Why Is It Going to Take 2 Years to Make a New Season of ‘Bridgerton’?
By the time Bridgerton airs its eighth and final season, I fear I’ll be fighting to swap the TV to Netflix at the retirement home in order to catch up with the Victorian Romance. It’ll be 2075, and every person on the show will have been recast. I’ll have to watch it on my 47th-generation iPad, with a Netflix app run entirely by AI. Alas, finally, we’ll be able to watch Gregory Bridgerton—played by some nepo baby from the OG Bridgerton cast, I’m sure—fall in love. I’ll be hooting and hollering from a walker.
Exaggeration, yes, but the wait time between seasons of Bridgerton is starting to feel unbearable. Since the show began, we’ve had to wait two years between seasons—Season 1 came out in 2020 during the middle of the pandemic, Season 2 arrived in late 2022, and now, Season 3 premiered in the spring of 2024. We got a spinoff in 2023, although that didn’t really feed our full appetite for Bridgerton. Now, Season 4 is slated for 2026. It makes no sense. Television series used to debut one 22-episode long season every year. Now, it takes two years to produce eight episodes, and sometimes even less. What’s with the lengthy wait time?
There are different answers for various TV shows. Of course, the back-to-back WGA and SAG strikes last summer slowed everything down. When it comes to shows like House of the Dragon, intense overseas shoots and big dragon CGI complicate timing—which I can forgive, except for the fact that HBO used to release a new season of Game of Thrones every year. Still, I’ll give the pass to shows that need big special effects. Take your time. Don’t overwork those design whizzes.