Bridgerton Season Two: Thoughts? : All About Romance

This week, Netflix announced–woo hoo!–there will be a second season of the wildly popular Bridgerton featuring, as was predicted, Anthony, the hero of The Viscount Who Loved Me.

I confess: I am excited. I enjoyed season one, even with its many flaws, and I celebrate the world’s embrace of romance.

That said, I do have a few notions.

First, I hope whomever they cast as Kate is as strong as Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury. (I would watch her in anything.) Daphne’s casting was middling. I want better. I’d like Kate to be transcendently smart, smirky, and vulnerable. (If only Millie Bobby Brown were old enough!) Perhaps Hailee Steinfeld or Zoey Deutch or Constance Wu?

Secondly, mostly ignore Simon and Daphne. They’ve had their season, it’s someone else’s. The Duke and Duchess of Hastings are, one hopes, busy making more alphabetically named Bridgerton spawn.

Third, don’t mock the bee thing. Anthony’s fear of bees is a fear of leaving those who love him–it’s kinda noble, really.

Fourth, abandon Eloise and Philip as a couple. Marina deserves some joy–I’m not interested in seeing her a facile poster child for postpartum depression or, for that matter, any kind of depression. London, in this era, was the largest city in the world. Surely there’s some other progressive partner for Eloise. Or–gasp–she could end up single, studying, and occasionally aunting with love. It could happen….

Fifth, Genevieve Delacroix and Siena Rosso need to have decamped to Paris. It’s bad enough Anthony and Benedict have frittered away the time of these two self-possessed, successful women. And worse that, in his dickish way, Anthony has fallen in love. It will be stupid drama if the savviest modiste and the best opera singer in town wastes our and their time competing with Kate and Sophie for that manly Bridgerton love.

Sixth, leave America out of it. The Regency era mirrored an ugly time in the horror that was slavery in the States. I can’t see any way this reimagined racially integrated England could reflect on an America as it was without managing to enrage the majority of the internet. And while I’m all for reckoning with our history, I doubt Julia Quinn’s novels are the place to do so. (Watch Harriet or Underground instead.)

Seventh, quit teasing us with Benedict as sexually curious unless that aspect of him will have resonance. It’s all very Katy Perry to hint that Benedict might be open to a non-straight life, but it’s cynical to do so if the end game is Sophie and babies.

Eighth: There’s another child named Francesca. Her family loves her. Do not erase her.

Lastly, do not f*ck up Penelope and Colin. I’m already cross Colin is in love with Marina and Pen’s identity is known. I will throw a serious snit if their love story is meh. (Doesn’t Luke Newton’s Colin seem… bland? I have a hard time seeing him being an ass to Penelope about her work or dragging her out of the ballroom.)