Now, that the news of Regé-Jean Page (who played Duke of Hastings Simon Bassett) not being a part of the season 2 of Bridgerton has circulated. Fans are literally loathing and, and tweeting about their feelings regarding the news, even Kim Kardashian couldn’t hold it! In fact, many have said that they won’t even continue watching the show anymore. Regé-Jean Page is regarded as “The Show” rather than an “Important part of the Show”.
According to Deadline, Bridgerton officially announced the news on their Twitter account. The tweet stated how much the actor contributed to the life of the show and how he will always be missed and be a part of the crew!
Your Grace, it has been a pleasure. 💜🐝 pic.twitter.com/kX1nIG8pz7
— Bridgerton (@bridgerton) April 2, 2021
However, this is no shocker for readers who are well acquainted with the story’s writer, Julia Quinn. She writes very differently and develops on characters that the audience starts to obsess over. Once the character reaches its height, Julia often has this strategy of breaking the readers heart by completely cutting off that character during the story.
Season 1, which was based on the first book of the Quinn series The Duke and I, focussed on the difficult romance of the oldest daughter of Bridgerton, The Duke Dynevor, with Regé-Jean Page depicted as Hasting’s Duke, Simon Bassett.
The season2, which begins in the UK’s Spring, will feature in the second book of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton, The Viscount Who Loved Me, an apt marriage for Anthony, the eldest Bridgerton sibling to be played by Jonathan Bailey.
The final figures are there in Season 1, where 82 million households worldwide have watched (partially or in its entirety.) the show. The 19M houses that Netflix released in the Shondaland series for ten days are bigger than the four-week forecast (63 million), the 5th biggest launch in the history of the streamer.
In an ever-expanding Netflix universe, a procedure that was exacerbated by the pandemic, both Bridgerton and other recent Netflix fellows Lupin (70M) and The Queen’s Gambit (62M) have recorded massive numbers. (Five of the 6 largest Netflix series since the start of the pandemic in March have been released to date)
For example, 82M of the 200M Netflix Q4 2020 record subscribers were watching Bridgerton, or 41 percent.
When Netflix’s user base stood at 167M a year ago, Witcher scored 76M households. The figure is 46%. Even the third season of Stranger Things in July 2019 (64M) is similar when you consider that Netflix was at that time 158M homes; in the first 28 days 40,5 percent were seen in them.
Based on Julia Quinn’s novels, Bridgerton, produced by the former shonaland veteran Chris Van Dusen, ranked #1 overall in eight countries including the USA, Great Britain, Brazil, France, India and South Africa.
The time of the series undoubtedly played a part in its good outcome. It came amid the latest deathly Covid rise and after months in quarantine, people in many countries were exhausted and so the show got more attention than it would have otherwise.
Bridgerton’s Netflix redefined dramatic periods and romantic genres and broke races traditions while making Page and Dynevor world stars. Van Dusen said last week that the pair could return in Season 2.
The actor stated:
It’s a one-season arc. It’s going to have a beginning, middle, end — give us a year,” Page recalled of early conversations with Shondaland producers. “[I thought] ‘That’s interesting,’ because then it felt like a limited series. I get to come in, I get to contribute my bit and then the Bridgerton family rolls on.
Netflix and Shondaland fittingly shared the news about Page via Lady Whistledown.
“We’ll miss Simon’s presence onscreen, but he will always be a part of the Bridgerton family,” the message read. “Daphne will remain a devoted wife and sister, helping her brother navigate the upcoming social season and what it has to offer – more intrigue and romance than my readers may be able to bear.”
