As Bridgerton’s free-spirited bachelor, Benedict (played by Luke Thompson) is receptive to new experiences.
That rang especially true in Season 3, Part 2, which is now streaming on Netflix. The second batch of episodes found Violet’s second-eldest son in a throuple with the widowed Lady Tilley Arnold (Hannah New) and her friend Paul Suarez (Lucas Aurelio), a patron of the arts.
When it comes to the rakish Bridgerton’s sexuality, showrunner Jess Brownell tells TVLine that the show’s writers “talk about him as being pansexual [and] the idea that for him, gender is not that important when he is finding attraction.”
“He’s someone who is interested in energy and spirit, and he’s not interested in convention or labels. He sees a person as a person,” she explains. “And while his throuple chapter with Tilly and Paul seems to have come to a close at the end of the season, we’re certainly not done exploring that part of his personality. As all queer people know, your queerness is always a part of you, no matter who you end up with.”
In Julia Quinn’s bestseller An Offer from a Gentleman , Benedict romanced and married a domestic worker named Sophie Beckett in a Cinderella -type story. We haven’t yet met his would-be wife, and the EP isn’t revealing Bridgerton’s next romance right now. But Brownell notes that the most important clue about Benedict’s Season 4 journey lies in his conversation with Lady Tilly about not wanting something serious.
“ I think that he is someone who has never been able to commit. Not only to a person, but to a path or a passion or even a hobby,” she adds. “He’s a renaissance man and that comes with it, the ability to do lots of different things.”
But Lady Tilly’s comment about it feeling good to want to commit for once may have struck a nerve. “I think he might be starting to realize that while he has a lot of breadth in his life, he doesn’t have depth,” the Bridgerton boss previews. “So that’s something we’ll be carrying forward.”
What’s more, Benedict may not be the show’s only queer Bridgerton. With the introduction of John Stirling’s cousin Michaela , Brownell says there’s “fertile ground there to explore” for Hannah Dodd’s Francesca “in a queer story.”
And what of their sister Eloise (Claudia Jessie)?
“We’ve talked about Eloise in the room a lot about the fact that to a lot of people, she does read as queer, and I totally understand why,” Brownell shares. “But we felt it’s really important to hold space in this show where everyone is obsessed with romance for there to be a character — specifically a female character — for whom that is not the priority.”
For now, the intent “is not that Eloise just needs to meet someone of the right gender but that, in fact, she is genuinely more interested in cerebral pursuits at this moment.”
That’s not to say that she won’t eventually open herself up to love, but for now, Eloise “is on a path of finding her place in a society that doesn’t make a lot of room for women who care more about ideas than they do love.”
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