Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix
If you were wondering just how close we’re getting to Penelope Featherington’s two worlds colliding, look no further than the close-up we get early on the episode of Pen’s ink-stained hands adorned with her new engagement ring (this episode was directed by Bille Woodruff and written by Annabelle Hood). A telling shot, if ever there was one! That is to say, those worlds are colliding right now, and we are reaching the point of no return.
Pen is fuming after Cressida’s big “reveal.” She knows she needs to put out a column refuting her claims, but she doesn’t know where to begin. She is sweating. She is frustrated. She is me trying to write a recap. It hits very close to home! While Pen wrestles with what to do next, at least one good thing comes out of Cressida taking credit for Lady Whistledown: She gets to hear Colin say that he always thought Lady Whistledown would be someone “more clever” than Cressida and wow, wow, wow does that have to be the biggest turn on for Pen. I’m surprised she doesn’t jump him right then and there. Alas, she does not (this episode is very chaste, to be honest). Instead, he puts that ring on her finger, tells her it is but half as beautiful as her (again, she must be hot and bothered), and is off. Pen’s excitement is palpable, until once again it dawns on her that she is still lying to this man. So many lies! It’s a real pickle, babes, and the situation is only about to get more complicated.
Up to this point, Eloise has been a staunch proponent of Penelope coming clean to Colin and quitting the Lady Whistledown operation for good. But it seems she is rethinking things in light of Cressida’s big play and a conversation she has with Colin in which she can see her brother is really, truly in love with Penelope. Colin is so soft, and I cannot get enough of it. It “is truly bewildering how quickly one person can become all that matters. My only concern now is with her well-being and our future together,” he tells Eloise when she notes how his hatred for Whistledown has kind of calmed. He still hates her, for sure, and is glad that Eloise isn’t going to continue her friendship with Cressida, because, gah, what a monster! It would make no sense to stand by a person like that after the anguish she’s caused their family, he tells her. Eloise is dying inside.
And so, she rushes over to check in on Penelope. Cressida has given Pen a clear way out of this whole mess: Let Cressida take the credit — she’ll never be able to write a real Whistledown, so the column will “die with her.” No one will ever need to know the truth — Colin will never know the truth. “She did you a favor,” Eloise tells her old friend.
If only it were that easy for Pen. It’s not just giving up Whistledown, something that she has worked hard to build, but it’s giving it up to Cressida Cowper, of all people. She can’t do it. “It would break my heart,” she tells El. “What of Colin’s heart?” Eloise responds. Eloise arguing the “Give up your dreams and your work for a man and marriage” side is wild, even if Colin is her brother. It’s no wonder Penelope bristles a bit when Eloise flat out tells her that Whistledown is “just gossip” and she should let it go — effectively belittling everything Penelope’s worked for up to this point. The show always references the Bridgerton brothers feeling lost, but maybe Eloise is the most adrift out of all of them.
That conversation with Eloise is surely what’s spinning around in Pen’s head when her mother comes to have a sit-down. Portia finds her daughter utterly despondent, clutching some old Whistledown columns — cannot wait for everyone to learn Pen is Lady Whistledown so they can all feel like complete dingalings for not realizing it sooner — and she impresses upon her the importance of keeping her husband-to-be happy in these early stages of their relationship. Her job at the moment is to cater to his every wish, his every dream. When Pen asks about her own dreams, Portia believes her daughter to be very confused: “What dreams? Ladies do not have dreams; they have husbands.” It’s a testament to Polly Walker’s performance that Portia can spit out bullshit like this so matter-of-factly and you can still deeply empathize with her when she opens up to her daughter about her own terrible marriage and her greatest wish being that her daughters would do better than she did. She’s so sincere when she tells Penelope that her marriage to Colin Bridgerton has made her dreams come true, it’s almost heartbreaking. Even if her actions have been misguided, even if she has been downright cruel to Pen at times, you can still buy her defense that, in her mind, she did it all to protect her family. It looks like Pen is even beginning to consider her mother — and her reality as a woman in 1815 — in a new way.
If you’re counting, that’s two strikes against keeping Whistledown going. The third arrives soon after. At church, it’s time to begin the reading of the marriage banns — publicly announcing Penelope and Colin’s marriage and allowing the congregation to object if they feel so inclined. It all feels official now — it is happening, baby. For a moment, you can see it crosses her mind that she definitely has a reason they shouldn’t get married, but she buries it. And when she and Colin find themselves alone in the church after mass, she informs him that yes, there has been something she’s been wanting to tell him, but we aren’t getting a Whistledown confession that easy; Instead, she wants him to know that she has loved him since the day she met him. She has always loved him. He is moved. “I will spend a lifetime begging your forgiveness for not seeing you sooner,” he tells her. And they dance there in the aisle, so happy to be together and in love. It would all be so goddamn romantic if we didn’t know there was the major, life-altering lie looming over them. Pen’s no dummy — deep down she has to know this can’t stay a secret forever.
It doesn’t take long for cracks to start forming in Penelope’s big plan to keep the truth hidden, either. Genevieve Delacroix is my hero. Penelope, who has thrown herself deep into wedding planning, heads to the Modiste to get her wedding dress shopping going while also informing her friend that she is putting down the pen, so to speak; she’s letting Cressida take credit, and she is done writing Whistledown. Genevieve clearly thinks this is a terrible decision. She can’t say that to Pen’s face, but she does go on about how good it feels to see someone light up when they put on one of her dresses and how she could never give that feeling up. It is her life’s work. It’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer, and it is fantastic. Pen picks up what Genevieve is putting down.
But what of our Imposter Whistledown? Cressida can’t just claim to be the ’ton’s most notorious writer and go on with her life. Sure, she meets her short-term goal and Lord Greer rescinds his offer to marry her, but then her father pulls her dowry, informs her she will be living with her Aunt Joanna in Wales from now on, and she’s summoned to go before the Queen. Perhaps she didn’t fully think her little ruse through. Wait, no, sorry, she definitely didn’t think it through. Doesn’t she know Queen Charlotte will suffer no fools? She can’t believe the Lady Whistledown would be out here exposing herself for 5,000 pounds and she sure as hell isn’t just handing over the reward money without proof — she demands Cressida write her next column. Earlier, her mother already called her an idiot to her face — okay fine, she said “cleverness” is not one of Cressida’s gifts, but in 1815, that stings! — and both the Cowper ladies realize they are in some deep shit here.
Cressida even goes so far as hunting down Eloise outside of church, as if no one can see her lurking — a woman that tall? With hair that stiff? With shoulder pads designed to take out innocent bystanders? Be for real for once, Bridgerton. Not knowing that Eloise knows she is lying through her teeth, Cressida asks El if she would like to be a pal and team up with her on the Whistledown front. Why she doesn’t just come clean and explain that she’s lying and why she’s doing it, I’ll never know! Maybe Lady Cowper is really onto something with the not-so-clever stuff, because Cressida forgets that if she is Whistledown, then she is the one who wrote all that stuff about Eloise and the Bridgertons. She doesn’t put it together fast enough. Eloise declines the offer for a whole host of reasons and Cressida immediately lashes out. It is her way! And yet, when she tells Eloise that she’s simply jealous because Eloise is all talk and never actually does anything, isn’t there a little truth to that? And isn’t it interesting that it is the exact same thing Penelope said to her when Eloise discovered the truth about her friend? There’s no way that doesn’t hurt her at least a little bit.
Regardless, Cressida will find no help within her very short-lived friendship with Eloise Bridgerton. And dear lord, she needs help. Her first Whistledown draft is, well, they call them rough drafts for a reason right? Things are looking so bad for Cressida that when she tearfully tells her mother that she’s scared, you almost feel bad for her. But the Cowper ladies hatch a plan.
All of this is brewing as the ’ton heads to the very first ball hosted by the Mondriches. That’s right! Will has given up his club to focus on his family’s new reality, and at the behest of Lady Danbury, he and Alice have agreed to a ball — they want to stay ahead of the game, after all. They do a nice job! Everything looks lush there, and that giant flowered apparatus that opens into some sort of floral paper fan when the Queen walks in is a nice touch. I’m sorry to the Mondriches, but that is not why their ball will be remembered.
Everything is going so well. Have Colin and Penelope ever looked so happy? But it is short-lived. Everyone is talking about Cressida and you can see the whispers, especially the ones that praise her for her writing, are really starting to get to Pen. Finally, Cressida and her mother roll in; Cressida dresses like Satan’s little angel, and things really take a turn. They have brought a present for the Queen: It’s not a full column, but a little introduction to this new, unmasked version of Whistledown and it might not be an exact copy, but it is close. From the ink stains on Lady Cowper’s forearm (was she laying on the parchment, or?), it’s clear that mother dearest took the quill into her own hands. And she’s kind of good? So good, in fact, that both Penelope and Eloise are reeling from reading it — and from the promise of a full issue.
The two run off together into a private room. Eloise is panicked: She’s created a monster by not stopping Cressida when she had the chance, and she blames herself for inviting “that viper” into her life. Now that Cressida is angry with her for not helping her, or standing by her side, she knows that she and her family could once again be targets when Cressida goes to write her fake Whistledown. She never dreamed she’d be able to write anything coherent, which is both a hilarious and cutting insult. But not all hope is lost, Penelope reminds her friend. Whistledown isn’t just gossip, she tells Eloise — “Whistledown is power.” If Pen writes a column and discredits her, proving that she is lying, all of this will go away. She started the column because she felt she had no voice, even (especially) in her own family, and she should’ve kept it as a vehicle to “give voice to the other voiceless.” She wants to do good with it. The Bridgertons are one of the most highly regarded, wealthiest, and most powerful families in the ’ton, so I’m not exactly sure they are “the voiceless,” but yeah, sure, let’s roll with it. Penelope is going to protect her closest friend.
And so she writes. She writes in the back of her carriage and rushes a new issue over to her publisher, the disguise and accent are back, baby. But the relief is brief. When she turns around, she discovers that Colin has been following her since she ran off with Eloise, and the man has questions. Well, he has one question, really. He steps out of the shadows, toward his friend-turned-future wife and asks it: “You are Lady Whistledown?” Like I said at the top: Worlds are colliding and there is nothing Penelope can do about it now.
• You know there is a lot going on in this episode when Benedict being invited to have a threesome isn’t the headline news. But it’s true! Tilley throws a dinner party for Benedict and her other boyfriend Paul Suarez, and at the end of the night, he and Tilley ask him to be their third. He runs away so fast there should be a cartoon trail of dust behind him. Don’t worry, he’ll definitely be back. What a time to be alive!
• Oof, when Benedict can’t even bring himself to admit he used to paint after Paul asks if he has any “creative pursuits,” it’s a real gut-punch. Benedict continues to be self-deprecating when it comes to the fact that he feels purposeless, but scenes like this point to some real pain going on beneath the surface.
• We finally get the dirty deets on the long-standing tension between Lady Danbury and her brother Marcus: She blames him for turning her into their father when she was about to escape the night before her wedding. He betrayed her. He took away her once chance at freedom. He seems genuinely upset about the accusation! He even tries calling her Soma, her “born name,” to express just how sincere he’s being here, but it doesn’t matter. Lady Danbury has been carrying this fury around for a long, long time.
• Before Agatha and Marcus have it out, she is already trying to run interference on the obvious attraction between her brother and her friend Violet, but bombarding him with other widows in the ’ton. It’s not working — Marcus and Violet are so into each other! He even uses the oldest trick in the book: He leaves his hat at the Bridgerton House after the engagement party so he has an excuse to bump into her. People have been pulling the move for centuries, apparently.
• Francesca and John announce their engagement to her family, but since the Queen might not be thrilled about it, decide to keep the public announcement on the back burner. They ask Violet to speak to the Queen on their behalf. Violet apparently doesn’t have a great bluff — she’s worried the Queen would pick up on her apprehension in regards to the match and she’d ruin things for her daughter. When Frannie realizes this, she is beyond hurt. “Not every attachment must be dramatic and hard fought. What John and I have is easy and I love him, Mama.”
• John Stirling is so impressed by nice wainscoting and I could not love that man more.
• The greatest mystery in Bridgerton remains alive and well in season three: Will Benedict Bridgerton ever learn to sit in a chair correctly or nah?