Our First Look at 'Bridgerton' Season 4 Features a Masquerade Meet-Cute

Netflix's Bridgerton has dropped a ton of new information about the series' upcoming fourth season, in which it will finally be Benedict Bridgerton's (Luke Thompson) time to shine. The hedonistic second Bridgerton son has been loath to settle down over the show's first three seasons, exploring his artistic and sexual interests as he watched four of his siblings tie the not. But it appears as though it's finally his turn in the marriage mart.

Season 4 will adapt Julia Quinn's third novel, An Offer From a Gentleman, and will be (at least according to showrunner Jess Bromwell) the series' "most faithful" translation of the book series to screen yet. Given that this novel has some particularly problematic elements at the center of its class-conscious upstairs-downstairs romance, that's...certainly a choice. But the show is at least shaking things up by casting a Korean-Asian actress as its lead and changing her name and family from Sophie Beckett to Sophie Baek.

A vague retelling of Cinderella, An Offer From a Gentleman sees Benedict fall in love with a woman in a silver gown at his mother's yearly masquerade ball. (Eagle-eared viewers likely heard the event namechecked at the end of Season 3.) But she disappears at midnight, leaving him to mope and pine after her for the rest of the social season as he searches for his mysterious dance partner, with no success.