‘Bridgerton’ Season 4 Episode 7 Recap: A Hell of a Week

Sometimes it takes a great tragedy for a person to shift their perspective on things. In Bridgerton season 4 episode 7, the death of John Stirling (Victor Alli), a.k.a. Lord Kilmartin, hangs over the entire Bridgerton family and while it’s the widowed Francesca (Hannah Dodd) whose life is most directly affected, John’s death has also lit a flame under Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) as well as his own mother Violet (Ruth Gemmell) who now realize that life shouldn’t be lived by someone else’s rules.

The Bridgerton and Kilmartin houses are in mourning after John’s death, the windows and his portrait are all draped in black. Francesca, whose need for order and propriety is always lurking under her stoic surface, feels that the only way to handle her grief is to bury it and play the role of dutiful hostess at his funeral, but she’s finding it impossible to keep it together.

“Is this all not rather morbid?” John’s cousin Michaela asks Francesca as they receive guests at his memorial. It’s such a somber event, and while it’s exactly what tradition dictates, it’s so sad that its driving Michaela crazy. As John’s closest confidant, and a woman with a true zest for life, she’s thrown off by how grim and depressing it all is, but Francesca bites back, telling her, “It’s not morbid, it is proper.” When Francesca notices that the snack table is running low on biscuits, she loses it and her entire family – and Sophie – start to realize that she’s not okay. (Eloise tries to defuse the situation with a “guess the ingredients in the biscuit” game that goes over better than you’d think, this being a funeral and all.)

Sophie tells Francesca her hair is out of place and that’s the perfect excuse for Francesca to excuse herself from the emotional overload. As Sophie comforts Francesca in a bedroom, she recounts how she honors the memories of both of her own deceased parents, and realizes that the necklace she wears to honor her mother is not on her neck. (Methinks it must have fallen off when she was in bed with Benedict?).

Meanwhile, when Violet visits Benedict after the funeral, he is full of not just grief at the family loss, but pent-up anger at his mother. When she mentions how big a help Sophie has been at Bridgerton House, he scoffs, telling Violet not to bring her up. But then all his frustration at his mother, the one person who values love above all, and he really lets her have it saying, “It is all a tad hypocritical, do you not think? You spent our entire lives claiming the one thing that matters is marrying a love match. For years I did not understand it nor want it. In fact I ran from it. Now, I have found someone I love, more than I could have even thought possible.” His mother is stunned to hear him say the L word. “You love her?” she asks. Benedict is furious that the rules of society dictate that Sophie is not of proper breeding and therefore not suitable for him and walks out. But Violet, realizing how serious her son is about Sophie, gets it now and is sad that she didn’t understand how deep his feelings were. (It helps that she herself adores Sophie and can see what Benedict sees in her.)

Later though, she warns Benedict that choosing a life with someone from a lower class will alter their family relationship. It will ostracize him from the family and society, but he already knew that, it’s just hard to hear his mom say it out loud.

This gives a shirtless Benedict an awful lot to think about.

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Violet also confronts Sophie about whether or not she’s hiding something about her background. It’s a desperate attempt to find a loophole that will allow them to be together, but Sophie refuses to bring up her past knowing that her illegitimate status as the daughter of a nobleman won’t help.

Prior to John’s death, Sophie had planned to leave Bridgerton House for her new job at Cressida Cowper’s new home, Penwood House. But because she stayed on to help the Bridgertons prepare for the funeral, Cressida hired someone else and the only other job Sophie can get os working for a family who’s moving to America, and their ship is leaving in just days.

Sophie doesn’t to tell Benedict she’s moving to another continent when she has a chance, instead letting him believe she’s staying on at Penwood House. But when she runs into him in his office, she makes one last intimate gesture to him, reaching for his hand, as she knows it could be the last time she ever sees him. There’s so much heat in that pinky touch.

Araminta Gun (Katie Leung) is as evil and vengeful a character as has ever been on Bridgerton, but despite how calculated and cruel she is, she makes one mistake when she confides in her (not evil) daughter Posy that she’s still looking for Sophie. Even though Araminta’s older daughter Rosamund (evil like her mother) has a potential new suitor, Araminta, who knows Sophie is the Lady in Silver, is still bitter that Sophie earned Benedict’s affection at the masquerade ball, ruining Rosamund’s chances with him. Once Posy realizes how set on vengeance her mother is, that she actually wants to have Sophie arrested for stealing her fake diamond shoe clips, she warns Sophie. When her mother and sister leave the house, she sneaks out a window to visit Bridgerton House, finds Sophie, and tells her everything. Before she leaves, she tells Sophie, “I would not have survived in that house without you.” Aw, Posy! I knew you were a good egg, and I also want to hear more about that dream where you have feet for hands.

Araminta is furious at her maid, Varley, for not noticing that Posy snuck out, and when Posy comes home, Araminta sits her down and actually apologizes to her daughter for venting so much of her frustration at her. It’s surprising to see Araminta show any sign of weakness or humility, but she confides in Posy that she wasn’t always like this, but the strain of being twice-widowed has forced her to pressure her daughters to be perfect and marry well. Their connection to Sophie, a bastard, could jeopardize those chances, which is why Araminta is so hell-bent on finding her. This moment between mother and daughter seems tender, but Posy foolishly reveals something Sophie told her in confidence, that she’s moving to America, telling Araminta she need not continue her pursuit of her. This is new information, and Araminta’s not about to let Sophie get off that easy. So much for trying to soften us up with her sad backstory, she’s still an evil witch!

The relationship between Hyacinth and Eloise has been contentious all season, with Hyacinth exuberantly preparing for her debut and Eloise hesitantly accepting that she’ll have to enter the marriage mart. Eloise’s cynicism has made Hyacinth feel targeted and they haven’t been getting along. But John’s death changes all of that when Hyacinth has her own breakdown. She’s the youngest Bridgerton, and the only one who never met her own father who died while Violet was pregnant. Between his death and John’s, she has soured on marriage after seeing so many women in her life widowed. “What is the point of finding love when your husband will probably die?” she asks Eloise, who can do nothing but console her sister.

When Penelope and Eloise confront Francesca about how stiff and closed-off she’s been acting in the wake of John’s death, she explains that she’s trying to keep it all together because, at long last, she is pregnant. After months of not being able to conceive, the news is a welcome bit of comfort for everyone, but the situation soon turns horrible when a solicitor from the House of Lords arrives to settle John’s estate and forces her to have an invasive exam to confirm the pregnancy. How else are we gonna uphold the line of succession, unless we perform an internal exam on a fresh widow?? Alas, it turns out she’s not actually pregnant. This is gutting to her (although it seems like she already knew it and was just using the pregnancy as a beacon of hope), but not only does it mean will she not have the joy of a baby coming into her life, but she also feels like a failure, having been unable to give John the thing he wanted, and unable to maintain his line of succession after all. The grief finally washes over her when she speaks to Violet about how blessed Violet was to have eight children, “eight pieces of your husband to remember him by.” As she collapses into her mother’s arms weeping, she cries, “I have nothing. I have nothing.” Give this girl all the awards, I haven’t stopped crying.

This moment Violet shares with Francesca, coupled with her conversation with Benedict, makes her start to question pretty much everything: her role as a ballast for her children, her relationship and engagement to Lord Anderson. For the first time, she doesn’t have all the answers and it’s weighing on her.

Eventually, Francesca realizes that all this wallowing isn’t honoring John’s memory. Michaela, who is astonished at how depressing British funerals are, suggests to Francesca that maybe instead of wallowing in their grief, they have a celebration of life for John. While Francesca initially resists the idea, eventually she comes around and they host a proper Scottish celebration of life party. Francesca eulogizes John, calling him “more than my husband, he was my truest friend,” and it’s the kick in the pants that Benedict needs to realize that true love is worth fighting for.

As everyone dances the stag in John’s honor, Benedict slips out to find Sophie and properly propose. As he stops by Bridgerton house to pick up the engagement ring that Violet has offered him, he notices another piece of jewelry on the floor, Sophie’s necklace. He hadn’t noticed it when then were together the night they had sex, but now that he’s found it, he realizes it’s the same necklace his Lady in Silver wore at the masquerade ball and everything finally clicks for him (Sophie also leaves behind her single silver glove, confirming Benedict’s suspicions further.) Now that he knows Sophie is his mystery woman, the urgency builds and he races off find her but it’s too late… she’s gone.

Benedict rushes to the servants quarters at Bridgerton House to ask where Sophie is and her fellow maid Hazel informs him that she’s not actually headed to Penwood House but to the Americas. He races out the door to go look for her but before he can find her, Araminta has Sophie arrested for stealing her fake-ass shoe clips. Sophie pleads with the constable to no avail and so, with her stepmother smugly watching, she’s carted off to jail. Has there ever been anyone so purely evil on this show as Araminta Gun? I think not.

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.