Bridgerton season 4 isn’t going to look how fans might expect — literally.
Showrunner Jess Brownell was asked about how Benedict’s love story with Sophie would compare, to which she told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month, “I’ll tease this: You might be getting a different season from Bridgerton. We always live in this perpetual spring in Bridgerton, but we’re playing around with the idea of fall for the first time.”
The shift comes after the past three seasons remained in the summer.
“Some of that is about the story and some of it is, honestly, just for practical reasons because we’re shooting in the fall,” Brownell noted. “It’s still going to be just as lush and colorful, but just more in those warm fall colors instead of the pastels.”
Brownell assured viewers that it wouldn’t be too drastically different, adding, “There will still be some pastels, so it won’t look like a totally different show. I’ll give you that.”
The insight into season 4 — which will center on Benedict’s love story (Luke Thompson) — comes after Brownell confirmed a two-year wait for new episodes of the hit Netflix series. Season 1 of the period drama debuted in 2020 with Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon (Regé-Jean Page) as the main focus before season 2 picked up two years later with Anthony and Kate (Simone Ashley) as the leads.
Season 3, which is based on Julia Quinn‘s novel Romancing Mr. Bridgerton, premiered earlier this year and Colin (Luke Newton) and Penelope (Nicola Coughlan) became the focus of the show.
“We are working to try and put the seasons out more quickly, but they do take eight months to film and then they have to be edited and then they have to be dubbed into every language,” Brownell told The Hollywood Reporter in June about the delay.
At the time, Brownell explained that the priority was making the best season possible. “The writing takes a very long time as well, so we’re kind of on a two-year pace,” she continued. “We’re trying to speed up, but somewhere in that range.”
The wait hasn’t been easy on fans, but most viewers have just been excited to see their favorite novel from the Bridgerton book series come to life. Quinn recently hinted that Netflix plans to release eight seasons to correspond with all the books.
“I think that’s been going through the whole way. Which is a long-winded way of saying, ‘Yes, there are plans [for beyond season 4],'” the author told People in July. “But, of course, those plans can always change.”
Quinn continued: “One of the things that was very exciting when they actually first bought the series was that it was really clear to me that they put a lot of thought into it already. We had to go through everything and very specifically say, ‘These characters are included, these characters are not.’ In that process, it was really clear to me that they had a long plan and were really thinking about all the books.”
Bridgerton is currently streaming on Netflix.
