Since the very beginning of Bridgerton, Nicola Coughlan’s outcast wallflower character Penelope Featherington has been the show’s beating, oh-so-vulnerable heart. Sure, she might midnight as the town gossip, Lady Whistledown, but at her core, all she wants is to find love and security—preferably, with her childhood friend and longtime crush, the clueless Bridgerton brother Colin (Luke Newton). For three seasons, we’ve watched Penelope cast furtive, longing looks in her would-be suitor’s direction, and his utter cluelessness has been absolute torture. Thank God that’s finally over.
Bridgerton Season 3, which hit Netflix with its four-episode Part One on Thursday, repays our patience (or, in my case, deep lack thereof) by giving Penelope the show’s best romantic arc yet. And how could it not be so, after three years of build-up? But Colin’s not the only one who has Penelope’s attention: This season, a new suitor, the very rich, very eligible Lord Debling (Sam Phillips) enters the mix and captures Penelope’s interest. Lady Featherington (Polly Walker), might be dead set on getting one of Penelope’s dim-witted sisters pregnant so that they can inherit the family fortune, but as usual, she underestimates her shyest daughter at her own peril. (That said, Lady Featherington’s impromptu sex education session with her daughters might be the funniest moment of the season.)
As usual, the romance tropes abound, starting with Colin offering Penelope secret one-on-one “lessons” that will supposedly teach her how to seduce other men. (Who does he think he is—Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful?) Coughlan and Newton have spent years developing their chemistry, and here, it’s practically combustible. Not since Bridgerton Season 1, which practically made a drinking game out of flashing Regé-Jean Page’s ass on screen, has this brilliant, smutty show been this sexy—although admittedly, these first four episodes are mostly about building up the libidinous anticipation via horny camerawork. The Penelope-Colin-Debling love triangle ups the drama, setting Colin’s jaw in a near-permanent clench as the competition heats up.
