Fans of historical regencies have flocked to the Netflix book-turned-series adaptation of the Bridgertons. As the Shondaland series jumps from the Julia Quinn novel timeline with Bridgerton Season 3, fans wonder what will happen in the fourth season.
This Bridgerton Season 4 cast and character guide has all the juicy gossip on who’s coming back and who’s gone for good in the Bridgerton world.
Now that the book storyline isn’t a firm pathway, we’re in uncharted territory.
The fourth season promises to resolve everyone’s unsettled feelings at seeing the story skip over Benedict’s love life for Colin’s.
Although the route Netflix took to make the adaptation worked out for the sake of being all-inclusive.
Grab a cup of tea, get cozy, and reunite with the Bridgerton clan as we impatiently wait for the family to return in 2026.
In the meantime, check out the prequel spinoff, Queen Charlotte, if you can’t get enough of the Bridgerton universe.
Bridgerton Season 4 Cast and Character Guide
Viscount Edmund Bridgerton (Rupert Evans) and his gorgeous wife Violet (Ruth Gemmell) produced a bolstering family of eight children before Edmund’s death from an allergic reaction to a bee sting.
We’ve seen each season focus on the romantic entanglements of one sibling each season, with other romances that happen on the side.
Here’s a little secret to help you keep them in order: the names start with the first letter of the alphabet for the oldest (Anthony) and go down to H for the youngest — Hyacinth.
Given that there are eight books in the series, fans hope that means we’ll get eight seasons of the TV adaptation, letting each season focus on the love story of one character.
Although we don’t know much about the plotline of the fourth season, we do know that the primary relationship focus will be between the second-oldest son, Benedict, and his partner, Sophie.
The fourth season of Bridgerton will return with some of our favorite family members and their romantic interests.
However, we do not know how much more we’ll see of Viscount Anthony and his wife, Kate.
It’s possible they could exit the show now that their storyline is complete.
We’ve seen it done with the oldest Bridgerton girl, Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor), and her partner, Simon Basset (Rege-Jean Page), Duke of Hastings, the focus of Season 1 and Book 1, The Duke and I.
We expect to see the return of supporting characters Lady Agatha Danbury (Adjoa Andoh), the youngest son Gregory Bridgerton (Will Tilston), and the youngest sibling Hyacinth Bridgerton (Florence Hunt).
9th Viscount Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey)
Anthony Bridgerton is the oldest child, who assumed the role of Viscount after the death of Edmund, his father, the 8th Viscount Bridgerton.
His position as head of the family put him in many positions where he played an overprotective older brother, nearly ruining his sister’s chance at happiness.
Anthony’s desire to keep their family’s honor often leads to irrational actions, such as duels and fights over the Ton’s perceptions.
Anthony went from being a serial womanizer to marrying the love of his life, Kate Sharma.
Before admitting his feelings for her, he nearly married her half-sister, Edwina.
At the end of the third season, Kate was pregnant, and the couple left their home to raise their child in India.
Actor Jonathan Bailey has been around since the late ’90s, succeeding with earlier roles in movies and series before his role as the eldest Bridgerton son.
Many of his roles were as one-offs in different series, although he had several repeat shots.
His roles in Leonardo for 26 episodes and Broadchurch for 16 are the longest portrayals, other than his 19 appearances in Bridgerton.
Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson)
Benedict is the second in line of the Bridgerton family, with a sensitive soul and a big talent for fine art.
He’s had a flighty attitude towards settling down, preferring to live a life of wonton sexual exploration with suitable females.
Although we saw him testing the waters of his sexuality with a threesome involving a male and female partner during the third season.
Fans of the book series felt the sting of this altered timeline.
In book 3, we saw the fairy-tale relationship between Benedict and his personal Cinderella, Sophie Beckett.
But the TV series lineup jumped Cupid’s rendezvous with Benedict to focus on the pairing of another Bridgerton, Colin, for the third season. Fans adore Polin — Colin and his partner, Penelope Featherington.
The love story of Benedict and Sophie — Benophie — will be the focus of Season 4.
If you thought having to wait an extra season to see Benedict get his happily ever after was the rough part, you’re not going to like this news.
Bridgerton isn’t set to return to Netflix until 2026. If you’re tired of the massive delays between seasons, you’re not the only one.
The delay leaves fans plenty of time to check out Luke Thompson’s other works. His career started with roles in several plays before breaking into film with roles in Dunkirk and Making Noise Quietly.
You might have seen him on other Netflix shows, such as Kiss Me First or Transatlantic. But his biggest role to date has been Bridgerton. We expect to see much more of him following his role as the seasonal lead in Bridgerton.
Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton)
If you’re current with the Bridgerton series, you’re fully invested in continuing the Bridgerton family line through happy relationships.
Including the out-of-sequence airing of Polin in Bridgerton Season 3.
Their relationship happened in Book Four (Romancing Mister Bridgerton), after the happily ever after for Benedict and Sophie.
Colin is the third son and Bridgerton sibling, allowing him to pursue his interests, like writing and exotic travels, rather than worry about leading the family.
He had a brief engagement to Marina Crane after a whirlwind mutual attraction.
But her betrayal and secret pregnancy from a previous suitor ended their engagement before it became big news with the ton.
Overall, Colin is a good guy who likes doing the right thing, like uncovering the unscrupulous cons of Jack, Penelope’s cousin.
After discovering Penelope’s secret writing identity, he even overlooked his significant other’s betrayal.
Luke Newton is another relative newcomer to the acting scene.
After scoring his first role in The Cut in 2010, he landed several one-off appearances before landing a 25-episode recurring role on The Lodge.
He’s also appeared in movies like Lake Placid: Legacy and The Shape of Things.
His biggest role, by far, has been playing Colin Bridgerton for four seasons since 2020.
Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie)
Eloise stole viewers’ hearts from the start with her feministic wiles and deep rebellion against what society expected of her.
She often relies on her wits and charm to get her out of social commitments she doesn’t want to do, much to her mother’s (Violet) chagrin.
Violet introduced Eloise to society in Bridgerton Season 2, hoping to find her a suitable partner. But Eloise protested against such traditions and interested suitors.
In the third season, she had a change of heart when she tried to be part of the Ton.
The season ended with Eloise in Scotland with Francesca, still single, which leaves the door open for her to find romance in Bridgerton Season 4.
Or they could wait and hope for a Season 5, which would coincide with the books’ order. Given the loose interpretation of the books, it’s exciting to wonder what we have in store when Bridgerton returns with its fourth season.
Lady Francesca Stirling (Hannah Dodd)
Lady Francesca Stirling — originally Bridgerton — didn’t have as much screen time in Seasons 1 and 2.
And she looked a lot different, given that Ruby Stokes played the original Francesca.
Due to scheduling issues with Stokes, the original Francesca actor had to step away, leaving room for the new actress, Hannah Dodd, to debut with appearances in all eight episodes of Season 3.
In the third season finale, Francesca got her happily ever after by marrying John Stirling, the reclusive Scottish Earl of Kilmartin.
Their union means she relocated from her family home to her husband’s land in the Scottish Highlands.
But the couple didn’t relocate alone, hinting at the story yet to be told following the book’s timeline.
Only instead of a male cousin, Michael, the Bridgerton TV adaptation did a gender swap for the crucial character set-up, making him a her named Michaela.
There is much speculation that the queer romance between Michaela and Francesca might be one of the big events coming in 2026 when Bridgerton comes back with its fourth season.
Dodd hit the London acting scene in 2019 and took the acting world by storm with multiple recurring TV roles.
Her first role was as a Townie in kick-ass Fighting with My Family before she found a spot for five episodes on the TV show Harlots.
She found the most success with a long-running role for 54 episodes in Hulu’s Find Me in Paris.
She also made it onto the cast for movies Eternals and Enola Holmes 2 and series like Anatomy of a Scandal and Flowers in the Attic: The Origin.
Violet Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell)
The head of the Bridgerton clan is Lady Violet Bridgerton.
We’ve seen the family matriarch in every episode of the series.
Actress Ruth Gemmell even resumed the role in the Bridgerton spinoff Queen Charlotte, which featured Violet as an adult and during her younger teen phase (Connie Jenkins-Greig).
Violet’s primary focus is seeing the eight children she shared with 8th Viscount Bridgerton, Edmund, happily married to society’s best.
Gemmell has had an impressive acting career since her debut in the early 1990s, finding roles in films and series.
She found her first recurring role in the 2009 TV series EastEnders for 11 episodes. But she’s most known for appearing in the TV show Primeval and movies Fever Pitch and F.
Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan)
From the start, fans of Bridgerton have known about Penelope’s intimate feelings for her Bridgerton friend, Colin.
If you’ve read the books, you know about Polin before Season 3 happened.
So, rather than feel shocked at the union of Penelope and Colin, you’ve been rooting for it the whole time.
Even the drama surrounding the scandal of Penelope’s secret identity as Lady Whistledown (voiced by Julia Andrews) didn’t worry fans enough to fear the fate of the Polin relationship.
When she’s not taking on the role of Penelope, Nicola has been known to appear on stage.
Her on-screen works include a voice-over for The Fairytales, impressive runs with the English series SimsalaGrimm (and II), and short stints on shows like Harlots, Whistle Through the Shamrocks, Derry Girls, and Big Mood.
Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley)
Kate Bridgerton — by way of the Sharma family — is Edwina’s half-sister and the current wife of Viscount Anthony Bridgerton.
We met her in Bridgerton Season 2, which focused on Viscount Anthony’s romantic life, loosely based on Bridgerton Book 2, The Viscount Who Loved Me.
As of the show’s third season, they share a child that they raise in India.
Anthony intended to wed Edwina but fell for Kate’s brass independence and fierce loyalty to her sister.
The fireworks between Kate and the normally aloof, reserved Anthony lit the screen with potential that we never saw from his other dalliances.
We knew it was meant to be, even if viewers had never read the books beforehand. Kate is good for Anthony, helping him enjoy life despite his responsibilities and obligations.
Before her role as Viscountess Kate Bridgerton, Simone started in Wolfblood in 2016. Like many of her fellow Bridgerton cast members, she starred in a single Doctors episode.
She also found a recurring spot for two seasons of Sex Education.
Afterward, she found roles in several movies, including Pokemon: Detective Pikachu and The Little Mermaid (2023).
Queen Charlotte (A)
We met Queen Charlotte as a supporting character in Bridgerton Season 1 as she took a liking to Daphne as the diamond of the season.
She acted as we would expect from a pompous royal, in love with herself to the point of narcissism. But she also has an unwavering loyalty to those she deems worthy.
And the Bridgertons seemed to pass her test, as she embraced not only the oldest daughter, Daphne, during her time in society but also the oddly different Francesca.
Along with playing Queen Charlotte on Bridgerton and its prequel spinoff, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, she’s also appeared in Lady Macbeth, This Time Next Year, and episodes of Silent Witness, Rev, Luther, and Dr. Who.
Bridgerton Will Return With Season 4
Given the long delay we have until Season 4 comes out, possibly with a split-season format like the third season, we don’t know much.
But we’re obsessed with keeping up with all the juicy details, so be sure to follow TV Fanatic to be updated when we learn new information.
In the meantime, I’d like to know how you feel about Netflix and Shondaland going with creator Chris Van Dusen’s decision to change the series timeline compared to the books.
Do you prefer book-to-TV adaptations to stick to the original story, or do you like it when they play loosey-goosey with the story and adapt it into their own entity?
Leave your thoughts in the comments and share this guide with your Bridgerton buddies to create a shared anxiety of anticipation for Bridgerton Season 4.