Bridgerton Season 4 Wedding Post Credits Scene: Sophie, Benedict

Elsewhere in the Season 4 finale, Penelope (Nicola Coughlan) has been allowed to retire from her role as Lady Whistledown (though someone else has mysteriously taken up the task), Alice Mondrich (Emma Naomi) is the new lady-in-waiting to the Queen (Golda Rosheuvel) and Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) is headed on a much needed vacation, Francesca (Hannah Dodd) is mourning John (Victor Alli) alone now that Michaela (Masali Baduza) has abandoned her, Violet (Ruth Gemmell)has decided to be single over marrying Marcus (Daniel Francis), Cressida (Jessica Madsen) returned to the ton and arrived at some peace with Eloise (Claudia Jessie), Kate (Simone Ashley) and Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) returned from India with their baby boy Edmund to straight everyone out, and it’s still made completely clear who will be the lead of Season 5.

Below, Brownell breaks down Variety‘s biggest burning questions from “Bridgerton” Season 4 and tease the next chapter of the drama based on Julia Quinn’s novels.

We’re gonna start where I love to start, which is with the babies. Have you see the reaction to the casting of Baby Edmund and the comparisons between that baby’s expression and Kate and Anthony’s iconic shared eyebrow scrunch?

I saw the side by side of Kate’s beautiful eyes looking at Anthony with love compared to the baby. And, yeah, it’s a genius casting. They really nailed it.

The honoring of Edmund, how did you all decide that’s what you were going to go with for Kate and Anthony’s first child’s name?

Yes, Edmund is Violet’s deceased husband. So obviously, Anthony, the firstborn boy, honoring his father makes a lot of sense.

It’s interesting to see so far Daphne has been the only Bridgerton sibling to honor the ABC naming convention her parents picked.

Yes, yes. Her story, it was the first season we were introducing that conceit — and following what Julia Quinn laid out as well.

With the closing of this chapter, how much will Benedict and Sophie be in the next season? Sophie’s just finally gotten a taste for this life and been able to come into the light and be part of all of this. Are they just going to go live in the country?

The book does this really clever thing, which is Julia Quinn puts Araminta in this position where if she doesn’t want to basically go to jail for embezzlement of Sophie’s dowry, she’s forced to agree to this lie or slight fudging of the truth that Sophie is a noble cousin. And that allows Sophie and Benedict to live in society.

I think it was really important for us that Benedict chose Sophie before she was allowed in society. But letting Sophie save herself and give herself that win at the end was also really fun for us. So Benedict and Sophie are in society next season. I think they’re probably spending time at My Cottage when they want to, but they have the choice now to spend time in society when they’d like to, as well.

Speaking of Benedict making that choice before he knew Sophie could find a way to live in society — Violet made it too. She gave her blessing for him to be with Sophie despite all of the conditions of the family having to let him. How did you decide on that for Violet as well?

I think Violet is a woman of the time period, but she’s always on the side of true love, and I think it was important for us to get her to that place, especially after the death of John. That’s a moment that for all of our characters, they stop thinking about the mundane rules, banal rules of society, and start thinking about what really matters. And in real life, when you go through a loss in your family, or you see someone you love lose their love, it really puts things in perspective. So I think that was really helpful for us to get Violet to the place where she could embrace Sophie and Benedict being together.

How believably mean did you want to make the TV version of Araminta in her evil stepmother role by hiding Sophie’s father’s will and getting her arrested versus how far she goes in the book?

It was important for us not to shy away from Araminta being a villain. But at the same time, I think on our show, you have to understand why people do the things they do. I don’t need for people to be rooting for Araminta, or to feel like, “Oh yeah, a great decision,” but I want them to see how she got to the place she got, so that she feels more human and more three dimensional.

I really just adore the way Katie Leung plays that very last look at the end in her last scene with Sophie in Episode 408. It’s a look that is both like self-righteous and apologetic at the same time, which I think speaks to the fact that she knows she’s done wrong, but she also feels, perhaps rightly, that she was put in a really terrible situation by Sophie’s dad. So I hope that people see the gray in Araminta, rather than seeing her in black and white.

Is Araminta still going to live next door?

I think it would be too difficult for Araminta to live next door as she watches Sophie live the best life ever. So I think it’s safe to say that Araminta is probably leaving London next season.

Sophie and Benedict get Queen Charlotte’s blessing to marry at the end, first because her new lady in waiting Alice Mondrich makes a compelling speech to the Queen about the case for a maid loving a lord being like the Queen’s outsider marriage to the king — and then because of the Bridgertons’ lie that Sophie is a noble extended family member of Sophie’s father’s family. How much of the Queen’s choice to bless the union was because she believed this version of events, and how much was done for Alice and respect for Lady Danbury, who put Alice forward as her replacement? And with Lady Danbury having the Queen’s permission to go on a journey to her homeland, will she be back next season or still away on her travels?

Danbury is absolutely a part of the story moving forward. She’s quite a big part of Season 5, in fact. But I think we wanted to shake up the dynamic. She had been the Queen’s side, at her beck and call for four seasons and I think going forward, the Queen is seeing Danbury more as her peer, going forward — in many ways, as her true friend. And now the two of them are able to be true friends, and Alice can be in more of the service role that Lady Danbury sometimes had to fulfill. So that’s the answer to that.

In terms of the way everything goes down with Sophie and Alice and Araminta, it’s not in the books that the Queen is involved in sanctioning the lie, but I think it’s part of the language of our show that the Queen is somehow involved in blessing the union every season. And it felt like a nice cap on the Lady Danbury story, after the Queen has spent a season requiring Danbury to be in service to her, for the Queen to honor the personhood and humanity of a maid within a love match. That felt like a beautiful button on that story and like a gift to Danbury, in a way. And she’s giving her girl, the girl Danbury put forward, meaning Alice, a win. It’s really more about the Queen doing it for Danbury than anything.

The Queen has also allowed Penelope to step down as Whistledown. We know how much Whistledown has damaged things, and also what she’s given the Ton. So how did you and the writers arrive at Penelope giving it all up, and then also choose to replace her with a mysterious new character who has decided to take over Whistledown?

We knew from the moment we started talking about Season 3. It’s in the books that Penelope comes out as Whistledown and then eventually gives it up. And we knew once Penelope came out as Whistledown, we were losing some of the tension and stakes from that storyline, because she didn’t have a secret to keep anymore. And we got to have a little fun with her being a public Whistledown this season, but we didn’t want to drag it out for too long. And it also just felt really fun in our world for someone new to take it over, because it allows us to create a real mystery about who is Whistledown. Whereas everyone kind of knew it was Penelope from Season 1, even before we revealed it — it’s from the books — now we get to really build a secret that hopefully will keep fans guessing for seasons to come.

Am I crazy, or was Julie Andrews narrating with a slightly different Whistledown voice at the end there?

Yes! Good catch. Tom Verica, who’s our producing director, worked with Julie on finding just like a slightly different inflection for this new version of Whistledown. And we have some ideas about what the new voice of Whistledown is that you’ll hear a lot more about in Season 5. And the hope was that Julie’s performance kind of tips the hand a little bit about this Whistledown being slightly different than the last one. It’s not just going to be a rehash of the way Penelope did the column.

I really thought Violet and Marcus were going to get married. How much you can say about where you want to take her from here now that she’s decided she’s not ready for a second marriage?

So we all love the chemistry between Marcus and Violet, and it was a tough decision to make. But a lot of us felt like this is the first person Violet has ever dated since her husband died, and it felt a little too early for her to settle back down. It’s that thing of, sometimes you meet the right person at the wrong time and there’s tragedy and pathos and beauty in that. I think that we do really want to see Violet start putting herself first a little bit more before she ties herself down in a marriage — if she does ever decide to get into another marriage. I think in many ways, because Edmund was such a great love for her, maybe what she’s realizing is, in fact, a second marriage isn’t the right path for her. So that’s something we’ll continue exploring in future seasons.

Among the other big shocks we get at the very end of the season is that Michaela has left after promising Francesca she would stay. What are you trying to signal with that after everything that they’ve been through this season?

I think fans will read into it if they know the book. But I think that the way we’ve tried to portray it is a little bit of a mystery. You may notice that we’ve mostly stayed out of Michaela’s POV. We get to know her a bit through John and a bit through Francesca, but we haven’t really allowed ourselves to go into her POV all the way, and I think we are saving that for when we eventually get to her season. And so why she left is something that will be explored more fully in the future.

Exploring the loss of John, how did you decide this was the right time for the character to die at this point in the show, as opposed to happening in Julia Quinn’s fifth out of the eight “Bridgerton” books?

I think we knew that it was going to be later in this season. We wanted to focus as much as we could on Benedict and Sophie before we got the loss of John, because we knew it was going to be really important to actually spend some time with his loss. And I do think Episode 7 really becomes about Francesca, in a way, and it enormously impacts Benedict and Sophie’s story. We wouldn’t have had John die this season if we didn’t feel like it was thematically and narratively really interesting — in a very heartbreaking way — for Sophie and Benedict’s story.

As I talked about, I think loss like that really puts everything in perspective. And that felt like an important push in a season in which there’s such a giant obstacle to the romance, meaning Sophie and Benedict coming from a different class. But we also didn’t want to end the season with the death, because we want to get to a place of joy and of happily ever after by the end of every season. So Episode 7 kind of felt like the sweet spot.

Francesca’s book dives into her desires for motherhood and her fertility issues. I know one of the things that’s been discussed throughout the book fandom following the reveal of a gender switch for Francesca’s post-John love interest, Michael, now Michaela, was how that could continue as a storyline. This season introduced a lot of that already with John’s death and Francesca having thought that she was pregnant and going through a traumatizing examination where she finds out she is not. For fans who are wondering how this would be incorporated, is there more to come on the fertility storyline, or is this how you wanted to position it at the end of John’s time with her?

There’s more to come. I think we’re absolutely interested in telling — and we have told — a story of Francesca dealing with infertility this season. But if anyone thinks that women who end up with women don’t deal with infertility, I think they have a lot to learn.

Asking more about Francesca’s storyline, how did you decide how dark and deep to go with it, given that it is still balanced with Benedict and Sophie’s love story and this joyfulness in Season 4? And how much are you also reserving for whatever will eventually be Francesca’s season?

It was a tricky balance. We talked a lot in the room about the fact that, other than Penelope’s dad — who we didn’t really know that well, or frankly, care about that deeply — this was the first time we were losing a character, watching a character die.

It was really important the way we treated the death. We tried to be thoughtful — like, we’re not interested in seeing John’s dead body, for example. We wanted to give a lot of space to the reaction, to the grief and the way it lands on, not only Francesca, but the entire family, and give John his due. He’s a beloved character, has become a beloved character in the series. He’s a character we all love a lot, and he will continue to mean a lot in Francesca’s life going forward.

In terms of balancing the darkness, those who know the book will remember that Francesca has a miscarriage soon after John dies. And it was something we talked about in the room, and obviously it does play into her fertility storyline. But ultimately we decided that it was too dark and that we felt we had given service to the fertility storyline, and we will continue to give service to Francesca’s desire for children. But ultimately we felt like losing a husband and a baby on screen has a weight that would be too devastating,

Based on the signals we get from John in his conversations with Francesca, is it safe to assume that he knew Michaela’s sexuality before he died?

That’s something to be explored in the future.

Back to Sophie and Benedict, I wanted to ask about crafting their two sex scenes in Part 2. In the first one they have penetrative sex and in the second, a bathtub scene from the book, they do not. What was the difference between the two scenes and what you wanted to show with both of them?

In the Episode 5 scene, which was brilliantly, I think, choreographed by our intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot and our director, Rayne Harris, that scene was all about urgency and about two people being really, really caught up in the moment. Because in order for Sophie to give herself sexually to Benedict, knowing she has this hang up about being an illegitimate child, understandably, she had to be really swept up in the moment. So that’s all about urgency, whereas the bathtub scene is more about intimacy, and it’s about two people being in a place where they understand each other much more deeply. Chiefly, Benedict understanding Sophie more deeply; understanding what her boundaries are and why. So his thoughtfulness about not having penetrative sex with her there is because he’s finally at a place where he really understands what Sophie deserves, and how she deserves to be treated, and how she doesn’t deserve to be treated. But it’s also a moment in which the roles are flipped, and Benedict is caretaking for Sophie. He’s washing her hair, he’s pleasuring her and focusing on her, and hopefully it shows like a nice growth arc for Benedict, within the intimacy.

As they become more intimate and they start to have real conversations about what their future could be, Benedict discloses to Sophie not only that he’s had sex before, but that he’s had sex with men and he’s had sex with women. How did you craft that conversation? Obviously, that’s a deviation from the book, because Benedict’s bisexuality is a deviation from the book. So how did you want to approach that him telling her at all, and how she would respond to it?

It felt very important to us that Benedict is owning every part of himself and that he’s being accepted for every part of himself. When we talked about that conversation, it wasn’t from a perspective of this needing to be something that he disclosed so much as him wanting to disclose it because it’s a part of who he is. And in the same way that Sophie is reaching a place where she’s brave enough to be fully honest about her backstory and what she’s been through. It felt like the right time for Benedict to say, “OK, I see your vulnerability and I offer you mine.” And it’s going to allow these two to move forward in a way where they’re fully loved and accepted for every piece of themselves.

Part 2 sees the big return of Kate and Anthony. Anthony believes what is going on between Benedict and Sophie is the same as Anthony’s relationship with the opera singer Sienna in Season 1, but by Benedict’s wedding is admitting Benedict should never have listened to him. How did you decide what role Anthony would take in this, and why he would at first believe his brother’s feelings for Sophie weren’t the same as his own for Kate?

Obviously, Anthony went through a giant journey in his season where he went from being the guy who was maybe overly controlling with Daphne on the marriage mart to finding true love even in a tricky situation. So he’s chilled out, but he’s still the head of the household, and he still has to keep in mind that his younger sisters are unmarried, and that everything that Benedict does potentially reflects on them. He’s been away at Aubrey Hall and previously India with Kate and the baby, so I think he wasn’t around to really know the depth of feeling between Benedict and Sophie, but it was important to bring in someone who could be the voice of society in that time period, and he really is speaking to very valid society concerns. But it was also quite nice to see him coming around in the end.

By the end of the season, my personal belief is that more has been set up to make Francesca the lead of Season 5 than Eloise. What would you say to that?

Can you just put “laughs”?

I can do that.

No, no! Interesting theory. It’s always interesting seeing the way people react to the end of the season. We felt like at the end of Season 3 we set up Benedict really, really clearly and there was still some uncertainty. This season, there are reasons to believe it could be either Eloise or Francesca. And so I’m curious.

Cressida returns this season as the new Lady Penwood. Why bring her back after what she did to the Bridgertons, and have her share a scene of some reconciliation with Eloise?

In the book, the Penwood heir after Sophie’s father dies is a distant male relative. It felt like fertile territory to imagine who the new Araminta would be. We knew we wanted to give Cressida a proper ending, and it felt perfect for Araminta who always wears black to be replaced by the Queen of Pink. I love seeing the ways in which Cressida has grown after going through her trials in life, and more importantly seeing the way her reappearance gives Eloise a growth moment. This feels like a close to Cressida’s chapter for now, but I wouldn’t rule out seeing more of her in the world in the future. 

I know we talk every time about characters who leave and characters who come back, but I’ve seen more people asking this time around — and I feel like it’ll come up even more with John’s funeral — that it seems weird Daphne and Simon aren’t involved. So in a case like that, have you talked at all about recasting Daphne and Simon for future seasons? For Daphne to not be there for Francesca, while we understand from a logistical standpoint, is hard from a narrative standpoint.

We are not interested in recasting the characters. I think it would feel like a disservice to everything Regé and Phoebe set up in Season 1, and all the beautiful work they put into those characters. We would love to potentially have them back at some point, but I think, logistically, we want to make sure we bring them back when we have something really meaty for them. And to have them come back to say a line at a funeral and just prove that they were there, it wouldn’t feel right for many reasons. So I think in my mind, the camera doesn’t capture everything. They’re hypothetically there; it’s television. But we would love to find a time to bring everyone back at some point in the future.

Speaking of what else might have happened off camera, did Benedict meet Baby Edmund off camera? Because I thought we were building for that, and they never were on camera together.

Yes, I think Benedict absolutely had his good uncle moment and met his nephew, for sure.

This interview has been edited and condensed.