Less Mogging, More Yearning: Benedict Saves Bridgerton
Image Credit: Liam Daniel via Netflix
The following article contains spoilers for Bridgerton: Season 4: Part 1. Read at your own risk!
Dearest Gentle Reader, last Thursday, Bridgerton made a triumphant return after the agonising death that was season three.
The third season featured beloved characters, Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan), entangled in a clumsy love story that featured far too much mogging and acrylic nail art to be taken seriously as a period piece. It was a disaster of epic proportions, especially as it followed on anticlimactically from the cinematic romance between season two’s Kate and Anthony (brought to life respectively by Simone Ashley and Jonathan Bailey).
Perhaps it's due to this recent let-down that the premiere of season four slipped by so silently. It genuinely would have passed me by, had it not been for my flu-ridden sister telling me she’d binged the entire show in a sitting. That was all I needed to click on the first episode, and I am beyond glad I did.
Benedict Bridgerton, played by Luke Thompson, begins as all Bridgerton men do: sleeping his way around town and avoiding his poor mother’s desperate attempts to marry him off, despite the fact that she seems to have astounding success each time (Seriously, Violet Bridgerton, how do I acquire your services?).
Eventually appeasing his mother, he attends her masquerade ball, where he encounters ‘the lady in silver’ - a mysterious woman of unknown origin who charms her way to a private audience, on a secret secluded terrace, receiving intimate dance lessons with Benedict. Let’s just say women everywhere will have Benedict's gentle ‘mhms’ on repeat in their minds as their heads hit the pillow. At the 12 o’clock unmasking, the Lady In Silver flees, not before stealing a kiss and leaving her glove. Yes, gentle reader, I too was swooning.
We later learn that the Lady In Silver is none other than Sophie, a maid who is revealed to be the illegitimate child of a recently deceased earl. Or, as the show likes to remind us, the lowest position a woman can be (we’ll forgive the familiarity since it is a self-confessed Cinderella story).
Sophie is an iconic lady, who later exercises tremendous restraint as a delirious Benedict cries out for her to kiss him, and yet, as a better woman than me, she simply sits and continues to nurse him back to health. Despite her soft-spoken nature with others, she reserves her witty snark for Mr Bridgerton, creating conversations with so much chemistry it almost feels intrusive to watch.
Benedict battles his growing feelings for Sophie, with his fantastical love of ‘The Lady In Silver’: blissfully unaware that his two great loves are one and the same. This lack of critical thinking should honestly be a red flag given that the voice, eyes, lips - which Benedict flashes back to in the presence of EVERY woman except the right one - and demeanour of the two love interests are (obviously) identical. Eventually, Benedict decides it is Sophie he cannot live without, and (after a steamy encounter on the stairs) he assures her she deserves more and then proudly… asks her to be his mistress. Sorry, I just had to pick my jaw off the floor.
That one horrifying moment aside, we’ve finally received the return of the Bridgerton we know and love. With unchaperoned (and rather scandalous) kisses to wrists and love confessions like no other, this season will have you in a non-stop swoon.
Let’s just say I am not sure how I will survive a month without Benedict’s yearning eyes. Come February 26th, I’ll be refreshing my Netflix page for a second binge-watch, with a fan positioned to stop my gentle heart from giving out.
Let us hope it makes haste!