This article contains spoilers for the Bridgerton season 4 finale and Julia Quinn’s novel, An Offer From a Gentleman.
Bridgerton fans who have read Julia Quinn’s An Offer From a Gentleman may have noticed a few differences between the book and the show’s dramatic season 4 finale.
Series producer and showrunner Jess Brownell tells Entertainment Weekly that little tweaks were made to the ending of Sophie (Yerin Ha) and Benedict’s (Luke Thompson) love story — chief among them being the controversy surrounding those scandalous shoe clips.
“The shoe clips play a major part in the book. In the book, it’s actually Sophie who takes the shoe clips and then Posy [played by Isabella Wei] — just out of kindness — lies and says it was her who took the shoe clips,” Brownell explains. “We changed it a little bit so that it was actually Posy who initially takes the shoe clips and gives them to Sophie.”
Liam Daniel/Netflix
Those faux diamond shoe clips are, of course, what end up almost getting Sophie sentenced to life in prison after her evil stepmother Araminta (Katie Leung) has her arrested for nicking them and impersonating a person of nobility.
In the book, Araminta visits Sophie in prison to gloat over her upcoming sentencing only to receive the shock of her life when Benedict and Violet appear and demand her release. However, in the series, Sophie confronts Araminta over her endless cruelty in the jail cell scene and Benedict and Violet instead appear just in the knick of time during her hearing.
Liam Daniel/Netflix
“That’s all kind of one big set piece [in the book], and we wanted to parse it out a little bit,” Brownell says. “Both to let it breathe, but also so that Sophie could be the one who takes agency in saving herself in the second part of it all.”
She continues, “I think it’s really sexy and romantic for Benedict to be a big hero as he is when he comes into the jail cell [in the book], but we wanted to hold back just one piece, which was Sophie being brave enough to go look at the will and to confront Araminta so that we felt like she really traveled on an arc of learning to stand up for herself.”
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Sophie gets another chance to defend herself at the Queen’s Ball, when she, Violet, and Benedict lure Araminta, Posy, and Rosamund (Michelle Mao) upstairs to reveal that they’re aware Araminta has quietly stolen her dowry.
“I think Yerin is incredible in that scene. You really do see the change in her,” Brownell says. “I also think Katie Leung is so powerful… We talked a lot about the levels of how much of a villain she is in that scene, and I love the gray area that she plays it in where you can see her desperately clutching to her desire to blame everything that’s gone wrong in her life on Sophie.”
However, upon close inspection, Brownell notes viewers can see Araminta’s “realization that she’s been wrong all along” in her treatment towards Sophie.
Liam Daniel/Netflix
“She’s not ready to apologize and say how sorry she is, but I think that final look between Araminta and Sophie kind of says everything,” she adds. “And it’s heartbreaking, but also really powerful.”
In the end, the Bridgertons convince Araminta to begrudgingly go along with their plan to introduce Sophie into society as a relation of the late Earl of Penwood. With her title safely secured, she and Benedict are finally allowed to be together — and the pair get married in a Cinderella-esque wedding ceremony in a heartwarming post-credit scene.
“I love that scene. It’s just lovely to see, I think, especially in a season that is based on the Cinderella trope that Cinderella got to get her wedding,” Brownell says. “Her big moment.”
The season 4 finale of Bridgerton is streaming now on Netflix.