I am so excited for The Gilded Age season 4 that I simply cannot cease speaking about it for the reason that season 3 finale, which I am nonetheless not over. Massive modifications are on the horizon for Bertha (Carrie Coon) with George (Morgan Spector) probably leaving her for good, whereas Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) is pregnant after marrying the Duke of Buckingham.
Thus far, we have been targeted on what the latest previous means for Bertha’s future. After George’s temporary dance with loss of life, he admits that he now not is aware of if he is in love together with his spouse, dramatically leaving earlier than she has an opportunity to gather her ideas. Along with Gladys’ being pregnant, she’s basically bought her dream, previous cash life with out a soul on the planet to share if with.
However what if the continuing previous cash vs new cash battle is the flawed factor to give attention to? Two separate rivals are on monitor to stoke the hearth between Bertha and the life she needs, however I believe it is the life the might unintentionally land that wants probably the most consideration (spoiler: it entails feminism).
Carrie Coon thinks Bertha might have a ‘feminist awakening’ in The Gilded Age season 4, and I agree
“That type of nascent feminist awakening could be a extremely fascinating pursuit for her, whether or not or not the wedding lasts. […] I believe she’s not fairly far down the trail of that exploration to know precisely what occurred. We catch her in the midst of making an attempt to course of that second.”
Inadvertently, I believe she’s hit the nail on the top right here. Earlier seasons of the HBO Max present have prided themselves on not being much like the final, and seeing Bertha slip into full sister suffragette mode could be such a shrewdly refined approach to result in change and private redemption.
Timing smart, we’re about proper too. Girls’s suffrage within the US took maintain by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with the demand for such garnering curiosity as early because the 1840s. The primary official actions got here collectively in 1869, and we’re only some years out from that.
With the magic of TV, The Gilded Age season 4 might simply return with a time soar, or maybe Bertha immerses herself within the grassroots beginnings of girls’s suffrage to get away from her personal issues.
Personally, I believe the narrative switch-up would make not solely us, however these round her extra empathetic to the life she’s actually dwelling (properly, everybody besides Christine Baranski’s Agnes). Bertha’s by no means been good, however she’s not a doormat both, and that makes her an ideal Emmeline Pankhurst kind. Take down the husband, and take down the patriarchy too.
Do I believe Bertha will go the way in which of Winnifred Banks in Mary Poppins? No. However season 4 goes to wish to maneuver with the instances after the season 3 finale nearly sewed up each current narrative thread, and what higher approach to try this than with a spot of forward-thinking progress?