Bridgerton season five foregrounds Francesca and Michaela’s burgeoning queer love story

Now that we’re done swooning over Benedict and Sophie, it’s time to turn our attention to the next Bridgerton romance.

Season five of the Regency-era drama is officially in production, which means we might get the next instalment sooner rather than later. That is to say, perhaps it won’t take two years before our worlds are again draped in wisteria and brocade.

As suspected, Francesca is set to be the focus point this coming season, specifically her burgeoning entanglement with Michaela. It’s the first time Bridgerton’s core storyline will be about a queer romance.

Netflix today confirmed the news, and released a series of publicity images featuring leads Hannah Dodd and Masali Baduza.

It also dropped a short video clip of the two, in character, as they stand side-by-side, their hands gently grazing.

It was intercut with video of the sweeping vistas of the Scottish Highlands, which suggested that season five will spend some time away from London’s Mayfair and The Ton.

It will also be a little bit different to most of its previous seasons in that the Francesca and Michaela relationship has been seeded over the two previous instalments, unlike the stories with Daphne, Anthony and Benedict, who meet their eventual paramours during their season. Colin and Penelope had also been teased, but it was predominantly one-sided.

Francesca is the sixth Bridgerton sibling out of eight – even matriarch Violet joked during the most recent episode that she has “so many children” – and has already had a romantic subplot for the past two chapters, but the plan was always that each of them would get their own season to shine.

In season three, Francesca debuted on the marriage mart and coupled with the kind and unassuming John Stirling, a Scottish lord. The two tied the knot and appeared to be in a happy and lowkey marriage.

At the end of that season, the series introduced John’s cousin, Michaela.

The two sparked but to the point that there was some awkwardness between them, as if Francesca didn’t want to acknowledge what might really be happening.

John unexpectedly died in the fourth season, and in the aftermath, Francesca came to rely on Michaela more, even expressing that she hoped Michaela would stay in London.

The season ended with Michaela leaving town, a tease of the bubbling sexual and romantic tension between them.

The TV adaptation of Bridgerton, which comes from Shonda Rhimes’ production banner, has broken many conventions for a historic romance, especially with its racially diverse casting. Three of its four central couples have been inter-racial.

But it has yet to make a big push behind queer representation, although Benedict is bisexual and was depicted on screen as engaging in same-sex relations.

The Francesca-Michaela focus might not be an entirely frictionless endeavour given some of the reaction at the end of season three when the latter character was introduced.

In the books by Julia Quinn, from which the series is adapted, Michaela is Michael, so the character has been gender-swapped, and some segments of the fandom were viscerally opposed.

The online backlash got so ugly that Quinn had to intervene and in mid-2024, posted a lengthy defence of the TV show’s creative decision to change the character.

“I ask that you grant me and the Shondaland team some faith as we move forward,” Quinn wrote at the time. “I think we are going to end up with two stories, one on page and one on screen, and they will both be beautiful and moving.”

According to the official description, the fifth season will be set two years after John Stirling’s death, and Francesca chooses to re-enter the marriage part for practical reasons.

At the same time, Michaela has returned to London to look after her late cousin’s estate, which triggers resolved feelings between the two women.

Showrunner Jess Brownell told Netflix’s marketing site, Tudum, the Francesca and Michaela story feels “ground-breaking”.

“Obviously, there are a lot of great shows that have depicted queer love. We’re not the first by any means,” she added. “But to make an entire Bridgerton season about a sapphic relationship feels huge.”

Bridgerton is one of Netflix’s most commercially successful series. Its first and third seasons are among the streamer’s top 10 most watched English-language original shows.