Queer love storyline is a "priority" for new Bridgerton showrunner

The release of Bridgerton season 3 is quickly approaching, and fans everywhere can't wait to dive into the brand-new episodes. Here at Netflix Life, we can hardly contain our excitement as well. So, we've been having to figure out ways to keep ourselves busy in the meantime. Luckily, the show's cast and crew have been constantly revealing new juicy deets about the upcoming season to get fans pumped up about it. One of the latest reveals about the new season is that it may feature a queer love story. This is something that I personally have been waiting for the period drama to explore. Finally, the time has come!

Bridgerton might be set in the Regency era, but the show doesn't portray the era exactly how it was in real life. The period drama portrays the Regency era as a time when diversity was welcomed with people of different races and ethnicities in high positions of power. When in real life, the Regency Era wasn't nearly as inclusive. Since the show was able to switch things around when it came to diversity, I couldn't for the life of me understand why they couldn't include queer characters.

All right, there was one queer character in the first season of Bridgerton, but his role in the series wasn't big, and the only bit we got of his queer love story was a five-second sex scene of him with another man and a short scene of him expressing his love for said man to Benedict. That's it. We need to see real queer representation in the period drama. A queer relationship that gets just as much focus as the central heterosexual relationship.

Well, it looks like this will be happening soon, according to season 3 showrunner Jess Brownell. Brownell spoke with PRIDE in an April 2024 interview and said that a queer storyline is a priority for her.

"This is a show about love in its many forms and I think that it's only right for us to foreground queer love and to tell queer stories. I want to see more queer joy on my screens and that was definitely a priority for me when I stepped into the showrunner role."

- Jess Brownell

When asked about how queer inclusion will be shown in the show, this is what Brownell had to say.

"How exactly that [queer storyline] plays out over this season and the next couple seasons, I can't say specifically, but I will say I'm excited for fans to see that."

- Jess Brownell

Brownell couldn't exactly spoil how the queer storyline will be shown in the series for obvious reasons, but this does make us wonder which characters will be involved. Will it be characters we've already been introduced to or new characters? I guess we'll have to wait to find out.

Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan, whose Penelope character steps into the spotlight in season 3, also spoke with PRIDE and expressed her excitement about queer love coming to the Ton.

"I'm desperate for it. I cannot wait. I think it will be so beautiful. The wonderful thing about Bridgerton is it's an invented world that has never existed. It's a Regency London in which we wear all these mad bright colors, it's really diverse, there's glitter eyeshadow. So I think there's so much space there for queer love stories and I think all love stories deserve to be celebrated."

- Nicola Coughlan

If you watched the hit Bridgerton prequel series, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, you'd recall from the series that it featured a queer love story between two men (Brimsley and Reynolds). Although their relationship was considered secondary to the main relationship between Queen Charlotte and King George III, their love story was still explored more than the little queer representation we saw in Bridgerton season 1.

We're hoping Bridgerton can do even better than its prequel when it comes to queer representation, and Coughlan hopes so too. She tells PRIDE, "I hope that in time we get a leading queer love story in this show." Let the manifestation begin!

Bridgerton season 3 premieres its first part on Netflix on May 16, followed by part 2 on June 13.