Bridgerton Fandom Divided Over Nicola's Take on Penelope & Marina

If there is one thing that the huge Bridgerverse fan base will never agree on, it is the Marina Thompson storyline from Season 1. An entire season and over two years later, fans are still discussing Marina's situation and how Penelope 'Pen' Featherington handled it.

And the closer we get to Penelope's love story with Colin Bridgerton, the more heated these discussions become.

Marina was introduced in Season 1 as a guest in the Featheringtons' house in search of a worthy husband. As she and Penelope became close, Marina confided in her new friend a shocking secret: she got pregnant with her lover's child back home, but the man had disappeared from her radar.

Long story short, Marina decided to trap Colin in a loveless marriage and pretend the child was his. But being Lady Whistledown, Pen took harsh measures and wrote about Marina's delicate situation in her gossip column, ruining the engagement, Marina's reputation, and the Featherington pride.

In interviews after the season premiere, Nicola Coughlan, who plays Penelope, was quite scathing about her character's actions.

'I was mad with [Pen]. It's not only Marina's life that she's basically condemned, but also her sisters'. She's playing with fire,' Nicola told R29.

The actress' words are often used as proof of Penelope's eternal guilt by the part of the Bridgerverse fandom that thinks Pen is a terrible character and doesn't deserve Colin (or any other love interest, for that matter) without a strong redemption arc. However, there is also a large coalition of fans who simply cannot agree with either Coughlan or the Penelope haters.

Yes, Penelope's decision was harsh, but it's also unfair to put all the blame on her, fans say. If we take a closer look at the whole situation, we'll find that Pen was no more in the wrong than Marina. Marina's position was sympathetic, but what about Colin — did he deserve to be baby-trapped? By taking drastic measures, Penelope saved the Bridgertons a lot of embarrassment.

Besides, Pen did try to solve the problem in many other ways by talking to Marina and her mother. And she only exposed Marina as a last resort, hours before she and Colin ran off to get married.

Even though she condemns her character's actions against Marina, Nicola Coughlan says Pen is a genuinely good person who had been bullied and emotionally abused by her own family all her life. And isn't that redemption enough?

Source: R29.