Bridgerton Season 2 debuts on Netflix on March 25, 2022.
After getting swept up in the lush fantasy of Bridgerton Season 1, I had two major questions regarding its follow-up's prospects: would it be able to replicate the kind of sizzling romance that made it a breakout hit without leading man Rege-Jean Page? And would it be able to hold our intrigue with the identity of Lady Whistledown out of the bag? Luckily, the answer to both of those questions is largely yes, with Season 2 giving us another grand love story and adding new wrinkles to the Whistledown arc. So rest assured, dear readers (*Julie Andrews voice*): our latest jaunt with London’s most privileged and eligible bachelors and bachelorettes marks a worthy return, with all the scintillating romance and mystery that you could hope for.
Bridgerton, both the show and the books on which it’s based, could be considered something of a loose anthology. There’s an overarching story following the large Bridgerton family, as well as the illustrious circles they run in, but each installment centers on one of the sibling’s romances. After Season 1 saw Daphne finally riding off into the sunset with the Duke of Hastings, it’s her brother Anthony’s turn to find himself in an inevitably fraught love story. This format proves to be an effective one; it obviously keeps things fresh with new faces and relationships, but Season 2 also uses our familiarity with the Bridgertons to dig deeper into characters we already started getting to know, expanding on their backgrounds and dynamics in wonderfully nuanced ways.
As Anthony, Jonathan Bailey plays a very different kind of protagonist than Phoebe Dynevor’s starry-eyed Daphne. In Season 1, we already started to see how heavily the burden of being the eldest son in a fatherless family weighs on him, but Bailey gets a lot more to work with in this batch of episodes, and he does so beautifully. At times, Anthony risks getting frustrating with his bull-headedness and even arrogance, but Bailey plays him with such a determination and enthusiasm that it’s impossible not to root for him. And isn’t that what Bridgerton is really all about? What it excels most at is giving us characters that are endlessly flawed, yet layered enough to easily find ourselves in them.
On that note, Season 2 gives us a few more players to keep up with, most prominently Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma and Charithra Chandran as her little sister, Edwina. In a lot of ways, Kate seamlessly slips into the role the Duke of Hastings filled in the first season: a mysterious outsider whose confident appearance betrays more complicated motivations. But there’s something softer about Ashley’s performance, specifically because she’s so devoted to her sister. Ashley is no doubt a breakout, and she and Bailey sell an undeniable yearning for each other with ease. Her dynamic with Chandran is great, too, giving us a genuine warmth between sisters that shows the true strength of this season.
Yes, this is Bridgerton, so it’s anchored by the love story, but this season is just as much about familial love as it is about that of the romantic variety. There are some absolutely gut-wrenching scenes when we learn more about the Bridgertons’ grief over their late father, exploring poignant themes on how parents and children navigate loss together – and the ways in which they often fail to do so well. Ruth Gemmell gets to shine a lot more this time around as Violet, the Bridgerton family matriarch, and you can feel the unresolved generational trauma in her quietly powerful scenes with Bailey. She also gets a few good moments with Adjoa Andoh, whose kind yet occasionally ferocious Lady Danbury is one of the series' most consistent highlights.
In addition to the Bridgertons, the other major ongoing story arc is that of Lady Whistledown. No, this show didn’t Gossip Girl us, instead revealing at the end of Season 1 that it was the unassuming Penelope Featherington who was secretly spilling more tea than American rebels did in 1773. Luckily, this storyline did away with my fears that knowing who Lady Whistledown is would make it all less interesting. Instead, we get to see Penelope’s stress as she hustles to keep her secret just that, and it’s consistently fun to watch Nicola Coughlan play her with a sort of sneaky ingenuity, especially when paired opposite Claudia Jessie’s still-curious Eloise.
With its second season, Bridgerton proves it’s got a lot more in the tank.
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The only storyline that feels particularly lacking is that of the Featheringtons outside of Penelope. Their story is given some fairly interesting twists and turns, but nothing that rivals the main story or the Lady Whistledown saga. It’s not funny enough to be considered comic relief, nor is it insightful enough to serve as a look into a different faction of this society. It’s hardly the fault of Polly Walker, who plays Baroness Featherington with devilish cunning, but most of it comes across as filler in a show that definitely doesn’t need it.
Still, none of that can take away from the utter fantasy that is Bridgerton. The production design remains magnificent, and this season seems to luxuriate in the vibrant green exteriors of London’s parks and fields even more than last season did. The balls, as well as the dresses that fill them, are as gorgeous and opulent as ever, introducing even more violin covers of Top 40 hits that will inevitably throw an elegant wrench into my Spotify Wrapped.
Even though the last couple episodes have a hastily added subplot that’s a little too quickly resolved, Bridgerton Season 2 largely sticks the landing, too. Yes, it’s melodramatic, but hey, isn’t that what we came for? It’s paced so skillfully that all of that drama feels earned, making this one easy show to binge in a couple of sittings. Maybe you’ll miss the Duke of Hastings, but there’s still a lot to love in these flawed high-society families.
