By Dominique Tassell
Season two of Netflix’s Bridgerton series hit the app on Friday 25 March and has been the talk of the ton ever since.
While the first season of Bridgerton followed the story of Daphne Bridgerton and Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings, the second season follows Daphne’s brother Viscount Anthony Bridgerton and Kate Sharma.
The season follows Anthony and Kate as Anthony attempts to court Kate’s sister, Edwina. Awkard, I know.
The chemistry between Anthony and Kate this season is even more searing than we saw between Daphne and Simon last season. And that chemistry made the season the most-watched show on the app for a while.
While it has an incredibly strong build-up, the eight-episode season does suffer a bit in the second half.
Fans of the books will know this is where the series largely diverts from the novel, but while some argue the series should have stayed true to its source material, I personally disagree.
I do think the series felt a bit messy towards the end, both in the dramatic sense and the narrative sense, but changes did need to be made.
The first two novels in the Bridgerton series, The Duke & I and The Viscount Who Loved Me, are probably the two most similar novels in the series. Had they stuck to the source material, it’s highly likely they would have received complaints about this repetitiveness. There’s also the matter of what works on the page not necessarily working on screen; so changes would have been made with this in mind too.
While I think changes needed to be made, I do think they could have been different changes. While some of the changes gave added agency to some of the female characters, I do think this could have been achieved through other means.
Simply put, as a woman with a sister, I think they failed the Sharma sisters. I think they could have achieved agency for the female characters, and a more prominent position in the narrative, without doing irreparable damage to their relationship.
A very positive change in this exact space, though, was the addition of the sisters’ heritage. In the novels, they are the Sheffield sisters, but as the TV series is committed to showcasing a more diverse cast this was changed. While the first season didn’t add much extra weight to this diversity bar from the obvious casting changes and a couple lines of dialogue, this season takes the time to include aspects of the Sharma family’s culture and it makes for some of the best moments of the season in my opinion.
A detail throughout the season I personally loved was the callbacks to other Regency-era romances in pop culture. I haven’t re-watched and found them all, but there are two references to two different Pride and Prejudice adaptations that I adored. The direction of the season feels very female-gaze heavy, and these two references, in particular, added to that.
Showrunners have reportedly made comments about how they may not be following the novels in order, and there is a strong general suspicion that viewers will see the third and fourth books swapped. As someone who has read both books, I think this might be wise. The third book is one that will need a lot of work, both due to problematic elements of the novel and the plot in general not really fitting the vibe of the TV series. Some choices made in this new season also lend weight to moving the fourth book forward.
Nothing regarding this has been confirmed, but we’ve long had confirmation that the series will have at least four seasons. It will be interesting to see if we go all the way to the eight seasons necessarily to give each Bridgerton child their own season, but fingers crossed.
