7 hours ago
11
Dearest gentle reader … Netflix has announced that Bridgerton’s upcoming fifth season will focus on a gay lead storyline in a first for the hit romantic period drama.
Netflix confirmed the news on Tuesday while also revealing that the new season is in production.
The teaser trailer, which is less than a minute long, depicts the two characters, Francesca Bridgerton and her cousin-in-law Michaela Stirling, standing alongside one another and almost holding hands.
In the new season, Francesca, the introverted middle daughter of the eponymous Bridgerton brood played by Hannah Dodd, will find herself in a “complicated” romantic relationship with Michaela, played by Masali Baduza.
Francesca’s inability to orgasm – or as the show puts it, reach a “pinnacle” – was a storyline of the show’s fourth season, while her husband, John Stirling (Victor Alli), unexpectedly died near the season’s end, leaving her a widow. Two years later Francesca re-enters the marriage market for “practical reasons” – as Michaela stirs “complicated feelings” within her.
The announcement is a major shift for the Regency romance series, as every main couple featured in the show have been opposite-sex partners.
The second-eldest Bridgerton child, Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) was confirmed as being bisexual and was shown experiencing romantic and sexual relationships with men and women. But his relationship with a maid, Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha), was the main focus of the last season, which reached 28 million viewers.
In the original book series by the US author Julia Quinn, Michaela was a male character named Michael. There were no main queer characters or storylines in Quinn’s works, making this gender swap a deliberate choice by Netflix showrunners.
In an interview with Out this year, the executive producer and showrunner Jess Brownell said telling queer stories in Bridgerton was “hugely important” to her.
“I feel like Bridgerton made its name in many ways on being an inclusive universe, and for queer stories to be left out of that would not feel right,”she said.
A release date for Bridgerton’s fifth season has not yet been announced.
