Hot Take: Let's End Bridgerton on a High Note with Season 4

Immediately after it was released on Netflix in December 2020, Bridgerton became an international pop culture phenomenon.

The series quickly garnered a large and dedicated fan base and was renewed for three more seasons.

Besides a few deviations, the show is largely based on Julia Quinn's best-selling novel series, which has a very specific structure that fans would like to see translated to the screen. But can we expect the Netflix adaptation to follow Quinn's narrative structure so closely?

The original series consists of eight novels, each telling the love story of a Bridgerton sibling, beginning with Daphne and ending with Gregory. Such a structure feels natural on paper because the fictional book universe allows the author to tell two stories at the same time in different novels or jump between stories that are several years apart.

And though storytelling in television can also be very flexible, it may be just too difficult for the Bridgerton producers to adapt Quinn's storylines exactly and maintain viewers' interest in the series at the same time.

The first two seasons of Bridgerton focused on one romantic storyline each, but there were also many subplots and secondary characters featured in every episode, which were meant to keep the audience interested, engaged, and excited for the next seasons. Furthermore, the adaptation can't allow years between the main storylines because the actors would have to be aged, and that wouldn't sit well with the viewers.

Inevitably, these problems lead to a change in the original structure of the book series. Netflix's show has already altered the order of the novels by moving Penelope and Colin's story ahead of Benedict's, and it will likely make more changes in the future.

Season 4 may have not one but two love storylines — Benedict's and Eloise's stories are ready to be told, so it's quite likely that both will start in Season 3 and end in Season 4, ensuring that both characters' love arcs have enough screen time.

And after these two stories are shown, there will be nothing left to support the show's high ratings. Benedict and Eloise had their arcs developed from day one, and they seem to be the last Bridgerton siblings that a casual viewer cares enough about to tune in.

Francesca, who has been recast, Gregory, and Hyacinth are too underdeveloped at this point to keep the ratings high, and the characters that viewers have come to love are bound to leave after their stories are told, as happened with Simon and Daphne.

So for the sake of the ratings, it would probably be best to end the show on a high note with Season 4.