‘Bridgerton’ Season 3 Finale Recap: Yours Truly, Penelope Bridgerton

“You could have had me in check mate,” Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) tells Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) during a game of chess early on in the season three finale of Bridgerton. While at a chess board, the two women were discussing the fact that Queen Charlotte is tantalizingly close to discovering the real identity of Lady Whistledown, and she suspected that Lady Danbury may even know who the writer is. But amid this game of chess, one that Lady Danbury could have won handily, she tells the Queen that the reason she didn’t check mate her is because “then the game would be over early, and what fun is there in that?” It’s a metaphor for the Queen’s relationship with Whistledown, and it gives Charlotte a lot to think about, because where would anyone in the ton get their entertainment if Whistledown is outed and ceases to exist?

If the Queen is over here playing chess with Lady Whistledown, Cressida Cowper (Jessica Madsen) is playing checkers. Because now that she knows that Penelope (Nicola Coughlan) is Lady Whistledown (thanks to a too-chatty printer’s apprentice), she heads right to Pen’s house the day after her wedding to give her a wedding gift: the gift of bribery. She tells Pen that she’ll keep her identity a secret if Penelope pays her a cool ten grand. When Portia Featherington walks in on this shake down, Cressida does the unexpected: she tells her exactly what she’s doing. I definitely assumed the conversation would be more like, “Oh! Mrs. Featherington, I didn’t see you there! I was just telling Penelope that I heard she was a lovely bride!” but instead, Cressida tells Penelope’s mother that Pen is Whistledown, and she wants cold cash money to keep that a secret.

A few things happen after Cressida outs Penelope and sets her scheme in motion: First of all, Portia and her two older daughters have been the victims of Whistledown’s cruel quill, so she is not just shocked to learn her daughter is the writer of such things, she is angry. Second of all, it brings together all the people who know Pen’s identity: Portia and Penelope visit Colin and Eloise to try and solve this problem, and for the first time on the show, a whole room full of people are privy to this grand secret.

But my favorite thing that happens as a result of this bribe is that we now learn the real financial gain of being Whistledown. While Colin offers to pay Cressida, Pen reveals that, actually, her earnings from the newsletter can handily pay off her foe. She’s been hoarding cash under the floorboards, bb!

Colin, honorable and dutiful husband, despite still being super annoyed at his wife of 18 hours, goes to Cressida’s house to appeal to her sensitive side. He explains that Whistledown was just a manifestation of Penelope’s feelings of isolation, surely something Cressida could relate to. He tries to remind her that when all of this blows over, surely she can retreat back into the loving arms of her family, if only she will just back off of Penelope for a while. Being a Bridgerton, this rhetoric makes sense, but the Cowpers have no loving arms to speak of, and that’s Cressida’s problem. Her bribe is her only chance at escaping them, so she becomes Lady Doubledown, telling Colin that 10 grand ain’t enough, and now she wants even more hush money from him, 20Gs, please. (While Colin feels like a failure for not solving this problem, maybe the most cutting part of this conversation was when Cressida suggested that Colin was actually jealous that his wife was the successful, paid writer of the family and he was not.)

As this scandal heats up, the Bridgertons are also preparing for another wedding, Francesca’s (Hannah Dodd) marriage to Lord Kilmartin. As the wedding approaches, Francesca surprises her mother with some big news: she’s about to become Franny, Queen of Scots. I mean, not an actual Queen, but she and John plan to move to his estate in the Scottish Highlands after their wedding. This is a struggle for Violet to understand, as she doesn’t want to lose her daughter, but Francesca assures her that, in fact, this is the place where she hopes she’ll find herself. Francesca thrives in quiet remoteness. It’s not something Violet immediately understands, but caring mama that she is, she’s willing to let her daughter make the decision for herself.

Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson), having been consumed by an epic sexual walkabout with Miss Tilley and Hot Paul, has given himself over to carnal delights proffered by both man and woman. When Miss Tilley tells him she wants something more serious (fewer three-ways, more joint checking accounts, that sort of vibe), Benedict tells her he’s still in his “just here to have fun” phase. And thus, we set him up for season four, where I assume he’ll make the transition from being everyone’s “Mr. Right Now” to someone’s “Mr. Right.”

Philippa and Prudence Featherington (I’ve given up on trying to remember their married names) want just one thing before they both start to look visibly pregnant and have to hide from society, and that’s to throw the grandest ball of all. They want lavish, they want luxe, and thanks to the money hiding in Penelope’s floor, they got exactly what they want. Maybe it’s penance for writing about them in the past, but Penelope gifts her sisters with a ball that even they could never have dreamed up: it’s all ostrich feathers and jewel tones and garishly decorated desserts, and it could not be more Featherington if it tried. But Penelope wants to use the ball for her own reasons: she’s invited the Queen there so she can reveal her secret identity.

When Queen Charlotte arrives, she takes center stage, announcing that Lady Whistledown is present, and then hands Penelope the floor. Penelope admits to a shocked crowd her identity and her original motives: jealousy, feeling voiceless, wanting to fit in. Things, she explains, that are not unique to just her. But for so long, the Queen has been Whistledown’s adversary, a wily opponent in this (dare I say) info war. So why is the Queen so forgiving of Penelope once she finds out her identity? Because Penelope, an equally smart chess player, has brought the Queen into her gambit. She explains to the crowd that she’s grateful to the Queen “for forcing me out of the shadows with her most cunning scheme.”

“She seems humbled,” the Queen tells the crowd after Pen asks for her permission to keep publishing her newsletter. “What is life without a little gossip?” she asks. Also humbled is Cressida – with all of her plots and plans foiled, she’s unhappily sent packing, though the question is, did she go with Aunt Joanna to Wales, or did she find other means to escape Mayfair?

In coming clean so publicly, Penelope also solves her mother’s problem of proving where she received her fortune. The Queen’s solicitor, Walter Dundas, is still trying to discredit the Featherington name but now that Pen can prove that she’s basically independently wealthy, the family’s problems are solved. Coming clean also proved to be the thing that would fix her relationship with Colin, too: he admits he was jealous of her cleverness and her writing, but he explains that seeing her for the talent that she is, it only makes him more proud to stand next to her as her husband. The obviously DO IT that night, and as we see in the epilogue, Penelope, along with her sisters, all have babies, though Pen has the boy – the rightful heir to the Featherington title.

Perhaps most important of all though, is that now that Penelope’s identity has been revealed, she is retiring the Whistledown name. She’s still writing the society papers, but she’s no longer hiding on the wall, she’s out and proud: she’s Penelope Mother-Effing Bridgerton.

Bonus Bridgertons:

• Violet Bridgerton finally receives the approval from Lady Danbury to explore a relationship with Marcus Anderson, but more than just signaling her approval, Danbury also uses this moment to acknowledge a moment from her past: that she had an affair with Violet’s father.
• I guess Anthony and Kate already took off on their passage to India? When did I miss that ship leaving port?
• I had often wondered myself if Lady Danbury always knew that Whistledown was Penelope, given the way she, too, seems to be one step ahead of everyone else in society. Danbury’s conversation with Penelope where she admits that she, too, loves a secret, feels like a wink to that. I love their weird, less menacing Varys/Littlefinger dynamic!
• Eloise is going to Scotland with Francesca to see the world. And make… friends? Friends with benefits?… with John Stirling’s cousin Michaela.
• I hate to even ask this question, but is that a series wrap on Julie Andrews?

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.