Two Years for Bridgerton Season 4? Here's Why Fans Are Frustrated

Summary

• Bridgerton's second and third seasons were delayed due to external reasons such as Covid-19 and the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
• The showrunner of the series stated that the new season will take two years again, frustrating fans.
• At the same time, Shonda Rhimes explained that Netflix doesn't allow to shoot a season and write a new one at the same time.

The third season of The Bridgertons has managed to impress both critics and viewers even more than the first two. On Rotten Tomatoes, the critics' and viewers' scores are an impressive 87% and 77% respectively, higher than the previous seasons. All of this suggests that the show is still incredibly popular, and viewers are now eagerly awaiting the release of the follow-up to the passionate love story set in Regency London society.

Following the huge success of the first two, Bridgerton's third and fourth seasons were announced back in 2021. Of course, a lot has happened since then, from the Covid-19 pandemic to last year's WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which undoubtedly had an impact on the delay of Season 3, bringing the total wait to a full two years.

Now, thankfully, there are no major events that could freeze the entire television industry again. Still, it looks like Bridgerton Season 4 will have to wait another two years, which is incredibly frustrating for fans. Let's get to the bottom of it.

Why Did We Have to Wait So Long for the New Seasons of Bridgerton?

The difference between the release of the first two seasons of Bridgerton was one year and three months, but the pre-production phase of Season 2 began before the release of the first season. Filming took eight months, but that was due to a Covid-19 interruption.

As for Season 3, the delay was due to both the effects of the pandemic and, as we've mentioned before, Hollywood labor disputes: filming was completed last year and also took exactly eight months.

We Have to Wait Another 2 Years for the New Season

Unfortunately, the total production time for the upcoming Season 4 may also take about two years, as showrunner Jess Brownell revealed in a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter.

'We are working to try and put the seasons out more quickly, but they do take eight months to film and then they have to be edited, and then they have to be dubbed into every language. And the writing takes a very long time as well, so we're kind of on a two-year pace, we're trying to speed up, but somewhere in that range.'

Of course, none of this convinced the fans, because even under Covid-19 conditions, the second season took much less time. Many have compared the production level of the show to Game of Thrones. Despite the much greater need to work with locations and, of course, CGI, the team managed to produce almost every season annually, even though Bridgerton has fewer episodes.

Also, many fans can't understand why the new season hasn't been written yet. It was announced at the same time as the third season, and the writers are apparently still unsure which novel of Julia Quinn's book series to adapt this time.

Shonda Rhimes Blames Netflix for Slowing Down the Production Process

Netflix's All-Mother Netflix, Shonda Rhimes, may have the answer. Shonda told Variety in May 2024 that the stumbling block is Netflix execs who demand too much of the writers room and crew, ultimately preventing them from optimizing the production process.

'They [Netflix] want to write everything, and then they want to shoot everything, which is — it's very counterintuitive to the way I learned to make television. It takes so long, and that's frustrating to me. To me, we should be able to write and produce shows at the same time, and that’s not necessarily possible at this moment. It should be, but it's not.'

Well, while the two-year wait is definitely underwhelming, it won't undermine our interest in Shondaland's work and the remarkable show that is Bridgerton.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter, Variety.