[Editor’s note: The following article contains spoilers for Season 3 of “ Bridgerton ” as well as various “Bridgerton” book plotlines.] Fans just about lost their minds when the final moments of Season 3 of Netflix’s “Bridgerton” showed that in Francesca’s (Hannah Dodd) forthcoming season, her future husband Michael will instead be Michael a (Masali Baduza), allowing Francesca to better explore her “outsider” (i.e.
queer) identity following her current husband John’s (Victor Alli) death. While much of the online fan backlash to the Michael/Michaela swap is the same frustrating feedback that often happens when showrunners elect to put a more diverse group of characters onscreen (and should therefore be ignored), some people have simply expressed disappointed that a popular romance tale that thoughtfully wrestled with infertility may lose that well-done subplot in the new TV adaptation. But that doesn’t need to be the case.
In the “Bridgerton” book about Francesca, “When He Was Wicked,” Francesca deals with fertility issues following a miscarriage with first husband John, which are understandably very painful for her. Interestingly, that problem doesn’t resolve in the book with an expected baby happily-ever-after — at least, not in the original ending to the book that was published in 2004. Years later, when the show became a smash hit, author Julia Quinn went back and added “bonus second epilogues” that checked in with all of her coupl.
