- Netflix has already confirmed that Bridgerton season 2 is in the works.
- The company revealed a few major spoilers about the upcoming season in recent weeks, including a detail that some fans won’t like.
- Shonda Rhimes’s Shondaland confirmed this week a new female lead for the series, which is bad news for Duke of Hastings fans.
If I could turn back in time, I’d watch Bridgerton rather than Wonder Woman 1984 on Christmas Day. That’s when Shonda Rhimes’s new Netflix creation launched, becoming a massive sensation overnight. The period piece based on Julia Quinn’s novels become the most popular show on Netflix, setting new records for the streaming service. And the series has a bright future ahead, with a second season already in the works. Netflix confirmed as much at the end of the first season and then started dropping official hints about what’s next.
Readers of Quinn’s books probably know what to expect, but Netflix’s latest moves are actually massive spoilers for everyone else. And Fans of the Duke of Hastings will certainly not appreciate them — beware, Bridgerton season 1 spoilers also follow below.
Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page) and his Duchess (Phoebe Dynevor) ended their romantic affair on a high note, giving the first season the happy end that fans wanted. It’s right then and there that we learned a massive spoiler about the Bridgerton that was staring us in the face. The Bridgertons named their kids in alphabetical order — and that’s a great detail a person who has not read the books could use from the start. We have Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory, and Hyacinth.
And according to Lady Whistledown, "Lord Anthony Bridgerton intends to dominate the social season" https://t.co/hFmBHEugAJ
— Netflix Queue (@netflixqueue) January 21, 2021
Season 1 introduced us to all of them, focusing on Daphne. It’s probably evident where I’m heading with this, but Daphne and Simon won’t be the focus of the next story in the Bridgerton family.
This should have been clear a few weeks ago when Netflix said on Twitter that “according to Lady Whistledown, ‘Lord Anthony Bridgerton intends to dominate the social season,’” while retweeting a different update that said Bridgerton season 2 is in the works.
Simone Ashley is Miss Kate Sharma.
Newly arrived in London, Kate is a smart, headstrong young woman who suffers no fools — Anthony Bridgerton very much included. 🐝 #Bridgerton https://t.co/Q5wBwFiNC4 pic.twitter.com/BZd4qOmsln
— shondaland tv (@shondaland) February 15, 2021
The Rhimes’s Shondaland dropped another major spoiler earlier this week on social media. The production company announced that Simone Ashley will play Miss Kate Sharma. “Newly arrived in London, Kate is a smart, headstrong young woman who suffers no fools — Anthony Bridgerton very much included,” the tweet reads, linking to Deadline’s exclusive story.
Ashley will play the new female lead for Bridgerton season 2, which is further confirmation that Daphne and Simon will not be at the center of everything that happens. Again, those who read the books might have already suspected this would happen. But these revelations were a significant spoiler for the rest of us — from Deadline:
The second season will chronicle the pursuit of a suitable marriage for the eldest Bridgerton sibling, Anthony (Bailey), as chronicled in the second book of Quinn’s Bridgerton series, The Viscount Who Loved Me. […]
In Season 2, Bridgerton continues to break conventions on race. Anthony’s love interest (named Kate Sheffield in Quinn’s novel) and her family were conceived by the series’ producing team as being of Indian descent in a continuation of the reimagined, multi-racial world of early 1800s London high society created in Season 1, which included several major Black characters, including the Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page), Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) and Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel).
Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) did reveal he was on a mission just as season 1 concluded. His plans include “finding and promptly declaring my intentions to my new viscountess,” now that Siena (Sabrina Bartlett) broke his heart. But most of us didn’t know that his romance would take center stage in Bridgerton season 2.