Queen Charlotte Got More Bridgerton Vibes Than Bridgerton Itself – Especially After Season 3 Disappointment

Summary

• Bridgerton Season 3 did well, but fans still criticize it.
• The reason is plot inconsistency, which makes the new season very different from its spinoff, Queen Charlotte.
• The latter was developed by Rhimes herself and is mostly a stand-alone story.

Unfortunately, Bridgerton Season 3 turned out to have far more flaws than truly worthy moments. It broke the hearts of many fans because the writers failed to do justice to one of Bridgerton's most beloved couples, Colin and Pen, as well as their incredibly talented actors, Luke Newton and Nicola Coughlan.

The third season still managed to get good ratings on review aggregators, but they are not at all comparable to those of the Bridgerton prequel, Queen Charlotte, the personal brainchild of Shonda Rhimes. Moreover, the resounding success of the spin-off is due not only to the ratings, but also to the very vocal opinions of the fans, who unanimously claim that QC is currently the best story in the Bridgerton universe.

The Queen Charlotte Formula Outperformed Bridgerton Season 3

Of course, the main drawback of Bridgerton Season 3 was how much the narrative distracted from the main storyline, the relationship between Colin Bridgerton and Penelope Featherington. Instead of the dynamic development of their feelings, we got an uneven arc that was incredibly rushed due to the sheer number of supporting characters. Fans would have liked to see a deeper exploration of Colin's feelings, as it would have shown that despite his resentment over Pen being Lady Whistledown, he actually admired his future wife's efforts.

Whenever we were captivated by the development of Colin and Pen's relationship, the plot would immediately jump to the Featheringtons. As soon as we focused on their story, the story would immediately switch to the Mondriches, and then to Francesca and Benedict. And while the former somehow mirrored Penelope's personal development, the rest of the story added nothing to the development of Polin ark.

Queen Charlotte, on the other hand, focused primarily on the Queen herself (India Amarteifio) and King George III (Corey Mylchreest). Throughout the series, fans cared deeply about Charlotte's relationship with her husband. Of course, there were side stories, especially the tragic love story arc of Reynolds and Brimsley. However, they were directly related to the story of Charlotte and George, while the Mondriches had almost nothing to do with Polin.

Queen Charlotte Owes Its Success to Shonda Rhimes

Unfortunately, one of the main reasons the writers rushed the plot so much was because Netflix and Shondaland have long-term plans for multiple seasons of Bridgerton. As a result, virtually every piece of plot is a setup for future seasons.

This has been indirectly confirmed by showrunner Jess Brownell herself, who says that she and her team of writers are excited about Season 4. Given what she said in one of her recent interviews, we can assume that Brownell has been planning all along to pack Season 3 with a huge amount of plot development for what will be 'some of [her] best work':

'I'm really excited about what we're writing. We're toward the end with the writers room season, with the scripts. And I feel like it's some of my best work and my writers room's best work. We've just really gelled our collaboration, and we're firing on all cylinders, so I can't wait for fans to see what we have.'

In fact, we've already seen this in Season 2, with the absolute minimum of Kanthony on screen and high expectations for Polin. In other words, all the subplots of Season 3 are precursors to the events of Season 4.

Therein lies the difference between the flagship series and its prequel. Queen Charlotte is a personal project of Shonda Rhimes and was therefore conceived from the beginning as a self-contained, limited story. And that allowed the script to give its main characters the right amount of screen time.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter.