Bridgerton Season 5 Will Give Francesca The Spotlight She Deserves
Francesca Bridgerton will get a second chance at love with Michaela Stirling when Bridgerton returns for season 5.
Though Bridgerton season 4 only just wrapped up the love story of Benedict and his housemaid turned lady of the Ton new bride, Sophie Baek, the show is already looking ahead to its next love story. It’s just not the one most fans probably expected.
As readers of Julia Quinn’s popular series of novels know, the fifth book in her Bridgerton saga technically follows the love story of Eloise, the family’s marriage-avoidant middle daughter who’s spent most of the TV series insisting that she’s not interested in things like suitors. But the fifth season of the show won’t be following that path.
Instead, Bridgerton will once again shake things up by skipping ahead in its designated romance order and will focus on Francesca’s story in season 5. And while some book purists are no doubt irritated that Bridgerton is once again straying from Quinn’s established path — the show already swapped the order of Colin and Benedict’s romances across seasons 3 and 4 — there’s no doubt that this is the right move, both for the larger series and for Francesca herself.
One of the best things about Bridgerton as a television show versus as a series of romance novels is that it’s much better at telling simultaneous stories. Part of the reason Colin and Penelope’s romance made sense as the centerpiece of the show’s third season is that we’d already spent two full years watching the pair alternately pine for and be completely oblivious around one another. Paying off that relationship at that point was smart — and such is the case with Francesca, who has already spent the past two seasons serving as the show’s primary B-plot.
Her marriage to John Stirling, Earl of Kilmartin, is primarily referenced in hindsight in the books, but the Netflix series gave their quiet, adorably socially awkward love story some much deserved time to shine. And, in the wake of John’s death, it feels completely natural for her to step into the role of leading lady in her own right and for the show to follow her story of second chance romance.
Francesca’s season was always going to be a boundary-pushing one, considering that the show has reimagined her book love interest, Michael Sterling, as Michaela and will use their story to debut its first proper LGBTQ+ romance. The series smartly allowed us to see Francesca and Michaela both becoming friends and grieving John together in season 4, and their story flows much more naturally into the series’ fifth season than Eloise’s might, if only because it will require some fairly significant narrative legwork to set up that by all rights probably should have started by now. (Technically, we’ve already met Eloise’s future husband, though it’s unlikely that casual viewers remember that character all that much.)
So much of Francesca’s story has been about her relationships to others — her marriage, her place in the Bridgerton family, even her status within the marriage — that it will be nice to see her get the chance to not just stand on her own, but to make choices without having to consider anyone else’s feelings. And it certainly feels like a more active path for her character than haunting the edges of someone else’s story, looking heartbroken.
The end of season 4 left the pair at odds — Michaela essentially ghosted Francesca’s request to abstain from traveling for a bit to stay with her in Mayfair — and that’s a pretty big emotional cliffhanger to let sit through another season where they aren’t the main characters. Besides, Francesca more than deserves a chance to reclaim some happiness for herself —and the audience watching at home does too.