Bridgerton Season 3 teasers

The long-awaited teaser for Bridgerton Season 3 has dropped, and amid the excited shrieking, and half-expected grumbling, fans promptly started analysing.

While it's likely the last we'll get before the release of the first half of the season, there's a lot to be found in a little over three minutes of collective footage.

Bridgerton is consistent in their Teasers.

Each official clip has been the first Meeting and Misunderstanding of the main couple. Season 1 had Daphne accidentally bumping into the Duke of Hastings and being mistaken for a fortune hunter. Season 2 had Kate overhearing Anthony's "requirements" for a wife after briefly encountering each other on a morning ride. Queen Charlotte had the iconic Garden Wall scene (that Lottie did not go over, after all...).

With Colin and Penelope, who have been friends for years, of course it had to be a little different.

Unlike the other Bridgerton couples, who are strangers at their first meeting (or nearly so, in the case of Sir Phillip and Eloise's letter-writing, or Hyacinth knowing of Gareth through his Grandmother) Colin and Penelope first met as children, and have interacted/obliviously flirted frequently throughout the previous two seasons. Their first meeting is long behind us... but this is likely their first meeting after Colin broke Penelope's heart (Seriously, the Bridgerton Boys need to stop talking to Lord Fyfe...)

Penelope isn't mincing words here, but she isn't truly angry, either.

Rather, she's resigned, in a reflection of every young woman who got a flattering dress and a new make-up style, and found out that the Teen Rom-Com Glow-Up failed to materialise. She's got a new dress and a new hairstyle and looks as stunning as we've ever seen, yet she's still a Wallflower, sidelined and ignored, in her third year of watching taller, thinner, prettier girls command attention and pair off with whoever they like best.

Colin has always been the one she could be honest with, even more honest than with Eloise, and the fact that he very publicly said he wouldn't date her hasn't changed that.

Colin, meanwhile, has just encountered the Sledgehammer of Having Done Messed Up, and given his track record of impulse decisions to Fix Things, it's going to be interesting to see how Colin reacts (and the rest of the Bridgerton family, once he fails to keep it a secret...)

Coming hard on the heels of the first preview, everyone breathed a sigh of relief that we would, in fact, get our happily ever after and our regular fix of steamy flirting.

(I was up there with Colin in needing a tall glass of ice water in the wake of that Moment! Damn, girl!)

This scene is interesting to me, because Penelope is flirting in a rather masculine way.

She's speaking of qualities that women value; Colin's kindness after her harsh words to him, but she does so in terms of his physical attributes, which is what men tend to focus on.

No doubt this is because she's seen plenty of men charming a debutant by speaking of her eyes, but Penelope has never had the confidence to flirt back in the way Daphne or Cressida or even Phillipa would, through prolonged eye contact and subtle gestures. Given that Lady Featherington never had high hopes for Penelope marrying at all, it's likely she never taught her third daughter how to do so in the first place.

Additionally, Penelope only ever had eyes for Colin, who does need to be beaten over the head somewhat before he realises someone is flirting with him.

Colin, meanwhile, is clearly having his own "Oh, no, she's hot" moment. A moment closely followed by the realisation that she's going to be saying those bold, flirtatious lines to men who are not him, and he's a lot less OK with that than he originally thought...

Which brings us to...

Again, there's a lot to see in just over a minute.

We see Francesca's struggles as an introvert in the very socially-oriented Season, and it's interesting how each Season highlights a different struggle: Daphne's strive for perfection in S1, Anthony's conflict between Love and Duty, Eloise's non-conformity in S2, and now the mental toll for Francesca alongside Penelope's struggle to stop being a wallflower.

While he's still protective, Anthony is also a lot more relaxed in a way he never was with Siena, now that he has a genuine partner to share the burdan. Kate, too, lis lighter and happier, because for the first time, she isn't taking care of everything by herself. They're in love and have their lives ahead of them, and it truly feels like a Happily Ever After.

Violet is obviously pleased with her second successful match, but with her children marrying and starting lives of their own, it's making her nostalgic for her own love-match, lost to death, and wondering what her future will be when all her children are grown and married off. Suddenly, the rest of her life seems like a very long time...

And finally Penelope, who's had her glow up and looks gorgeous in jewel-toned green and a dress that it actually made to flatter her... but she's still standing alone as a wallflower, and can't see what she's doing wrong.

Let the countdown begin!

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