'Bridgerton' Fans Reveal The Moment They Knew Lady Whistledown's True Identity
Warning: Spoilers for Bridgerton Season 1 follow. It took a while for Shonda Rhimes to get going on her Netflix shows, but Bridgerton was worth the wait. The Regency romance series has already been touted by Netflix as one of its biggest shows to date, heading toward 63 million household views in its first month of its release. The buzz around the show on social media has been massive, with fans discussing everything from how hot the Duke of Hastings is to the Gossip Girl overtones of Lady Whistledown's identity. Speaking of the rumormonger, the tweets about Penelope being Lady Whistledown in Bridgerton are just more proof her Society Papers are the dominant talk of both the ton and Twitter.
Bridgerton's decision to reveal Lady Whistledown's identity in Season 1 marks one of the most significant breaks from the books the series is based on. In the novels, Lady Whistledown's identity remains a mystery until the fourth book. That means, not only is Book Daphne bedeviled by this mysterious writer as she falls in love and marries (as she does in the first first book in the series), but so are Anthony and Benedict (whose stories make up Books 2 and 3, respectively). It's not until the novels turn to Colin's love story in Book 4 that his best friend, Penelope Featherington, takes center stage. That's when readers learn she's the one who's been writing the Society Papers the whole time.
But Netflix's Bridgerton didn't make fans wait that long to learn all this. And viewers appreciated the heads up.
Not everyone who watched Bridgerton had to wait until the end to figure out who Whistledown was, though. Some viewers quickly picked up on the trail of clues the show left for fans to follow.
For most investigators, the revelation was evident after one big Whistledown reveal: Marina's pregnancy. The Featheringtons controlled that news too tightly within the household for it to have come from anyone outside their family or staff.
But the best part of the big revelation was the group of viewers who realized Lady Whistledown's greatest pun without having it spelled out on the page:
Bridgerton Season 1 is streaming on Netflix.
