Bridgerton’s next spinoff should be Queen Charlotte’s gay butlers

Bridgerton’s Queen Charlotte It is an enjoyable miniseries, and it has opened up the Bridgerton world to its fullest potential. Beyond the alphabetical list of Bridgerton sisters, there is an entire world of steamy romance! Lady Danbury’s single lady adventures, anybody? The story is set against the background of Violet’s meeting Edmund.

There is romance, but only one. Queen Charlotte that I most want to see in its own six-episode miniseries: the epic saga of Reynolds (Freddie Dennis) and Brimsley (Sam Clemmett), the king and queen’s butlers.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.]

Liam Daniel/Netflix

Second episode of Queen Charlotte we learn Reynolds, the king’s personal headservant, and Brimsley, top butler to the queen, are not only colleagues, but lovers. The show does not reveal how long this love affair has been going on, but it’s clear by the easy way they fall into bed together that it’s been happening even before Charlotte arrived in England.

The past storyline gives us a better look at their relationship. It’s never one they can openly reveal, but despite it all, the pair do share some happy intimate moments. They take a bath together. The couple sneaks away to have some sex. When no one’s looking, they dance to the side of the room at the ball. It’s certainly a complicated happiness, since they can never fully be with one another, but they’ve found a way to make it work, using the duties of their job as an advantage in this situation.

Of course, their love story takes a bittersweet turn when you realize that we don’t see Reynolds at all in the present day timeline. It could very well be that he is just off attending to George at Kew; after all, George’s condition has worsened over the years. Or, perhaps, he might’ve passed away sometime over the past several decades. Whatever the reason, there’s a void in his absence, as we see in an absolutely heartrending scene where Brimsley dances all by himself, leading around an invisible partner in the spot he and Reynolds would meet.

Nick Wall/Netflix

But those years in between — I want to see more of that! It is 56 years in between Queen CharlotteBridgerton, the current series. Fifty-six! This is 56 years for two men to love and be bound to each other by duty. They understand eachother better than anyone else because they will never know how it feels to walk in the other’s shoes. Brimsley Reynolds and other minor characters are absent from the story. Queen Charlotte, and their relationship isn’t the main attraction of the show, but their scenes together steal the spotlight and take on a particularly evocative parallel to Charlotte and George’s love. They echo a similarly complicated happiness and devotion intertwined with equally-yet-completely different tragedy. A series diving into their point-of-view over the next five decades would not only be a fantastic follow up to Charlotte and George’s story, but also offer a perspective that the greater Bridgerton universe so sorely needs.

After all, Bridgerton’s main series barely even dabbles with queer portrayal. The main Bridgerton series barely dabbles in queer representation, after all. This means that even though artsy second brother Benedict went to a hedonistic sex party in season 1 and saw an artist he admired getting it on with a dude, which may have awakened something in him, it’s unlikely that this side of him will be explored much — at least not if he is supposed to match the romantic arc from The Offer of a GentlemanBridgerton’s love story is told in the Bridgerton Book.

But being queer in Regency times isn’t exactly the stuff of sweeping happy endings. Bridgerton takes place in a fantasy reality where race isn’t a huge issue when it comes to inequality, but sexuality and gender norms are apparently still quite rigid. As the primary focal point of the film, it is important to note that there are no major characters. Bridgerton series sticks closely to the married-with-heirs-on-the-way happily-ever-after formula that the novels do, it’s unlikely they’re going to heavily feature a queer romance unless they decide that in this version of the world, England legalized gay marriage 200 years before anywhere else in the world.

That’s why a spinoff like Queen Charlotte — which doesn’t end traditionally happily even though it ends as happily as it can — opens the doors to all kinds of stories. Brimsley and Reynolds’ decades-long secret and duty-bound relationship is the perfect follow up to Queen Charlotte This is the ideal gateway for more serious Bridger series, those that expand on the universe and fill in some details the original show only skimmed over.

Bridgerton: Queen Charlotte is a Story of BridgertonNetflix has it now.