Bridgerton Season 5 Needs to Do This One Thing To Keep the Show Alive

Since she first showed up with her wisecracks, no-nonsense attitude and indomitable spirit, Eloise has become a fan-favourite on Bridgerton. She has been on quite a journey through the course of the show, going from someone who was pretty much dragged kicking and screaming into society and everything it represents to being the person who urged sister Hyacinth not to give up on marriage and the idea of falling in love.

She might have started Season 4 by declaring herself as being “on the shelf,” but throughout the season, Eloise had a lot of growth. Alongside her chat with Hyacinth, there were other signs that she was softening towards the idea of a more conventional life — from her conversation with Cressida, where she said she was “starting to see” how falling in love can transform one’s life, to her surprising comment in the post-credits scene, where she remarked on how much she loves weddings.

Still, despite my predictions, Bridgerton Season 5 will be focusing on Francesca and Michaela’s love story. This leaves us with just one Season to go — in both senses of the word — before Eloise becomes a series lead. Here's what needs to happen before the mantle is passed for her to become a leading lady…

Eloise Needs To Do Something For Herself

In my opinion, Eloise’s best season in terms of storytelling so far was Season 2. I’ve mentioned before how the show — including Season 2 — veers on being a little too Whistledown-centric sometimes. While I understand that giving Penelope more screentime in that season was important for her to later lead Season 3, I felt that her storyline occupied more space than was warranted. However, Eloise’s pursuit of Whistledown specifically in that season avoided being tedious because it gave her something to do rather than making snarky comments at her siblings. 

While it started off as a quest to uncover the columnist, what we saw was Eloise becoming more exposed to the world beyond the confines of high society, learning more about feminism, activism, and striking up a friendship with the printer’s assistant, Theo Sharpe. While she ended up paying for it later, that arc was pivotal to her personal development. As well as coming to understand political issues on a deeper, cross-class level, she had her first somewhat romantic experience, even if her connection to Theo didn’t lead to much in the end. It showed us that, despite all of her complaints about convention, she wasn’t immune to developing more intimate relationships.

After the shock of Penelope’s secret occupied her in Season 3, Eloise spent most of Season 4 desperately trying to avoid society while scoffing at her younger sister’s more conventional pursuits. Still, despite her best efforts, her perspective on love and marriage did indeed mature. However, her storylines in Season 3 and 4 pale in comparison to Season 2 because, in the latter two seasons, she was maligned and reduced to a supporting role in other people’s stories. So, in Season 5, I would like to see more of Season 2 Eloise. I want her to broaden her horizons beyond the Bridgerton house and her siblings’ problems. And the good news is, there’s one simple and convenient way she can do that. 

Enter Sir Phillip Crane…

What show-only fans of Bridgerton might not realise is that Eloise’s husband has already been introduced. Back in Season 1, after almost tricking Colin into marrying her, a pregnant Marina Thompson found out that her love, George Crane, had died in battle. His brother, Sir Phillip, arrived to break the news and offer Marina his hand in marriage — although the latter was due to a sense of duty rather than being in love with her. Despite initial resistance, Marina ended up accepting the offer, and the pair went off to start a new life together. 

We then got to learn a little bit more about Phillip in Season 2 — namely, his obsession with plants and botany — after Colin decided to visit the couple. While he seemed pleasant enough, there’s still a lot we don’t know about him. He didn’t even appear in Seasons 3 or 4. In the book, ‘To Sir Phillip, With Love,’ Eloise starts writing to Phillip and expresses her condolences after (spoiler alert) Marina dies. They end up building a rapport and exchanging letters over the course of a year, with Eloise keeping it a secret. Then, Eloise is taken aback by Phillip inviting her to his estate to see if she’d suit being his wife.

However, after feeling lonely with her best friend Penelope’s marriage to Colin, the spinster decides in the middle of the night to take Phillip up on his offer and travel to his estate. This all happens in the prologue and very first chapter of the book, so if this portion of the novel were to be adapted as a sub-plot in Season 5, there would still be plenty of material for Eloise’s own season. 

While Penelope has been married in the show for a while now, Eloise’s brother and fellow convection-quashing ally, Benedict, tied the knot with Sophie at the end of Season 4. We also know that Season 5 is set to have a two-year time jump. So, with no kindred spirits left and a couple more years of evading the marriage mart under her belt, Eloise will be knee-deep into spinsterhood by the time we meet her on-screen again. Surely, she’ll be lonelier than ever. 

With this context, her reaching out to Phillip and establishing a connection via letter throughout Season 5 makes a lot of narrative sense. This storyline would also be an example of Eloise broadening her horizons as she did in Season 2, and would strike the right balance between important character development for the future lead without detracting from the Season 5 leads. 

Ultimately, one of the reasons Bridgerton is so popular is that it has perfected the art of the slow-burn. Time and time again, the show has proved that, like a good bolognese sauce, the perfect love story needs time to marinate. And by setting the scene with Eloise and Phillip in Season 5, we will not only get a better love story, but a better series as a whole, which would make Netflix less inclined to add Bridgerton to the long, long list of cancelled originals.