelope tells him she’s envious of his confidence, and the way he feels so at home in society when she never does, and he tells her charm can be taught, and offers to help her find a husband if it will make her happy. How could this possibly go wrong? No one ever caught feelings like this, did they? Penelope is happy to have her friend back but horrified to realize the things she wrote about him in the latest Whistledown were hardly complimentary — so much so, that Colin ends the episode vowing to bring the gossip columnist down and ruin her life.
Bridgerton
Bridgerton’s Season 3 premiere sets the stage, putting Colin and Penelope in the limelight at last.
ProsPenelope fully steps into the leading lady limelight, with a glow-up that didn’t require her to get skinny to be hot.We get glimpses of a happy Kate and Anthony after not really having any in the couple’s own season.The non-Colin/Penelope subplots are equally interesting, particularly Francesca’s.
The first four episodes of Bridgerton Season 3 are streaming on Netflix now.
Watch on Netflix