Bridgerton Season 4 is finally here, and there’s dumb review-bombing controversy right along with it. Netflix has finally pulled up the curtain on Luke Thompson and Yerin Ha’s highly anticipated stint as the main characters on the Regency drama. But, unfortunately some people out there have taken the latest Bridgeton episodes as a chance to pull the actress down on review websites like Rotten Tomatoes.
Ha plays Sophie Baek in the new season of the show. And most of the controversy here stems from the idea that the star shouldn’t be the one playing Sophie because she’s Korean.
In Julia Quinn’s novels, Sophie is Sophia Maria Beckett. As longtime Bridgerton fans know, the shows do not follow the storylines of the books beat-for-beat. Ha brings an interesting dynamic to Sophie as her “Cinderella-inspired” take on the Benedict-Sophie romance puts our beloved boy on the back foot often.
But, she’s not white, so that must be punished by the worst parts of the fandom and random posters at the same time. It’s exhausting to be involved in a fandom where legitimate critique of a movie or show can be hijacked by bad actors at any point.
Over on Rotten Tomatoes right now, Bridgerton Season 4 sits at 69% on the Tomatometer. When Part 1 dropped, the score was in the 50% range. That’s way lower than any of the other seasons. And, it also was accompanied by people who weren’t giving great reasons for such a low mark. (That’s a telltale sign you’re dealing with review-bombing.)
Bridgerton Season 4 gets review-bombed
Over at Collider, Marisa Williams clocked this strange activity. But, it’s been a problem with Bridgerton in the past. Previously, a big change in the show’s narrative surrounding Franchesca sparked some backlash from both book fans and bigots who love the series. (The two are not the same in most cases, but it’s hard not to point out how jarred the latter category seemed to be at the change.) It’s hard to gauge the legitimate disappointment from some book fans surrounding the changes to Hannah Dodd’s character. And, that’s largely due to some unhelpful nastiness coming from the more unsavory corners of the Internet.
For that reason alone, fans of different series and movies should be working hard to push that kind of nonsense out of their orbit. It’s hard to have a legitimate conversation around a work of art without having to also battle against rank discrimination or bad faith actors using your stated position to launder their hatred. At a certain point, it just becomes easier to banish that kind of stuff from the conversation so we can argue about costuming, story choices, and the music cover selections from a given season of Bridgerton.
What to do about review-bombing?
It might seem strange to bring up the Francesca changes, but they’re really in the same vein. Any deviation from the books for the rest of Bridgerton‘s run on Netflix will get scrutiny from certain fans. Shonda Rhimes adapted these novels because there was a massive fan base that already existed around Julia Quinn’s work. Because of the success of the show during 2020, there’s an entire new group of folks that are invested in the Bridgerton story. The streaming show is entirely its own thing. That sigh you hear is all the Game of Thrones fans nodding their heads in agreement.
This is where we are now with entertainment in 2026. Because of the failures of the last ten years in fandom, viewers are now realizing that you have to actively root out some of these larger quirks to get back to actually discussing the shows at hand. Because, that’s what all this really does. It serves to distract you from things that give life meaning. You can’t let bad actors spoil the fun, and really you shouldn’t! So, hoping for a good ending to Season 4, and dreading the conversations that will happen later in Bridgerton’s run.
(featured image: Netflix)
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