I inherited my (sometimes closeted) fandom of period dramas from my mother who was always up for anything with overly formal square dance, a wig, and arranged marriages. From the original BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice to the day-time TV Poldark, I would openly roll my eyes as she swooned over young Colin Firth, but I secretly coveted those shapeless Regency dresses that were all bust and no waist. The rash of Austen adaptations and their imitations, throughout the 90s and early 2000s, became my go-to comfort viewing for low stakes drama of people who called themselves poor but still, somehow, managed to have teams of servants.

I later became a (very closeted) fan of romance when I tried to write a feminist parody novel of Fifty Shades of Grey and my dip into Mills and Boon soon became more than just “research.” These obsessions were beginning to wane just as Bridgerton came along and offered the perfect blend of period gowns and steamy romance to win me over despite the intervening years of feminist militancy. 

What none of us bargained on as Season 1 became a runaway pandemic success was just how queer and neurodivergent a show Bridgerton would become as it galloped into a third season, with a fourth promised for 2026.  

Season 3, launched in May 2024, sated fans with a visual feast of ever more elegant gowns, elaborate wigs and lavish balls alongside the fraught matches, hidden identities and financial intrigues of previous seasons. The show has generated much commentary—both positive and negative—about its fictitious reimagining of racial equality in Regency England while glossing over  colonial realities. Season 3 takes another leap towards inclusion with visibly disabled characters appearing among the ton: a wheelchair user and a deaf mother and daughter who are seen using sign language in a number of scenes. 

For so-called “invisible disabilities” like autism, ADHD and other neurodivergencies, Bridgerton drops many easter eggs for neurodivergent viewers. There has been rampant online speculation that the season’s newest debutante Francesca Bridgerton (Hannah Dodd), Queen Charlotte’s (Golda Rosheuvel) “sparkler,” is very possibly autistic. Francesca and her suitor Lord John Stirling (Victor Alli), have weird and uncomfortable  social interactions. They do not like noise or crowds, they prefer silence over the agony of small talk, they have very defined special interests to which they give their all, they find social expectations overwhelming and prefer the wilds of Scotland to the buzz of the t ton. 

Whether deliberate or not, the show could not come out and name autism explicitly, because it would be another two centuries before autism would be identified and named as a discreet neurological “condition.” In the early 1800s people who presented with obvious autistic traits—including repetitive movements or non-verbality—could have been labelled anything from “eccentric,” “idiot,” to ‘simpleton.” Their eccentricity might be tolerated, such as Lord Debling’s (Sam Philips) vegetarianism and single-minded concern for animals, or their social privilege or the level of disruption or discomfort they created for those around them  they might be institutionalised. The latter, however, does not quite fit into Bridgerton’s pastel infused, fantastical retelling of history. 

The tensions at the heart of Season 3—the desire for a life that is true to one’s nature and the pressure to conform to gendered, class, racial and neurotypical expectations—are characteristic of the challenges neurodivergent people face when confronted with the expectation to adapt to, and conform with, neurotypical expectations rather than making space for our divergent needs and desires. In the ascension of the boxer, Will Mondrich (Martins Imhangbe) and his family to high society, we are permitted a rare insight into the rules of the Ton. The men and elders of the ton explain to the newly titled Mondrich family the intricate social norms that delineate acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and to what extent those rules might be bent or even broken. 

Those with most freedom to push back against those norms are men, and sometimes married women. Meanwhile the debutants on the marriage mart, like Francesca, Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan), Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie) and Cressida Cowper (Jessica Madsen), feel the full force of those rules. They are expected to not only understand, but accept, those rules unquestionably. 

Francesca struggles not only with society’s demands, but the demands of a family in which she stands out as an introvert among the easy confidence of a herd of extroverted siblings. Violet Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell), ever the insightful mother, is frequently confounded by Francesca’s reticence, and often obvious discomfort in social situations. The season’s protagonists, Francesca and Penelope,  even manage to connect over their shared unease with their first families, when Penelope empathises: ‘I am different from my siblings as well, it can be difficult can it not?’ 

My undiagnosed neurodivergence was the source of tension and conflict in my family over many years. On top of the challenges of negotiating the demands of a neurotypical world without support, I struggled to deal with the fallout from a messy separation and an emotionally abusive parent who preyed on my susceptibilities. My family singled me out as a trouble maker. As the conflict escalated I became more and more isolated before eventually being expelled from the family home. It is a story often repeated in the neurodivergent community, where typical neurodivergent behaviours (anything from intense interests to distractibility, to food and other sensory aversions, the desire to spend time alone, sleep problems or failure to make eye-contact) are too often interpreted as “bad behaviour” or insolence. In response, we are often subjected to abusive therapies meant to “correct” our behaviour, institutionalisation or must reckon with the deep rifts that can open between families.

Bridgerton, however, offers an alternative resolution. Though Violet initially tries to mould Francesca into the image of her flawless oldest daughter Daphne, she learns to accept her daughter’s wishes and preferences even when she doesn’t fully understand them. It’s refreshing to see how Francesca is allowed to find a place for herself among her noisy, boisterous and extroverted siblings. Season 3 gives us a lesson in acceptance—not mere tolerance—of difference. 

Penelope’s clashes with her family wane as her confidence grows as a writer, and as she achieves financial independence from her craft. Nevertheless, she continues to struggle on the marriage mart and her quest for a husband becomes increasingly desperate. In Season 3 she laments her own social awkwardness: ‘I know I can be clever and amusing, but somehow my character gets lost between my heart and my mouth and I find myself saying the wrong thing or more likely nothing at all.’

As someone who (sometimes) makes a living as a writer, I identify wholeheartedly with Penelope’s ease of expression in writing and her tremendous awkwardness when confronted with human, in-person social interactions. On the page I play with words, rearranging, then deleting them, writing the same idea three, four or more times until I am satisfied with the words I have chosen.Social interactions rarely, if ever, accommodate prolonged processing of this kind. My mouth always seems to lag behind my brain, or sometimes my brain takes a few minutes to catch up with something that has just come out of my mouth. All of this means I can come across as both dim-witted and thoughtless in the same conversation. 

It is notable that Penelope feels comfortable enough to be herself around a select few people, many of whom are potential neurokin, but particularly Eloise.

While Penelope longs for social acceptance and the security of marriage and Francesca sees marriage as a practical inevitability, Eloise continues to scorn all the gendered social conventions and expectations forced upon her and remains determined to avoid marriage at all costs. Her rebellion against the intellectual as well as relational and sexual demands society places on her gender—she is neither interested in men nor in the few pursuits allowed to ladies—is the embodiment of neuroqueerness.

Neuroqueer, a term coined by Dr. Nick Walker and colleagues can be used an adjective or a verb, an identity label or a way of describing practices that question how ‘socially-imposed neuronormativity and socially-imposed heteronormativity were entwined with one another, and how the queering of either of those two forms of normativity entwined with and blended into the queering of the other one.’ 

Eloise’s youth in season one permitted a certain amount of leeway not granted to debutants who are already out. But her debut in Season 2 provoked a clash of desires with social expectation that manifests in an “inappropriate” friendship with a working class political activist. We are never sure if Eloise has a purely intellectual or also romantic interest in Theo Sharpe (Calam Lynch), but she is nearly ruined in Season 2 when this friendship is exposed. In Season 3 we meet a much more guarded Eloise who tries, but largely fails, to fit into society. She puts on the neurotypical and heteronormative mask: she wears the dresses and attends the balls without protest but barely tolerates the genteel conversation at the edges of the dance floor, shares none of her fellow debutants interests and makes absolutely no effort to find a suitor. 

Her flourishing friendship with Cressida has become the source of much queer speculation, with fans surprised and delighted by their promenades, lingering looks and unguarded conversations. But beyond the potential sexual chemistry, the pair click in a way many neurodivergent people do when we find ourselves inexplicably drawn to each other. There is a shared understanding and empathy of their position as almost-ruined and almost-spinster young ladies flailing in society. 

Cressida: You are unlike many people, Eloise. How is it you have the courage to be so different?

Eloise:It is not courage. I simply cannot understand why others do not see things the way I do.

Despite previous ruthlessness in the marriage mart, Cressida’s proximity to Eloise seems to inspire her to make a real bid for freedom. Despite her ill-advised her plot to pass herself off as Lady Whistledown, her desire for an independent life free of patriarchal authority is clear. 

While Eloise and Cressida share little more than lingering glances, Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) spends his third season floundering around on the edges of society, lurching from one existential crisis to another with the same frequency he lurches between illicit relationships. His ennui, lack of purpose and failure to follow through with anything, feels characteristic of an ADHD temperament, though this aimlessness without any corresponding life or financial crises, is only possible because of his extreme privilege. With Benedict, at least, we are rewarded with the most interesting sex of the season as he finally allows himself to explore the queer and polyamorous desires that have been hinted at since Season 1. 

Benedict is already slated to regress to heterosexual respectability and fulfil his destiny as suitor to a blushing debutant in Season 4. We will therefore have to wait until 2026, gentle reader, to see if we are finally rewarded with a lasting queer storyline. Bridgerton is set more or less around the time Anne Lister, “infamous” lesbian from Yorkshire and star of the hit BBC show Gentleman Jack, was wooing noble ladies the length and breadth of England and beyond. There is, therefore, no excuse for Netflix to keep denying the queer  possibilities for Bridgerton’s debutants. I, for one, would love to see Cressida’s miraculous return to society to pursue a clandestine affair with Eloise and the neuroqueer affair between Francesca and her betrothed’s cousin, Micheala (Masali Baduza) that has already been hinted at! 

In a world where Raymond Babbit and Sheldon Cooper continue to dominate the popular imagination of what it means to be autistic (white, male, socially awkward, math genius) we often have to look beyond the characters dubbed “Autistic with a capital A” for representation that reflects the complexity of real neurodivergent experiences. Bridgerton celebrates, rather than pathologizes or makes a spectacle of, its potentially neurodivergent characters who are mostly women and people of colour, and at least some are possibly queer. Bridgerton does not give us a neuroqueer revolution. At the end of the day, conflict is usually resolved through the heterosexual imperative of holy matrimony after which the couples usually disappear into titled bliss. But, the season’s misfits, outcasts, abject failures and rebels nudge us towards the possibility that social norms, no matter how rigid, can be bent—even broken—without provoking catastrophe. Discomfort, perhaps, but not the end of the world. As Violet says: ‘living to please others? I imagine it can be wearying at times.’