For God’s sake, Penelope, are you going to marry Colin Bridgerton or not?
That was the question screamed around the world last night as Bridgerton‘s most faithful viewers plugged in for the first half of season three; a debutante we can all get behind. It remains to be seen just how much of a wrench the inevitable Whistledown revelations will toss into this particular endgame, but it’s sure to make for just as watchable a development as most all of this season has been so far.
Perhaps the biggest x-factor outside of Polin is the ascension into society of one Francesca Bridgerton, who’s quite firmly marked herself as one of the most curious debutantes we’ve seen in the entire show; that is, if you consider preferring the piano to the oft-vapid game of Regency-era romance to be curious behavior.
Might it furthermore be the case that such behavior has to do with a more biological lack of interest in attracting a husband, in equal measure with which it has to do with loving sheet music?
Is Francesca Bridgerton asexual?
If so, it would be quite the divergence from Julia Quinn’s source material; When He Was Wicked, the novel in which Francesca takes center-stage, makes viscerally little secret of the fact that the second-youngest Bridgerton sibling is very interested in sex, following her life as a widow who re-enters the marriage market.
That’s not to say that Hannah Dodd and the writing team can’t play around with the possibility here, but it really might just be the case that Francesca is exhibiting entirely allosexual, introverted behavior in the face of a grotesquely stratified dating game; one in which she and John Stirling are happy to just observe quietly from the far sidelines.
Bridgerton‘s first four episodes of its third season are now streaming on Netflix, with the last four set to release on June 13.
