s4 feels very different from the other seasons
english is not my first language, so please forgive any mistakes!
i'm mostly a lurker here, guys, i'm not really much of a poster but i wanted to talk about this very interesting experience i had. i started bridgerton from s4 mostly because i was pulled into it by my friends online and also because i found the premise interesting. i haven't watched the show before, so i don't really know what happened before, so i went into it completely blind and it was very surprising!!
i loved season 4 so much even though i didn't know the characters that well (had my girls fill me in on the characters tho!) and i decided to give s1-3 a chance as well. i'm not a big fan of fairy tales or fairy stories, and cinderella is not my favourite, but s4 was very pleasantly surprising that i didn't realise it was supposed to be a cinderella story until after i'd watched it. the acting performances were so so good. the actors were so wonderful and charismatic, it didn't feel like a cliche fairy story at all. like it was very immersive and i was just pulled into it completely, and it did feel like watching something so emotional and so lovingly made. i used to read some shakespeare at school for my english language course and it felt something out of shakespeare: the magic, the story, the world, the types of tragedies that occur, the problems faced by the characters, it all felt like a drama play.
obviously having fairy stories in 2026 can be considered a bit uninspired, but i actually really liked bridgerton's take on it and the way they handled class differences and a forbidden romance on top of the magic of cinderella and being ignorant, i assumed all the previous seasons also followed a fairy tale romance! 🤦♀️🤦♀️my own foolishness!!! keep in mind before, i wasn't familiar with the concept of each season centered on one theme, so i thought all seasons will have some common similarity of a magical romance in the regency era, which is quite interesting instead of typical jane austen, grounded romance novels.
in my opinion the previous seasons all felt so weirdly different. season one was grounded in realism, but it was too gritty. season two was all tension and season three was more of an ensemble show than the romance. so yeah! i think s4 might be an exception here! it had a healthy balance of everything, the characters were brilliant and i was of course tuned in for benedict and sophie's story. i think they're just very magical! and it did feel like s4 existed in some other universe because of how good and precise it was, on the whole. a cinderella story is very simple, but bridgerton really makes it better by introducing complex themes like class differences, grief, romance, longing, yearning for forbidden love, societal expectations, gender, so on and so forth. i think and this is just my opinion, this season has so much substance and plot in comparison and tackles so much of the unaddressed, quiet issues in bridgerton. racism was addressed in s1, but i think it was mostly done to explain why people of different races could coexist in society back then, but s4 addressed so many things that explained why bridgerton society is the way it is. s4 had a set identity, which i think changes the show on the whole from the topic of balls and galas to something much more serious. i think the next season is about a wlw romance so we will see some lgbtq+ issues being tackled as well.
s4 really bridged the gap so to speak, but as a result it feels like a completely different show, and that's actually a really good thing! it introduces something different in terms of characters: the character of sophie baek really changed the show for good. instead of the same 'i have to get married by the end of the season' type female characters, sophie felt so much more fleshed out. she is the strong female protagonist i think we are missing from modern media. strong females need not have to be violent, to say what they mean. they should be respected just as much as anyone else, because they are human and sophie, by demanding dignity and respect for herself, shows that she deserves better too and she should not be counted out just because she is poor, or she is a woman. it brings to light a lot of class issues because we aren't used to humanising those that live below the poverty line and if a mainstream tv show like bridgerton can start the conversation, i think we should all try to continue it.
like i said! healthy mix of both realism and fantasy! it feels like shakespeare with how sometimes absurd and nice it gets, but also stays grounded. i love stories like this personally that is rewarding and emotional, and honours romance and doesn't treat it with pessimism. i recently went through heartbreak and s4 brought me a lot of hope in a time when i thought things will never recover. it is funny because you don't usually expect such hope to spring up from a forbidden romance story with class differences, because usually at the end of the day, the main characters are forced to separate.
i think what sets s4 apart and makes it unique is that it is different from other tragic forbidden stories. it rewards effort and with the quirky bridgerton magic (the magical and the real part here!) it helps the characters get together. whatever happens, benedict is fated to be with sophie, there is no doubt about that. it is more about how they get there, what kind of obstacles come their way and how each obstacle brings up the character's inner fears and hopes that makes all the difference.
i think there is a lot to praise about s4. this is just a random collection of my thoughts lol! i loved benophie, the premise, i also loved alice and will, the two not so evil stepsisters and sophie's friends. even though they were side characters, i think they were some of my favourite characters given very important roles. well! these are my take aways from the show!
thanks for reading if you have made it this far! i'm just posting my thoughts here because i don't know where else to put them. thank you for your patience