Movies & TV Bridgerton Bridgerton Season 4 Gives Class Struggle a Cinderella Sheen It’s still Bridgerton, but questions of class division power its fourth season By Lacy Baugher Milas | Published on January 29, 2026 Image credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Image credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix Four seasons in, Netflix’s Bridgerton has a formula that works. Known for its steamy romances, candy-colored costumes, and effortlessly diverse Regency setting that’s anything but traditional, it’s a historical drama with a thoroughly contemporary feel. This isn’t a criticism, by the way—the show is delightfully fun escapism that manages to remain true to the swoony spirit of its source material even as it updates the saga of the sprawling family at its center for a modern audience. And in season four, the show pulls off its greatest trick yet, reimagining one of its most problematic stories in a way that often feels richer and more engaging than the original.  Based on the third book in Julia Quinn’s megapopular romance series, season four backtracks to tell the story of Benedict (Luke Thompson), the Bridgerton family’s artistic and free-spirited second son, who has not always fit in with his more marriage and family-minded siblings. Previous seasons of the show have touched on his frequently Bohemian lifestyle, his love of painting, and his hedonistic sexual pursuits with both women and men. Perhaps it was always inevitable that Benedict’s story—and the romance at its center—would not follow a conventional path.  Rather than a simple friends-to-lovers romance or a fake relationship that turns real, Benedict’s story takes many of its narrative cues from Cinderella, featuring everything from a glamorous transformation and a hidden identity to a wicked stepmother and a misplaced (and personally identifying) fashion item left behind at a party. The season begins with a masquerade ball, and much of that fairytale feel lingers throughout the four episodes of Volume 1 (all of which were available for review). But underneath the masks and mistaken identities, Bridgerton season four is really a story about class. And it is through the introduction of Benedict’s love interest Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha) that the show is forced to confront, in some small ways at least, some of the most uncomfortable elements of its own premise.  Don’t get me wrong, this is still Bridgerton. The housemaids and shopgirls who quietly make the town run don’t suddenly unionize. The upper-class elites aren’t miraculously agitating for a minimum wage or fair housing laws. There are still lines the show won’t cross. And maybe this means the bar is in Hell, but it still feels important that the show is at long last acknowledging the stories of those who live outside the privileged world that the Bridgertons and their friends inhabit. Sophie, you see, is a maid. She’s not genteely impoverished or down on her luck; she’s a servant who performs manual labor, precisely the kind of character who has haunted the edges of Bridgerton’s previous seasons but never really directly taken part. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but Sophie is great. Image: Liam Daniel/Netflix Resourceful, intelligent, and kind, she never lets her difficult personal situation—an orphan with a stepmother who resents her and no future to speak of—make her cruel, cynical, or incapable of embracing joy. Her unabashed delight at simply being allowed to attend the Bridgerton masquerade is infectious, her honesty and complete lack of guile refreshing in a world where performance and presentation often carry more weight than truth. She’s a heroine whose happiness is easy to root for, so much so that no matter how you may feel about Benedict as a potential life partner, you’ll find yourself hoping these crazy kids can work it out, if only because Sophie wants it to so badly. It’s easy to see why this character has long been such a fan favorite, even if the book in which she is introduced is… well, let’s just call it problematic at best.  Bridgerton has always played a bit fast and loose with its source material. The show has both race and genderbent major characters (including Sophie herself). It’s moved the order of various narrative events around to suit its own purpose. And sometimes, it’s even made them up out of whole cloth. That season two love triangle between Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley), her sister Edwina (Charithra Chandran), and Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey)? Doesn’t happen in the books. The revelation that Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) is actually Lady Whistledown? Happens much earlier in the show than on the page. Your mileage may, and likely will, vary on how well all of these changes, reorderings, replacements, and expansions have played out onscreen. Sometimes it turned out really well. And sometimes… not so much.  In the case of Benedict, the show has genuinely put in the work to make the shifts in his character feel earned. The early episodes of season four lean into the idea of Benedict as a rake, highlighting his multiple sexual partners, disdain for the rules of polite society, and resentment toward the man-of-the-family role he’s being forced to assume while Anthony is in India. But he’s also portrayed as someone who is deeply lonely and unsure, convinced that he’ll never find a woman who can accept all the disparate and frequently conflicting identities that make him who he is. He’s been uniquely positioned to both find—and accept—a love that colors outside the boundaries established by aristocratic society and to appreciate Sopie’s particular brand of authenticity. Yes, it helps that their initial meeting essentially occurs Love is Blind-style, when neither really knows who the other is, but the masquerade also gives them both the freedom to be their truest selves—that is, after all, the whole point of a disguise. Thompson and Ha have a warm, genuine chemistry together, and their banter is easy and fun. This first half of the season definitely prioritizes yearning over sexual tension, as Benedict works to track down his mysterious masquerade dance partner and grows closer to Sophie-as-herself after rescuing her from a dangerous situation at a country party without realizing that the two are the same person. But this season largely belongs to Ha, who steals almost every scene she is in from her first moments onscreen—even when we as the audience don’t know who she is. Deftly shifting between determined grit, wistful joy, and desperate yearning, her Sophie is a woman made of many layers, and who has seen more than her fair share of struggle without allowing it to make her cynical or cruel.  But Sophie and Benedict are not season four’s only story. Much like last season, this outing has a much more deliberate ensemble feel, with multiple secondary plots and supporting characters getting considerable screentime in ways. Penelope and Eloise are drawn into Benedict’s hunt for the mysterious Lady in Silver, and his purported willingness to (maybe?) finally marry puts him at the center of the ton’s social season (and Queen Charlotte’s interest). We also get to see the early days of John and Francesca’s marriage, witness Hyacinth chomp at the bit for her own debut, and watch as Violet and Lady Danbury take tentative steps into chasing dreams tied to their own futures rather than that of their loved ones. In many ways, though Netflix split the show’s fourth outing into two volumes for some inscrutable reason, it still feels like the series’s most complete and well-balanced. Yes, its primary story is still Benedict’s, but his emotional journey is just one piece of a larger narrative whole. With half the season to go, it’s impossible to tell how Bridgerton’s decision to acknowledge that class exists in their candy-coated fairytale world will ultimately play out. But Sophie’s story offers a perspective we haven’t really seen before, and helps open up a corner of the Bridgerton universe that feels altogether new. Image: Liam Daniel/Netflix The Mondriches, after all, were business owners before their son inherited a title, and regularly hobnobbed with various members of the aristocratic elite. Sophie, for her part, is threatened with violence, penury, and homelessness over the course of these initial episodes as she loses her job, is forced to sell her belongings to survive, and endures sexual harassment in the name of keeping a roof over her head. While Bridgerton certainly has a… let’s just call it an idealistic view of the camaraderie amongst the downstairs employees of Grosvenor Square, the show doesn’t shy away from acknowledging how hard they work or how central the roles they play are when it comes to facilitating the lives of leisure the Bridgertons and others like them enjoy. It’s a new sort of self-awareness for this show, but one it deserves no small amount of credit for. Perhaps most importantly, the season makes a valiant effort to explore questions of class outside of Sophie’s storyline. We meet more downstairs workers than ever before in the space of these episodes, and a major subplot involves many of the ton’s most popular household servants and ladies’ maids advocating for better working conditions and higher pay. It’s far from perfect—no matter how much we love it, a show like Bridgerton is never going to have the capacity to do the complexities of these issues justice—but the fact that it’s at least taking the issue seriously (something we can’t really say for the book this season is based on) is worth a great deal. Here’s hoping season four can stick the landing in its back half.[end-mark] The post <i>Bridgerton</i> Season 4 Gives Class Struggle a Cinderella Sheen appeared first on Reactor.