![]() ![]() They’re summoned back to London by a Whistledown-fanned scandal involving Marina Thompson’s pregnancy by another man, and Marina struggles to justify her decision to enthusiastically encourage Colin’s courtship. At Clyvedon Castle, Daphne and Simon can barely exist on the same plane without wanting to throw their whole partnership in the trash in the wake of last episode’s revelations. We spend the episode seeing the fallout of decisions made by people who feel like they have no other options, but still bear the judgement of their confidants and society. While evidence of leg day and a squat routine among the nude male actors demand the label “female gaze,” it’s the serious treatment of emotions related to pregnancy that most effectively cements Bridgerton as TV for women. The episode ends with Daphne’s period arriving - in distressingly hemorrhagic fashion - despite her dream of motherhood, as Marina’s attempt to make an abortifacient tea leaves her unconscious on the floor at the Featherington house. It's unclear whether she is ill or dead.Early in the season, Bridgerton addressed the danger and pain posed to women by Regency childbirth, and this episode pairs Daphne’s desperate hope for a pregnancy with Marina Thompson’s increasingly limited options for avoiding life as an unwed mother. At the end of the episode, Penelope finds Marina limp and lifeless in her room. She sneaks down to the Featherington kitchen to make some sort of tea concoction that I assume is meant to induce an abortion. Marina is optimistic at first, but when oblivious Daphne tells Marina she was the only one to sign the letter to the general - meaning she didn't include Simon, who is a duke and a man and therefore the letter's seal of legitimacy - Marina gives up altogether. Daphne realizes that Marina was just trying to do what was best considering her situation, so she vows to use her duchess powers to contact the general who's married to her new gambling buddy to try to locate George in Spain. After her last fight with the Duke, she attends Lady Danbury's underground gambling room for fancy ladies, where she gets very drunk but also meets the wife of a general who might be able to help Marina. While all of this is happening, Daphne is also trying to help out with the Colin and Marina scandal. (This Queen Charlotte seems to be based on the real Queen Charlotte, who was rumored to have been mixed race, but the real Queen would have been much older during the 1813 setting of the show.) This conversation makes a scene in which an old white man considers Marina, a young Black woman, as a potential wife while studying her body read differently than it would have if this was a story where race didn’t exist. Black people wouldn’t just suddenly become accepted in every aspect of society in the time the queen and king have been together, but it’s not explained further. A previous episode implied that Simon’s father had long been a duke. There’s no mention of slavery - or anything specific, really - but he says that their people were previously seen as “novelties.” This raises a ton of questions. Regarding the white king (who we haven’t actually seen) and Black queen, Danbury says, “We were two separate societies, divided by color, until a king fell in love with one of us.” Simon points out that this might have allowed Black people to hold titles, but it doesn’t change everything. She also makes the first mention of race we get on the show. In a scene mirroring this, Lady Danbury tells Simon to propose to Daphne, if he loves her. And, please, someone get these girls an encyclopedia. At one point Eloise is shown smoking a cigarette and with her deep voice she’s reminiscent of Florence Pugh playing young Amy in Little Women. It doesn’t help that the actors playing Penelope and Eloise are 33 and 31, respectively. Neither Penelope nor Eloise find out the truth about sex this episode, and… I’m sorry, how old are they supposed to be? Penelope is out for her first social season, so I was guessing about 16. Marina tells Penelope that pregnancy comes from “love” and shares that she’s in love with a guy named George who writes her letters and is fighting in a war in Spain. They thought pregnancy could only happen to married women and don’t want to become pregnant by mistake, so they need answers. She shares with Eloise that she knows someone who is pregnant, but doesn’t know how it happened. ![]() The other storyline of this episode starts when Penelope finds out about Marina’s pregnancy. ![]()
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