Everyone who watched The Duke of Hastings and Daphne Bridgerton fall in love during Bridgerton’s first season has been eagerly awaiting the show’s return. We’re going to have a brand new central couple in Daphne’s oldest brother, Anthony, and newcomer Kate Sharma, and the romantic drama’s millions of viewers want to see just how all of the sexual tension (and sexiest scenes) between the two will eventually play out. Star Nicola Coughlan, who plays the sweetly duplicitous Penelope Featherington, has just revealed that the finale for the second season will actually be quite “heavy,” so hold on to your opera gloves!
While there were some serious things that went down by the time we got to the Bridgerton Season 1 ending, the focus was on a variety of swoony love stories and the drama that came from them. So, I can bet that most audiences weren’t thinking they’d hear that anything too deep would happen when Briderton Season 2 came around. However, if what Nicola Coughlan told the Radio Times is correct, it would appear that that’s not the case. When speaking about her work on the new episodes, Coughlan said:
I’m shooting all this like, big, heavy, dramatic stuff for the finale at the moment...The drama has amped up a lot. As I say, we're shooting all those big dramatic scenes for the end. It's exhausting but very satisfying.
Hmmmm. The question, of course, is what all of this “big, heavy, dramatic stuff” could be. The series is based on a series of romance novels, and books don’t get classified in that genre unless they have happy endings. So, my money is definitely on Kate and Anthony not being explicitly involved in and of these “heavy” finale goings on.
If fans will recall, though, Coughlan’s Penelope had a couple of big secrets in Season 1, with one of them being more well-hidden than the other. Pen was pretty obviously in love with Colin Bridgerton, brother to her best friend, Eloise, and she was heart-broken when he decided to leave London to adventure around Greece for a while. Meanwhile, the finale revealed to the audience that the mysterious (and quickly notorious) gossip-monger, Lady Whistledown, was none other than our dear ol’ Pen!
Despite her best bud's efforts to figure out who the wordsmith was, Pen was able to keep her activities as Whistledown on the down low, but that could definitely change by the end of Season 2. When asked if we’d see more of Pen’s secret life, Coughlan said:
I think it’s safe to say that you do. And you know, that final moments of series one was definitely a peek into her life. I think in series two you kind of see how the sausage gets made and all that’s happening.
And, even though that hint at Pen’s double life that we got at the end of Season 1 will turn into much more time with her working as her alter ego in Season 2, it does sound like this will cause problems, possibly even with Colin, who will be way closer with Pen this time around. Coughlan continued:
I think you know, she’s certainly been lying to literally everyone in her life and I think you’ll see the repercussions of that...She definitely matures from series one. I think she thinks she’s much more a woman of the world than she actually is. And her and Colin Bridgerton, you get to explore their relationship [in Season 2]; they’ve become closer in this sort of gap [since] we’ve last seen them.
Sounds to me like this dramatic finale could easily involve Colin and / or Eloise finding out what Pen has been doing, and that will absolutely make for one hell of an ending. Bridgerton will return with Season 2 sometime in 2022, but be sure to check out other upcoming romantic TV shows, and what you can watch right now with our 2021 fall TV schedule!
