'Bridgerton' Casts Australian Actor Yerin Ha as Season 4's Lead

The speculation over how Bridgerton plans to proceed in Season 4 is over, and those hoping for something a little less traditional will have to resign themselves to waiting for another story. In July 2024, Netflix confirmed that Season 4 would center Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) after skipping over him in Season 3 in favor of Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington's (Nicola Coughlan) love story. Season 3 instead had Benedict explore his bisexuality after being invited to join a throuple, part of a long-needed injection of LGBTQ+ and queer love stories into the franchise, which also included Francesca (Hannah Dodd) discovering her attraction to women right after marrying a man.

However, when it comes to coupling Benedict up for life, apparently he'll be returning to the more traditional heteronormative style of love story that involves a woman stealing his heart before disappearing like she never existed. To that end, Variety reports the production has cast Australian actor Yerin Ha (who American viewers may recognize from Halo) as Benedict's future love interest, Sophie Beckett.

With the surprise twist at the end of Season 3 for Francesca, which saw her book love interest gender-flipped from Michael to Michaela (Masali Baduza), LGBTQ+ fans had hopes Sophie Beckett might also receive a twist. A popular theory suggested the series could take the Cinderella retelling and, instead of having Sophie be a high-born lady forced to live as a maid, having Sophie be a transgender woman forced to live as a man. However, this casting suggests that while Bridgerton is comfortable with portraying queer love stories as long as they are traditional and cis, transgender stories are still a bridge too far, at least at this juncture.