'Bridgerton' Season 4: Everything We Know, Including Michaela ...

In the season three finale, the camera lingers on Thompson’s Benedict as Julie Andrews’s narrator says, “It is time now to look toward the future, whatever it may bring.” For Thompson, this comes back to the words his character says to Eloise as they chat on the swings: “Love isn’t finite.” Says the actor, “Weirdly, though, what the show seems to be exploring with Benedict is that love is finite, actually. Our bandwidth is finite, and you have to [make] space for other things and be ready for something else to happen.”

In Julia Quinn’s third novel, An Offer From a Gentleman, Benedict’s central romance takes a Cinderella-esque spin. While attending a masquerade ball, he falls in love at first sight with a masked woman named Sophie Beckett. She is the daughter of an earl who, after her father’s death, is forced to work as a maid by an evil stepmother—at one point laboring in the Bridgerton house.

Although Benedict ends up with Sophie on the page, Luke Thompson says his character’s sexual fluidity may continue to play a role in his story. “I think it’s an important facet of his character that certainly shouldn’t be ignored. But beyond that, I mean, we’ll see what the writers do,” he tells VF.

Adds Brownell, “Many of us in the writers’ room have long felt that Benedict is queer, as I think the audience has felt as well. I think he reads that way. And I think he’s someone this season who is figuring out what it means to make his own rules, because he doesn’t quite fit in society, but he doesn’t quite know where he belongs. So seeing him embrace his queerness is thematically also about him figuring out how to flout the rules and define himself the way he wants to. And it’s something that we’ll continue to explore going forward.”

According to the IMDB cast list for the fourth season’s first episode, Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope, Luke Newton’s Colin, Luke Thompson’s Benedict, and Claudia Jessie’s Eloise are all returning, as are Polly Walker, who plays Penelope’s mother, Portia Featherington, and Jessica Madsen, who plays semi-reformed mean girl Cressida.

“I don’t think we’re done with Cressida,” Brownell tells VF. “If I have my druthers, there’s more I’d like to do with her. It felt too early to give her a big happy ending. We’ve watched two seasons of her be a real bully, and I love understanding where that comes from. And I love that people are feeling more sympathy for her now, more empathy, but she has a bit more growth to do before she gets her happy ending. But ultimately I do hope to give her one.”

During her appearance on Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast, Coughlan confirmed: “I’m coming back for season four. People are like, ‘Are you sad that you’re not the main love story?’ I’m weirdly not, only because I feel like I couldn’t have given it anything more…. I don’t have any regrets. I feel like I’ve left it all on the pitch.”