Does Bridgerton’s Shift Away From the Books in Season 2 Work?

And the season’s biggest swerve—making the bee sting just another moment of sexual tension instead of a forced marriage proposal—turns into an unnecessary overcorrection. For non-book readers, this decision turned the bee sting from a silly reason to make the characters get married into a genuinely sensual moment between the lovers. It also made Season 2 feel less like a Xerox copy of Season 1, where the primary plot also hinges on forced nuptials after Daphne is caught in a “compromised” position with the Duke of Hastings. But the shift robs Kate and Anthony of the genuine one-on-one time necessary for their relationship to blossom and kept Kate on the enemy side of the “enemies to lovers” equation for far too long, giving fans little time to see her and Anthony together.

One can argue that the decision to create a love triangle where both Kate and Edwina are falling for the same man is a more interesting story to tell. It also explores the unhealthy relationship that can sometimes develop between siblings, as Kate unconsciously manipulates Edwina into wanting the life Kate actually desires. These types of nuanced stories where siblings can be both good and bad are something romances of this sort rarely explore in-depth, preferring siblings to either be wholly supportive, or entirely antagonistic.

But by inserting Edwina into the love triangle, and having her and Anthony play out a scenario where he proposes to her first, Kate and Anthony’s relationship never gets any time to develop away on its own terms. (In the novel, Edwina is willing to accept a proposal from Anthony should one come, but it’s out of duty for her family to marry well. She’s actually in love with a scholar with no inheritance, and her reaction to Kate and Anthony’s engagement is far more along the lines of “bullet dodged” than anything else.)

Moreover, by creating this difficult and nuanced relationship, the show also creates a situation where viewers could pick someone to root for besides its designated heroine Kate, a huge no-no in the romance genre. Worse, Edwina’s Daphne-like ingenue innocence is something viewers were already primed to root for after the show’s first season, while, Kate becomes more of a Mary Sue-like character.

This may have helped some viewers insert themselves into the Bridgerton world, but on the page, Kate is anything but a Mary Sue. She’s a rare figure for romance, someone with a spunky attitude, a “wallflower who’s learned to function in the patriarchy,” but who has also completely internalized and deeply believes society’s attitude toward her as a woman no one in their right mind would marry. She’s already a complicated enough figure for the screen without including conflict with Edwina or the love triangle, additions that simplify her into someone more two-dimensional.

It is also an odd choice to adapt The Viscount Who Loved Me into a more mainstream-style romance, considering what’s to come in the next book. Should the show continue to follow the series semi-faithfully, Benedict’s story, An Offer From A Gentleman, will form the basis for Season 3. Quinn’s third book is already a more mainstream style romance than its predecessors, with a slow burn relationship between the lovers and a heroine who is also of dubious birth origins. Though, in that case, she is the bastard daughter of an Earl, not the child of a commoner husband who her titled mother lovingly adopts. It’s also essentially Bridgerton-Does-Cinderella, and retelling one of Disney’s most popular tales is a recipe for skewing even more chaste than Season 2 already did.

Bridgerton is still a delightful series and super fun even though it goes from having somewhere around a dozen sex scenes to all of one. (Ok, maybe one and a half.) For those who know nothing about the books, Anthony’s story was probably very fulfilling, despite the lack of sex. But the show’s reputation is partially earned from its willingness to put all the sex found in your typical romance novel on screen, and it seems a strange choice to move away from that so quickly, especially when the second book is far less problematic in that department than the first.

For book readers, it’s also a sign that perhaps we had our hopes too high. The next streaming service to option a romance adaptation from a different popular series will probably also veer more to the mainstream with Bridgerton’s successful swerve towards the less risque side. As for where Bridgerton Season 3 plans to go, that’s just about anyone’s guess.