Emily in Paris will return soon to Netflix with season 4. However, as the streamer released the trailer for the first part, we can’t help but wonder: hasn’t Emily learned anything at all?
Emily in Paris comes from Sex and the City creator Darren Star, and stars the lovely Lily Collins in the leading role. Her character, Emily, moves to Paris temporarily because of her marketing job, but, after a couple seasons, Emily decided to make the move permanent. While balancing her career with her flamboyant, colorful personality and some outrageous, head-turning outfits, Emily got caught in a love triangle.
Love triangles were one of the most frequently used romcom tropes from the early 2000s through the mid-2010s, and feel so outdated now that it’s hard to imagine one bringing anything interesting to the table. Emily got caught between two very fine options — chef Gabriel, the object of her desire since moving to Paris, and the lovable British finance worker Alfie. Season 3 finale seemed to solve it and clear the path for an Emily-Gabriel romance, but the new trailer seems to hint that things won’t be that easy.
Emily in Paris season 3 trailer hints at more love triangles
At the end of season 3, Emily found out Camille and Gabriel were expecting a baby. Despite the two of them calling off the wedding, it looks like Emily and Gabriel won’t get together — at least, not yet. After Camille exposed Emily’s feelings for Gabriel, Alfie left and told her he needed some time to process it, which meant the two of them had a clear path.
The trailer opens up extremely encouragingly — with Emily noticing that there are more men in the world than Gabriel and Alfie. Wow, a fresh start! However, that merely lasts seconds before she’s pulled back into the same overused storyline.
Similar to the previous three seasons, Emily and Gabriel are prevented from getting together by a shining suit of plot armor — read: stupid excuses to drag it out. She is caught once more in a world of messy drama, with the love triangle, workplace brouhaha, and everything else in her life in chaos, with many juicy secrets threatening to spill out.
Emily in Paris will get the divided-season treatment
The trailer also reveals that Emily in Paris season 4 will be divided into two parts, as per Netflix’s new release strategy. The first part will arrive on August 15, with the second half of the season premiering less than a month later, on September 12. While the move to premiere the seasons separately might’ve been to keep subscribers for more than a month, dividing the new Emily in Paris season makes no sense to me.
If Emily in Paris fans aren’t subscribed to the streamer anymore, they can re-subscribe starting on August 15, and then cancel their subscription and still get to see Emily in Paris season 4 part 2 on the same one-month subscription. But we didn’t tell you that. Of course, the move is to grow more anticipation and get people to talk about it but, if Bridgerton season 4 taught us anything, it was that the wait between the two parts was frustrating, and there wasn’t enough excitement halfway through for the streaming service to justify separating the two.
So far, it’s unclear whether Emily in Paris will have more Parisian experiences beyond season 4, so Netflix is using everything it has to bring more anticipation back into the same old, tired storyline. But since everyone already knows Emily in Paris is so bad that it’s good, count us in for a snark-watch!