Bridgerton season 3 spoilers follow.
Looking at the whole third season of Bridgerton through rose-tinted glasses, it had a lot going for it. While the wait of a month in between the first four episodes and the last magnified the fizzy period drama’s faults, the finale managed to right a lot of those perceived wrongs.
With one exception: resident mean girl Cressida Cowper (Jessica Madsen). Cressida, of the helter-skelter hairdos and non-stop insult slinging, had an arc that on first inspection appears peculiar. With a more rigorous interrogation, it’s downright sloppy – particularly for a show which so often predicates itself on female empowerment.
As a villain for two seasons, Cressida didn’t really pack much of a punch. Where she could have slotted into the iconic company of Regina George, Chanel Oberlin or even Sharpay Evans, Cressida was always too forgettable or unimaginative to be a legitimate avatar of Mean.
With the third season came an image rehab and softening of Cressida. She was given a confidante in Eloise (Claudia Jessie), who was bereft of her own lifeline in Penelope (Nicola Coughlan). Then, she got a humanised backstory once we got a peek into the greige mausoleum of her household.
But in retrospect, where the show wanted to go with this newly tempered character is unclear. They almost needn’t have bothered.
Given that Cressida and Penelope started the season on a similar footing, their retrospective endings are stark in comparison. Both had been out selling their womanly wares on the marriage market for three summers, to no avail. Both in turn had started to edge into all-hope-lost territory.
This result was in a brief skirmish waged over Lord Debling (Sam Phillips), which took up most of the first part of the season. But when we returned for the second drop, Debling had disappeared off to save the birds or something and Cressida’s prospects had declined from bad to dire.
Her Dickensian father presented her with a prospective husband three times her age. He at least had money so it seemed bearable to Cressida, until the pensioner announced he required four prompt children and little in the way of social dalliances.
After having to watch Lady Danbury endure her rotten ordeal of an arranged marriage in Queen Charlotte, sympathy levels for Cressida were at all all-time high just as the Queen (Golda Rosheuvel) decided she was suddenly dead-set on rooting Lady Whistledown out – and willing to pay for it.
Given the business empire the real Whistledown had amassed, the five grand on offer wasn’t much to the scandal writer, but to Cressida it was a path to freedom that didn’t involve marriage, and possibly a charming existence in Austria or Venice.
In a show where the endpoint is predestined – each time around, our young lovers will finally figure it all out and live happily ever after in Shondaland – Cressida’s pickle brought some startling good stakes into the mix.
Here was someone given the depth and backstory to emerge from the corners of the ball scenes into a fully fledged person with a complicated family life and unfair expectations put upon her. But after Cressida made her claim to the Whistledown name, the show inexplicably undermined all that narrative work and reverted her to a boring moustache-twirling villain.
Except this time around framing her as a stock antihero didn’t work, because we knew the scheming and cattiness were the result of someone whose many attempts to find a path to freedom hadn’t worked. Cressida was cornered and panicked and we felt sorry for her.
In what was far from her best moment, Eloise quickly washed her hands of Cressida. Perhaps that wasn’t surprising in a season which up until that point had done more harm than good to the show’s reputation for championing tender female friendships.
After a failed attempt at haggling with the Bridgertons to keep Penelope’s secret identity as the scandal-sheet penwoman, Cressida was exiled to live with her wretched aunt in Wales. The last we see of her is a sombre stare from a departing carriage – before the show swiftly cuts to all the happiness surrounding her. Even the annoying Featherington sisters leave this season on a jolly note.
The Cressida, Penelope and Lady Whistledown triangle of power scrutinised the Ton and its hierarchy of principles – almost as if the show were prepared to turn an inquiring eye on its own value system. With Cressida, it was found wanting.
Without means or a marriage, Cressida is shuffled under the narrative carpet. It’s the darkest end the show has given yet to a character we have been encouraged to care for.
Jessica Madsen has shared a flicker of hope for the Cressida-heads, speaking about the alternative, and decidedly more open, ending which was filmed and left on the editing floor. Since we never saw her scary aunt in the carriage, our pretzel-haired trooper could be travelling elsewhere. Perhaps there’s hope for this wrong to be righted yet.
Bridgerton is available to stream on Netflix.
Deputy TV Editor
Previously a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape for Digital Spy, when she’s not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas.
When she’s not bingeing a box set, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we’re all watching.