While Bridgerton Season 3 delivers its fair share of swoons and scandals, not all changes from Romancing Mister Bridgerton hit the right notes. In fact, several departures from the original novel left fans questioning whether the heart of the story had been slightly misplaced. From delayed romances and underdeveloped friendships to oddly anticlimactic reveals, the season at times struggles to balance its lavish spectacle with the emotional depth that made the books so beloved. Here are the most disappointing differences — the ones that made us sigh not from longing, but from lost potential.
Worst: Benedict is still single and lost
By “Romancing Mister Bridgerton,” Benedict had found his lover and was already married. However, the “Bridgerton” TV series skipped his romance for now, so he is still single and lost. While Benedict’s casual relationships were fun in the first season, it was a little disappointing to postpone Benedict’s romance to give him another fling.
Benedict is one of the best Bridgertons. We want to see his love story!
Worst: Lady Danbury doesn’t have a friendship with Penelope
One of the best past of “Romancing Mister Bridgerton” was Penelope’s friendship with Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh), a wise, independent widow in the Ton.
She was part of Penelope’s transition coming out of her shell, and their conversations always showed that Penelope was so much braver than she thought. Their interactions are among the few insights into Lady Danbury’s personality in the book series since she is a more minor character there.
Though Lady Danbury has been more developed in the TV series, she doesn’t interact with Penelope much. Pen is left to fend for herself without any friends this season other than Colin, though Lady Danbury supports her after she reveals her identity.
This allows Penelope to find the courage alone but doesn’t help Lady Danbury’s arc in season three. Lady Danbury randomly props up Francesca instead, but this pairing has no interesting interactions.
Worst: The Featherington sisters’ baby race
“Bridgerton” leaned pretty hard into the entire “these poor young women don’t know how sex works” thing in season one. While potentially realistic, by season three it’s become a bit tired.
Penelope’s sisters, Prudence and Philippa, are both married, and their mother is putting pressure on both of them to produce a baby. If either of them had a son, that child would become the new Lord Featherington. That’s particularly important, given that Lady Featherington herself is under threat from the Crown to have to transfer their estate to another family.
Unfortunately, Prudence and Philippa are shockingly clueless when it comes to procreation. But by this point in time, the bumbling sex schtick is a bit tiresome. In “Romancing Mister Bridgerton,” the Featherington heir race isn’t a part of the plot — and while it’s an understandable concern, it could do with a bit of nuance this season.
Luckily, by the end, all three Featherington sisters have managed to conceive. In a twist, it’s Penelope who has given birth to the new Lord Featherington.
Worst: Penelope doesn’t have a younger sister
In “Romancing Mister Bridgerton,” Penelope isn’t the youngest Featherington sister. In addition to Philippa and Prudence, she has a younger sister — Felicity.
Felicity is close friends with Hyacinth Bridgerton and serves as another conduit of information between the Bridgerton and Featherington families. In the book, Lady Featherington schemes to set Felicity up with Colin, a prospect that Penelope balks at. But Penelope and Felicity are close, and her friendship with Hyacinth is a regular sense of entertainment.
It’s easy to see why Felicity isn’t around in “Bridgerton” — frankly, there are plenty of characters to keep track of, and she doesn’t play an irreplaceable role in Penelope’s story. But Felicity’s inclusion in the story adds a bit of levity through her friendship with Hyacinth. It also underscores the tensions within the Featherington family: Lady Featherington thinks much more highly of Felicity than she does Penelope.
Worst: Penelope and Colin are much younger than their book counterparts
The “Bridgerton” book series has bigger gaps of time between the events of each book. This means that by the time Penelope and Colin get to their love story in the fourth book, Penelope is 28, and Colin is 33.
Penelope’s desperation to find a husband makes a lot more sense in the book: In that era, she would definitely be considered a spinster at 28.
Penelope is only in her third year in society in the TV series, so her desperation feels forced.
In addition, the timeline in the book version supports their rapid transition from friends to lovers. Colin would be mature enough to realize Penelope’s beauty and have known her much longer. Therefore, he would have less hesitation in marrying her quickly.
Worst: The anti-climatic Lady Whistledown reveal
This is a tricky one, because the Whistledown reveal in “Romancing Mister Bridgerton” is also a bit wonky. In the book, it’s Colin who presents his wife as Lady Whistledown at his sister Daphne’s ball — and he does so without Penelope knowing that he’s going to do it.
In the show, Penelope decides to reveal herself by confessing to Queen Charlotte and asking to justify herself to the public. It means that Penelope gets to divulge the information more on her own terms. But the reveal ends up feeling rather anti-climactic on screen. Philippa Featherington ends the awkward moment with her now-iconic, “Now, Varley, the bugs,” but the entire sequence comes off abrupt.
That’s not to say the reveal in the book is perfect — but there’s something to be said for the romance of Colin making sure the entire Ton knows that his wife doesn’t stand alone.
Worst: Cressida finds out about Lady Whistledown mostly by chance
In Romancing Mister Bridgerton, the revelation of Penelope’s secret identity as Lady Whistledown unfolds with subtlety and wit, hinging not on a direct betrayal or external slip-up, but on Penelope’s own moment of carelessness. In a scene laced with irony and clever symmetry, Penelope makes a rare emotional admission to Cressida Twombley: that it would “break [her] heart” if Cressida were Lady Whistledown, after Cressida boldly and falsely claims the title for herself.
It’s a vulnerable and telling phrase—one that Penelope, in a moment of hubris or perhaps muscle memory, later repeats almost verbatim in a subsequent Whistledown column. “She is nothing more than a scheming imposter,” the column reads, “and it would break my heart to see my years of hard work attributed to one such as her.”
That repetition is Penelope’s fatal flaw. Cressida, more perceptive than she first appears, catches the turn of phrase and pieces the puzzle together. The discovery is subtle but rewarding, a testament to Penelope’s growing carelessness under pressure and to Cressida’s surprising shrewdness. It’s a cat-and-mouse game of intellect, rooted in character rather than plot mechanics.
By contrast, the Netflix adaptation opts for a more streamlined, less nuanced approach. In the series, Cressida stumbles upon the truth by way of a printer who casually mentions that Lady Whistledown is a redhead—a revelation that narrows the field with suspicious precision and leads Cressida directly to Penelope.
While both the novel and the show arrive at the same narrative destination—Cressida discovering Penelope’s secret—the path taken in the book is undeniably more intricate, and arguably more satisfying. There’s a delicious thrill in seeing Penelope’s own words nearly become her undoing, not through malice or exposure by others, but through a slip born of pride. In this version, the consequences of being Lady Whistledown are sharpened by the reminder that power, once tasted, can sometimes cloud even the sharpest minds.
