Penelope and Colin’s Long-Awaited Romance Grounds Bridgerton’s Sprawling Third Season

It’s been over two years since Netflix’s Bridgerton was last on our screens, which as we all know is forever in television time. So you’d be forgiven for wondering whether the megapopular period drama might have lost some of its charm during all its time away. Happily, that is most definitely not the case. In fact, Bridgerton’s third season is a welcome return to lush, steamy form, course-correcting many of the mistakes that plagued its sophomore outing and using what is arguably its strongest romantic relationship to help set the series up for the future. 

Yes, “Polin” season has finally arrived on Bridgerton and fans of the friends-to-lovers relationship between Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) have much to celebrate. While Netflix’s incomprehensible decision to split this latest batch of episodes into two parts does this outing no favors—and will likely accomplish little but annoying fans—the show’s third season is swoon-worthy and deeply romantic, full of earned moments and heartfelt emotional beats. The show grounds these episodes in our years-long emotional investment in these two characters and their future together, even as it busily reshuffles the larger scope of the series around them. A blend of the familiar and the new, Season 3 feels like a true ensemble piece, one that is centered firmly on Penelope’s emotional journey even as it introduces a bevy of new relationships and characters in supporting roles. 

Unlike Simon (Rege-Jean Page) and Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) or Kate (Simone Ashley) and Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), who each met and fell in love during their respective seasons, we’ve had multiple seasons to fully invest ourselves in the “Polin” romance. We’ve known both Penelope and Colin since the series started. We’ve spent significant time with them, both separately and together. We’ve watched Penelope pining over a boy she thinks she can never have. We’ve witnessed Colin validate Penelope’s worth when so many others have mocked her. The slow burn of their friends-to-something-more love story has played out in front of us across literal years, and it’s hard to overstate the joy of finally seeing this duo come together romantically. (Particularly in a television landscape that is so often extremely hesitant about actually putting its obvious endgame couples together.) 

The third season’s premise is fairly straightforward. Penelope, chafing at life under the Featherington roof with her mother, her two sisters, their new husbands, and no hope that Colin will ever return her feelings, decides it’s time for her to finally start seeking a match in earnest. That’s easier said than done for a wallflower in her third season on the marriage market, particularly when she has some rather specific needs—such as privacy to run her gossip empire as Lady Whistledown—that any future spouse will have to fulfill. Colin, for his part, has leveled up both physically and sexually whilst on his recent European vacation, and returns to Bridgerton House swole, confident, and full of tales of his many female conquests on the continent. That he doesn’t immediately notice how hurt Penelope is by the cruel comments she overheard him make about her last season is another example of Colin’s general obliviousness, but he at least grovels nicely after he figures out she’s angry with him and promises to make it all up to her by giving her lessons in Husband Catching 101.

Said instruction is wildly successful, given that his efforts not only help her attract the attention of handsome, if overly outdoorsy suitor Lord Debling (Sam Phillips), but ultimately force Colin himself to realize that his feelings for Penelope are maybe not as platonic as he once thought. It’s amazing what a little close-talking flirtation and a kind touch or two can do. (10/10 trope, no notes.)  As with most of Bridgerton’s stories, nothing about this is particularly subtle. But damn if it still isn’t incredibly affecting. 

Coughlan and Newton’s chemistry remains sweetly adorable, and after a second season that saw central romance Kate and Anthony spend most of it denying their attraction to one another even existed, it’s refreshing to follow a romance whose affections are so clear and whose story is so firmly grounded in the history of what their relationship means to them both. And because the show spends as much time on their emotional journeys as it does their romantic attachment, we’re allowed to see both characters come into their own as individuals and as a couple.