Bridgerton is in the business of giving its characters what they want (unless they happen to be Cressida Cowper). By the end of the Regency-era fantasy’s third season, Penelope and Colin are happily married parents of a son and heir, Eloise is off to see the world, and Francesca experiences the love-at-first-sight moment she thought she’d never have. But what about us, the yearning-to-be-entertained viewers? The fourth season of the series probably won’t hit our Netflix accounts until 2025, yet like Philippa Featherington’s unexpected affection for bugs in a party setting, we’re antsy for more. Julia Quinn’s novels certainly offer a road map for where Bridgerton could go next, but the series has jumped around the books enough — making significant and welcome changes along the way — to maintain a sense of mystery as we look to the future. And so, we’ve brought Vulture’s ton enthusiasts together to share what they personally want out of Bridgerton’s next go-round. —Roxana Hadadi
Lady Danbury’s squad goals
Lady Danbury is a girl’s girl, a ride or die, and a true friend to not just Violet Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte, but seemingly most women in the ton, as her fast friendship with Alice Mondrich proves. Surely her social calendar is packed with tea parties and happy hours spent complaining about husbands (whatever happened to those ladies-only salons she hosted in season one??) before ending the evening with a puff of whatever’s in that cigarette. With Lady Whistledown taking new form, Danbury’s position as the most influential person in London could provide new avenues for gossip. Perhaps someone’s housemaid’s daughter works at the Arnold residence and saw Benedict Bridgerton calling, or maybe Eloise’s new best friend is one of Danbury’s casual chess competitors. There’s a whole network outside of our main characters that only one lady in the ton can give us access to — and we need to see more of her. —Zoë Haylock
Some (???) acknowledgement of colonialism
Because both Jonathan Bailey and Simone Ashley returned for the third season of Bridgerton, we got to see Anthony and Kate’s happy, sex-filled marriage. Aspirational stuff! Except the two exit the season early to travel to India to visit Kate’s hometown, and the possibility of this trip has filled me with simultaneous curiosity and dread. As my colleague Kathryn VanArendonk wrote so incisively during the series’s second season, Bridgerton’s racially inclusive society is pleasant on its surface but contradictorily rendered when so much of the ton’s class-based hierarchy is directly tied to the U.K.’s colonialist history and imperialist injustices. If we actually leave Mayfair and travel to the Indian subcontinent, that would be a huge change for this otherwise tightly imagined series — and Bridgerton should do it! By materially and physically expanding its world, the show could rectify its past vagaries: Maybe it could take the time to present the British empire as the intrusive, culture-destroying force it actually was; maybe we would understand how the Indian caste system and the British class system similarly shaped Kate’s life, turning her into the ball-busting older sister we saw in the second season.
Yes, it would seem tonally weird if Bridgerton suddenly gave us a Schoolhouse Rock–style explanatory episode about the evils of expansionism, but I’m hoping the show would at least gesture toward those realities. If the India trip even feints toward someone telling Anthony the whole nobility system sucks, I’ll eat a vat of Holi powder. —R.H.
Eloise Eat, Pray, Loves Scotland
Season four definitely won’t be Eloise’s turn, and honestly, thank God. We need more of Eloise finding herself (and more of Claudia Jessie’s chaotic presence on the press tour). Season three leaves her at a most exciting place — if the writers commit to it — by taking her out of London and sending her to Scotland with Francesca. Even though Bridgerton hasn’t cared to leave the ton in past seasons, I need them to show us this journey for real; Fran will have her hands full being married (and lowkey in love with John’s cousin), so it’s time for Eloise to explore what life outside of England has to offer before she settles down with her future love interest. She should consume Scottish cuisine like porridge and Haggis and drink wine alone like Carrie Bradshaw. Let her run across a field of sheep in the rain! She still needs a flirty pick-me-up from season two’s devastating fallout with Theo Sharpe — let her find a handsome Scot in a kilt! It’s a five-star episode of Bridgerton waiting to happen, if you ask me. —Savannah Salazar
A satisfying ending
Bridgerton has trouble finishing. Sometimes it’s a wild mishandling of the racial politics in a relationship, sometimes it’s an over-investment in angst and underinvestment in sex. My greatest wish for the fourth season is that this show figures out how to support its own romance structure. Stakes and sex! Conflict on both sides! Maybe a relationship that doesn’t instantly create a fundamentally unanswerable set of questions about the show’s world-building, or if it does (eye waggle at Francesca) at least allow characters to be more curious and thoughtful about it? All the pieces are there, Bridgerton, you’ve just gotta figure out how to keep the momentum going all the way through to the end. No one likes a premature release (of tension). —Kathryn VanArendonk
Vacanza flashback episode!
If anyone deserves time outside of Mayfair, it’s Lady Danbury. She does her best work for the ton and never gets a day off. Presumably, she spent the years after her children grew up relishing in her independence and traveling the world (we know she’s already been to Scotland) but there’s nothing stopping her from taking on the rest of Europe, the Americas, and maybe even visiting home in Sierra Leone to finally confront her father. Perhaps this could be framed as a flashback? All she has to do is describe her trips to Eloise, inspiring the Bridgerton daughter to keep exploring upon her own return from the Highlands. —Z.H.
The Featheringtons as girl moms
Phillipa and Prudence are the Regency-era versions of Mormon mommy bloggers and should be put in charge of babysitting the Bridgerton cousins: Baby Viscount, Baby Lord Featherington, and Toddler August when he’s in town. The main characters will obviously be up to no good, making more babies and more problems, so in between all of that nonsense, we need scenes of the sisters wrangling them all for a portrait, dressing them in outrageously impractical fashions, and getting outsmarted by the next generation. —Z.H.
Some Gentleman Jack energy
With Francesca’s introduction to Michaela Stirling, Bridgerton’s season-three finale confirmed we’re finally getting our first queer-female storyline. However, it’s not enough! In season four, I’d like to meet a queer character who really disrupts the Bridgerton world as we know it: a masc lesbian. The power she would hold in a show ripe with single, queer-coded female characters is … almost unfathomable. Just look at how Lady Tilley shook things up! It’s time for Bridgerton to get a little more Gentleman Jack. —Zoe Papelis
Clock boy
He’s not in this show, but he should be. —Z.H.
A ton more bridges
I’ve never seen the show. I’m now seeing it is actually “BridgeRton”, with a hard R, not “Bridgeston.” Please, please, please don’t publish this. —Jesse David Fox
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