If you listen very closely, you can hear the tickings of the multiple time bombs that currently lie under the ton, just lying in wait for the final four episodes of Bridgerton season three to descend upon Netflix queues everywhere.
Indeed, another timeline would have seen Penelope and Colin gearing up for a true happily ever after right now, but Penelope’s insistence on keeping Lady Whistledown to her chest will no doubt create some dire complications for the road ahead. And the number one agent in all this chaos is Eloise, whose waning loyalty to Penelope’s secret and steadfast love for Colin makes her all but unpredictable at the moment.
Eloise is, of course, the perfect x-factor character for most situations; her perennial hatred for society and subsequent—even active—detachment from it makes her less vulnerable to the stakes that are in play for the women of Bridgerton. It’s perhaps only natural, then, that when (not if) the show introduces some love stories of the more revolutionary variety, the fifth-eldest Bridgerton sibling is one of the top candidates for leading such a plotline.
Is Eloise Bridgerton gay?
Given her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it connection with Theo Sharpe, we know that Eloise is attracted to men on some level, but the pieces for an Eloise-centric queer love story are all but ready to fall, given what we’ve heard from the showrunner of Bridgerton‘s third and upcoming fourth season, and Claudia Jessie herself.
Jessie, who of course portrays Eloise in the show, recently spoke to Business Insider regarding Eloise’s queer coding that comes with her defiance towards traditional love and marriage.
I’ve always loved that there’s this coding that people have with Eloise. There’s a strength in her that I think a queer storyline can connect. And I’ve always been touched by that as a notion with Eloise. But yeah, there’s definitely room for all of that.
Meanwhile, showrunner Jess Brownell, who took over from Chris Van Dusen as showrunner as of season three, promised some queer stories for the future of Bridgerton, albeit without naming who might be involved in such stories.
I think this is a show about the many ways in which people love. So it only feels right to show all the ways in which people love, including queer love. So we are exploring queer love stories across the next couple of seasons.
In other words, we’re definitely getting a queer story at some point in Bridgerton, and Eloise has been effectively queer-coded since we were first introduced to her. You do the math.
Bridgerton season three, part two is due to drop on Netflix on June 13.
