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PORTSIDE CULTURE

BRIDGERTON FINALLY GAVE US QUEER STORYLINES. FANS AREN’T HAVING IT.
 
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Aja Romano
June 18, 2024
Vox
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_ The show’s first queer storylines have been met with backlash,
homophobia, and misogynoir. _

Luke Thompson as Benedict Bridgerton., Liam Daniel/Netflix

 

Aja Romano [[link removed]] writes about pop
culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a
staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics
Institute, they’re considered an authority on fandom, the internet,
and the culture wars.

At long last, _Bridgerton_ has found its queer storylines! Aaaaand,
of course, the celebration has already been cut short thanks to a
frustrating mix of homophobia, misogynoir, and book purists.

As a television show with an enormous fanbase, _Bridgerton_ has
naturally provoked strong responses from audiences with the second
half of its third season
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which Netflix released over the weekend. Much of it once again
[[link removed]] divided
devotees of the books from Netflix-only viewers. The show has never
been a fully faithful retelling of the _Bridgerton_ books by romance
novelist Julia Quinn — but that’s a selling point in its favor
because the OG Bridgertons and their love interests are all straight
and white. 

The show’s biggest change thus far has been its
famous color-conscious casting
[[link removed]].
Now, at last, we can add queer representation to the list. Among the
plethora of romance plot lines the show was juggling in its
eight-episode season, released in two parts, were tantalizing hints at
queer representation from two characters’ storylines.

The first was a development the show teased early on but then seemed
to have forgotten about. Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) has been
what we might call queer-adjacent since season one, primarily through
his dalliances with London’s sexually liberated underground party
scene. He finally stumbled his way into discovering his identity after
a casual fling introduced him to the wonders of threesomes with men.
It’s a turn that feels long overdue, and I’m thrilled that I no
longer have to designate him “the inexplicably straight
Bridgerton.” 

The second was a rather charming bait-and-switch. Francesca Bridgerton
(Hannah Dodd) featured prominently for the first time after casting
issues kept her AWOL
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so we spent most of this season getting to know her. She turned out to
be a rare thing for a Bridgerton — shy and retiring, arguably
neurodivergent
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and most shocking of all, steadfastly dedicated to the idea of a
sparks-free romance with her new suitor John Stirling, Lord Kilmartin
(Victor Alli). The pair made an adorably low-key couple of besties who
stole my heart in the season’s first half — only for Francesca to
meet John’s stunning, vivacious cousin Michaela (Masali Baduza) in
the final moments of the season and go fully lovestruck. 

It’s interesting that _Bridgerton_ chose these two routes toward
queer diversity. Benedict’s storyline in the books is a loose
retelling of Cinderella, with Benedict in the role of the prince.
Giving Benedict his own male version of Cinderella would not only be
an interesting way to flip what is perhaps the most patriarchal,
heteronormative fairy tale in romancelandia. It would be deviant and
exciting on a number of fronts — exactly what we’d need to keep
the show’s romances from becoming stale. The third season has
already pointed us toward this storyline in season four, but exactly
who Benedict’s suitor is remains to be seen. 

(There’s a whole rather delicious sidebar here about fans’ ongoing
attempts to figure out exactly who this casting choice is, only to be
thwarted; at one point many fans were convinced
[[link removed]] that Baduza
had been cast in the role of Benedict’s future flame, only to learn
with the final moments of this season that she’d been cast as
Francesca’s instead. That means there’s still plenty of hope for a
male/male _Bridgerton_ romance to come!)

As for Francesca and Michaela, theirs was a twist we didn’t see
coming at all, mainly because John and Francesca were already 
subversive. This season continually emphasized Francesca’s quiet
confidence in her attachment to the socially awkward John, all against
the advice of her mother (Ruth Gemmell), who kept telling her that
true love was supposed to feel like a heady, emotional event, the
fabled lightning strike. That Francesca and John were simply adorable
and notably nonsexual together was a strong and unexpected but welcome
display of support from the show for romance on the asexual spectrum
... until it wasn’t. 

Around the time Lady Bridgerton finally accepted that there were
multiple ways of being in love and that perhaps her daughter was
right, Michaela showed up and struck Francesca speechless. Does this
mean Francesca is demisexual, meaning she’s only interested in
romance and sex with someone she’s already first grown to love?
Possibly, but it seems like that’s a subtlety
that _Bridgerton_ — which doesn’t have the greatest track
record
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it comes to nuance — doesn’t have the capacity to contend with,
and we’re instead supposed to read Francesca as having been naive
and misguided about her feelings all along. 

It’s also true, however, that the show’s third season feels a bit
like a reset, with expanded possibilities for all of its characters.
So giving _Bridgerton_ the benefit of the doubt here, we could also
be set up for a fun, fascinating story of consensual polyamory — one
that allows for love between both Francesca and John as they deal with
marital plot threads from Francesca’s original storyline and gives
us the heady adventure of Francesca falling in love with her
husband’s cousin. In other words, rather than forbidden love, we
could be getting a story that embraces both queer and open,
polyamorous relationships without ultimately devaluing what Francesca
originally felt for John. (Quinn’s original storyline rapidly
dispatches with John altogether to make way for Francesca’s new love
interest, so anything that allows him to stick around for a while
would be a positive — he’s a delight.) Season three’s showrunner
Jess Brownell has stated
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wants Francesca’s storyline to play out over several seasons, so we
could well be exploring all of these possibilities in the future.

Our other primary contender for queer rep, Eloise (Claudia Jessie),
fits many of the parameters for what we think of when we think of
“liberated queer woman” — she’s a proto-feminist with an
independent, anarchist streak, she’s got a penchant for hanging with
the working class, and she’s shown zero interest in traditional
family life thus far. She’s been serving sapphic vibes since the
moment she and Benedict first hung out in tree swings together in
season one, establishing their private, queer-Bridgertons-only club.

Yet Eloise, queer or not, also presents potentially the show’s
greatest divergence from the books because all these details make her
a much different character from Quinn’s progenitor. If the show
stays strictly faithful to the trajectory of the books, fans of the
show might be seriously unprepared for Eloise’s storyline, which
sets her up with a country life of motherhood and domesticity. So far,
the show seems to be at least feinting in that direction, but this
season is an exercise in why leaving the books behind may be the
show’s best decision. 

At various points, the themes of the books turn quite regressive, so
it’s been heartening to see how the show has polished some (but not
all) of the rougher spots while remaining true to them in spirit. Not
everyone is on board with the changes, though, especially not when
they interfere with book fans’ ideas of their beloved couples.

The fandom has long believed
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Quinn indicated the _Bridgerton_ writers were contractually
obligated to keep all of the main romantic relationships from the
novels intact. Fans have often parroted this narrative, both to
reassure themselves when the story unsettles them and particularly to
dismiss the possibility of any of the main relationships becoming
queer ones. 

In fact, Quinn said the complete opposite: In a recent Facebook
comment, she debunked
[[link removed][0]=AZXR260WzaQdEO0P9U4P6NSzbpAmxJhARxIUOcraYkEe2bek6MZaAxsCYGZx8TSFFcLTGIgh2FRawtbBU36A4vw_P8zpWsNfZ9wW4HcAqelMqpzJFMR7IcwKA5DuFqtiolFOf5_2ZDb0y45zTQ_1EyRWeKRDjML19ywP6OagTFpp1Nbq43064HVenziTGwq-Je7ozJ0KRG1t1bZWVQbpFnSb&__tn__=R]-R] the
“contractually obligated” myth, and in a 2021 interview
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gushed about the possibility for queer relationships and queer
Bridgertons on the show. We shouldn’t even need to point out that
it’s a stretch to expect a family as large as the Bridgertons to
have zero queer kids among them, and in 2024 we likewise shouldn’t
have to point out that changing a character’s gender or sexual
orientation doesn’t significantly change anything else about their
character in any way. The switch probably wouldn’t even faze most
of _Bridgerton_’s 45 million
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The smattering of viewers who are fazed, however, are incensed at
these alterations — particularly the change-up of John’s cousin
“Michael Stirling” with “Michaela Stirling.” There’s
absolutely nothing about this character’s personality or plotline
that can’t map onto a woman, and the one wrinkle this twist provides
— a subplot relating to infertility — could easily be dealt with
in an interesting way, especially if the show explored nontraditional
options for John and Francesca’s marriage. Yet some fans are
outraged. 

A “mega-thread
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devoted to complaining about the character change on the
main _Bridgerton_ subreddit has nearly 1,000 comments. Fans have
been bombarding social media accounts for _Bridgerton_ as well as
the actors, demanding that the show undo the casting of Baduza.
A petition
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this effect has garnered 16,000 signatures in the handful of days
since the season’s back half dropped; and while it’s satisfying to
note that this represents a little more than 0.03 percent
of _Bridgerton_’s viewership, those voices are loud, strident, and
very, very bitter.

It’s impossible not to notice that the same level of vitriol
hasn’t attached to the show for making Benedict queer. It’s hard
not to assume that most of the anger swirling around Michaela’s
character seems to be a product of blanket, garden-variety misogynoir
and homophobia. 

The mods of the aforementioned subreddit, r/Bridgerton, seemed to
recognize this; in their mega-thread for complaints, they also
announced a new rule banning general casting complaints: “If you
have a negative reaction or want to say you are disappointed that your
favorite character is getting a change related to race, shape, or
sexuality, it will be removed,” they wrote. “This ruleset covers
both LGBTQ casting and POC casting choices.”

This type of didactic decision-making is exactly what the fans who are
complaining are mad about — blah blah diversity, something something
too woke — but that’s exactly why it’s important. If the
loudest, most vocal, most stridently opinionated fans had their way,
queer Black characters might never get their moment to shine, and we
might never get to enjoy the way Michaela’s eyes sparkle the moment
she sees Francesca, or the way Benedict reaches for his first kiss
with another man, so haltingly, then with elation. 

I’ve been hard on _Bridgerton_ in the past, if only because I
never thought we’d get to this point. But _Bridgerton_ is rare
among streaming juggernauts — which are rare enough as it is. It’s
a show that not only commits to its diversity, but has the resources
to tell diverse stories well. If _Bridgerton_ gets its originally
planned
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run — and that seems likely given its massive popularity — it will
be even more unique among both streaming and Netflix hits for
delivering interracial and queer storytelling on a budget rarely
devoted to such storylines. 

And those storylines — thank goodness — are happening, whether
fans are on board or not. 

* bridgerton
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* queer representation
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* misogynoir
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* homophobia
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* NETFLIX
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