‘Bridgerton’ Season 3 Episode 7 Recap: The Pen-Ultimate Episode

Alas, dearest reader, Cressida Cowper’s run as Lady Whistledown was not long for this world. It was certainly a major development on Bridgerton when Colin learned that his betrothed, Penelope Featherington, was Lady Whistledown and declared that he could never forgive her for keeping that secret, but I’d say the bigger drama was when Penelope totally owned Cressida by calling her a liar in her latest newsletter.

In attempt to gain the Queen’s favor, Cressida (and her mother) hurriedly wrote an issue of their version of Whistledown, but it was full of lies, including a speculation that Violet’s Bridgerton’s children were of dubious parentage. On the very same morning, Pen reclaimed her original tracks by releasing “Whistledown (Penelope’s Version),” calling out Cressida as a liar, both for claiming to be the Gossip Queen of Mayfair and for circulating untruths rather than actually doing her gossip research. Cressida is cast out of society once she’s called out, earning her a one way ticket to exile (i.e. her Aunt Joanna from Wales’s estate), but Cressida actually feels bad about this while thing, not just because it means she’s a social pariah, but because she hates that she wrote such horrible things about the Bridgertons. Eloise was the one person, she tells her mother, who ever showed her true friendship, and now that’s gone. “Have I not raised you to know that in this world, it is every person for themself, especially amongst women?” Araminta Cowper tells her daughter. “Yes, you have,” Cressida replies, but silently, you can see that deep down she wishes she could break that cycle.

Colin is still furious about Penelope’s secret identity, but since he’s a man of honor (a.k.a.because they already had sex), he plans to keep his word and go through with their wedding. But the fact that he is stewing with anger makes wedding planning awkward – when they’re not being silent, they’re speaking in angry, hushed tones. Violet Bridgerton’s emotional antennae are up, and she can sense something is off about the two, but she’s also distracted by Francesca’s engagement to Lord Kilmartin, and her own feelings for Marcus Anderson. This woman needs a bumper sticker that says “This Mom Runs On Tea, Embroidery Floss, and True Romantic Happiness.”

On the eve of their wedding, Colin spends the night drinking, and Pen spends the night confiding to Genevieve, the modiste, about her troubles. As they both make their way home, they run into each other, where Colin confronts Pen about everything. She claims she wrote about him in Whistledown earlier in the season because she was too afraid to speak to him as herself, and she claims her column about Eloise last season was written as away to protect Eloise. She spent so much time expressing herself via Whistledown because she didn’t have the confidence to speak them aloud as Penelope, but that’s changed now that she’s engaged to Colin and he’s given her that confidence. Colin seems half-convinced by this explanation, assuming then that this means she’ll stop writing, but she can’t promise that. But after a desperate plea where she declares that she truly does love him, he gives in and they kiss passionately until they’re interrupted by a horse.

The day of their wedding, everything looks beautiful and normal from the outside, but things still seem… a little off. At the breakfast reception, Penelope asks Colin to dance (dancing in the morning!?) which leads to a cute performance of several other couples, including Francesca and John Stirling, to dance to “You Belong With Me” as everyone else looks on approvingly. The dance is interrupted when the Queen, of all people, arrives and pushes everyone who is not a Bridgerton out of the room. See, the Queen is savvy, and as she read the two dueling Whistledown newsletters, Penelope and Cressida’s, she began to piece together Whistledown’s true identity as if she’s Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal looking for the Zodiac killer.

Penelope starts to leave, until reminded by Colin, “You are a Bridgerton.” The Queen explains that “someone in this room has something to hide,” and she will not be leaving until she knows the truth. For the eighteenth time this season, Penelope has a breathless panic attack, but this time it’s Francesca who steps forward with an admission, and she announces, “It is I. I bear the secret… I am engaged to Lord Kilmartin.”

The Queen is 100% annoyed by Francesca, giving her a witheringly flippant non-blessing to marry, and saying, “That is not why I’m here.” She tells them all that she knows a Bridgerton is behind Whistledown, because why else would she put out a competing newsletter to distract from Cressida’s, which was filled with so much Bridgerton slander? Anthony assures the Queen that he wouldn’t allow such a thing to take place under his roof (a roof he doesn’t even live under, though?) and somehow that placates the Queen for the time being.

“As long as you are Whistledown, this lie will hang over all of us,” Colin later tells Pen, who defiantly gives him a speech about feminism that feels like not quite the right moment for a speech about feminism, but once again she tells him she will not give up the Whistledown name, so he tells her he’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight. At least Eloise is there to console Pen. Penelope is basically Even Steven with the Bridgertons: when one of them is cool with her, another one has to be mad at her, that is the balance that must exist in the universe.

Meanwhile, Cressida, who appears to be running away from home, has been hitting up every printer in town to collect her payment for her Fake Whistledown letter, but she keeps striking out. Until one particularly chatty printer’s apprentice reveals, though he’s not the right man, he did work for a printer who worked with the real Whistledown, and he tells Cressida, “He said she was a redhead, though.”

“Oh?” Cressida asks. “What else did he tell you?” Here’s the problem: while Cressida might be inching toward the actual truth this time, since she’s a known liar, will anyone even believe her?

Bonus Bridgertons:

• It’s been, what, two weeks since we last saw Kate and Anthony, but Kate now looks fully 6 months pregnant. I’m not commenting on a woman’s body, I’m commenting on her prosthetic! Anyway, Anthony wants Kate to have the baby in India so they can be near her family and that makes Kate extra horny for him, but how is he going to explain this move to Violet?
• I’m glad that the rift between Lady Danbury and her brother has been sorted, because, while her backstory is definitely compelling, her anger toward him felt a little forced. Now that they’re cool, it frees him up to give Violet that sweet widow-on-widower love they both deserve. And maybe distract her from Anthony moving across the globe.
• Penelope’s blush-colored wedding dress was to die for, right? But even more notable was the choice of Coldplay’s “Yellow” as the wedding song which made me chuckle to think maybe it was an homage to the Featherington’s love of citrus colors.
• Benedict Bridgerton is open to dating. Men and women. In the last episode, he was confused by a proposition from the woman he thought was his girlfriend, Lady Tilley, and her friend, Hot Paul. It turns out, Hot Paul likes both men and women, and would really like it if Benedict would consider sharing a bed with both him and Tilley. It’s a proposal that Benedict spends the episode mulling over until he finally gives in to temptation and we get some guy-girl-guy kissing (and more).

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.