Bridgerton season three part two has finally dropped to much fanfare, but while most characters got their happy ending I have only one gripe...
Justice for Cressida Cowper! The latest season of the steamy Regency-era drama follows the love story between Penelope Featherington ( Nicola Coughlan ) and Colin Bridgerton ( Luke Newton ) as they sail the choppy waters of a friends-to-lovers romance . In the second-half of the season, the happy couple’s engagement is haunted by Penelope’s deeply harboured secret. She is the enigmatic Lady Whistledown who regularly publishes the Mayfair gossip column that has besmirched the Bridgerton name more than once.
At the end of the second season, Eloise (Claudia Jessie) – Colin’s sister and Penelope’s best friend – uncovers Penelope’s secret after she airs Eloise’s dirty laundry for all the ton to see. A dramatic showdown later, Eloise ends her friendship with Penelope but agrees to keep her secret. With the tension between the pair still simmering in the third season, Eloise instead strikes up a friendship with fellow spinster Cressida ( Jessica Madsen ) who is notorious as the ton bully and has long rubbed both Eloise and Penelope the wrong way with her catty nature.
But rather than remaining an irrelevant side character (who the audience has grown to despise since season one) the first half of the third season fleshes Cressida and her story out. Instead of being a nasty gossip, we see a woman trapped by societal expectation.
