Chris Van Dusen answers our (slow) burning Bridgerton season 2 questions

Warning: This article contains spoilers about season 2 of Bridgerton.

Bridgerton is back — in all its corseted, luscious, romantic glory.

Season 2 follows eldest son, Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) in his quest for a wife. Initially, he sets his cap for newcomer Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran), Lady Danbury's protegée and the Queen's newly named "diamond" of the season. But when protective elder half-sister Kate (Simone Ashley) keeps getting in the way, the two can hardly resist the mounting attraction between them.

Edwina and Anthony make it all the way to the altar, but a small moment leads Edwina to realize the feeling between him and Kate, and she calls things off. At last, Anthony and Kate's slow burn leads to giving into temptation, and ultimately, a marriage built on love rather than duty.

The rest of the Bridgertons also have plenty to do. It may be Eloise's (Claudia Jessie) first season, but she prefers to spend her time on the wrong side of town cavorting with printer's apprentice Theo (Calum Lynch). Penelope (Nicola Coughlan) continues her scheming as Lady Whistledown, while struggling to keep it a secret from her scandal sheet-obsessed best friend. Meanwhile, her family contends with their charlatan of a relative, the new Lord Featherington (Rupert Young), who seeks to con the ton out of their wealth.

And then there's dear old Benedict (Luke Thompson), who fulfills his dream of landing a place in the Royal Academy of Art — only to discover his spot was purchased for him by Anthony. Could this be setting us up for his love story in season 3?

We called up showrunner and creator Chris Van Dusen (who is exiting as showrunner after this season) to ask him all our burning questions about the season 2 romance and its more protracted yearning, the secrets of Penelope and Eloise, and more.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Was there a direct intent or desire on your part to make this season more of a slow burn after the extreme sexiness of season 1?

CHRIS VAN DUSEN: The slow burn was very much just the natural progression of Anthony and Kate's love story this season. It is a different story this year; we are following new characters. I wasn't interested in telling the same story that we did with Daphne and Simon as far as two characters being caught in a compromising situation [and] forced to marry right after that. I wanted to change it up. I wanted to do something different this season. But our approach to the intimacy on the show, it remained very much the same. And that was using our intimate scenes to tell a story. We never do a sex scene for the sake of doing a sex scene. We never will. All the intimate scenes, they have a larger purpose. That was true for season 1. It's certainly true for season 2.

What made you decide to make the shift from Anthony and Kate being discovered during the bee sting scene to having him nearly marry Edwina?

I don't think I'd be doing my job correctly if I was scared to put our characters into the most unimaginable, most difficult situations possible and then seeing how they get out of them. That's something I challenged my writers to do in our room. It's something I challenged myself to do in my writing. That's what makes really good, riveting compelling television.

As with any adaptation, you've made some changes, but it stuck out to me that Kate's accident was a horse riding accident. That felt like Daphne's accident from Book One that we ended up not having last season, rather than the carriage accident that's on the page in this novel. Can you walk me through how you arrived at that?

It's a full circle moment. You meet Kate Sharma in episode 1 of season 2 on her horse. She's riding astride through those woods. Across the course of the season, Anthony and Kate have their spot in Hyde Park. This is where they meet multiple times. To bring it back full circle at the end of the season with Kate back on her horse about to jump an even bigger hedge than she jumped in episode 1, there was something really interesting to me about that being a really fascinating, riveting storytelling device.

When Eloise discovers Penelope is Whistledown, we think that that might be it for her column. But then we see, in those final moments, her picking up her pen again. What prompted her to keep doing this, and should she have a greater degree of paranoia now that Eloise knows the truth?

This season is so fascinating for Penelope Featherington. We get to see that there's this entirely other side of the Lady Whistledown Operation. Eloise Bridgerton is at these balls with her, which makes Penelope's life that much more difficult. And then finally the other shoe drops for Eloise — she puts the pieces together and she figures out Penelope is Lady Whistledown. That fight between the two characters, it's brutal and it's devastating, as I wanted it to be. That confrontation was a long time coming after seeing Eloise hot on Lady Whistledown's trail in season 1, almost getting her but not quite, and in this season, finally figuring it out. It's one of my favorite scenes, that fight — because it is a ride in of itself. Nicola and Claudia give performances that are just out of this world. A the end of the season, Penelope's been stripped of everything. She's lost her best friend. She's lost her crush in Colin Bridgerton, after overhearing him and his buddies. She's lost her alter ego. It was fascinating for me to figure out what Penelope was going to do next. And that's answered in the final moments of the finale.

Where did you get that idea to have us actually hear the narration as Penelope's voice as opposed to Julie Andrews'?

It was something that, like all ideas, they just get into my head and they just spill out. At that moment when you hear the voiceover, it is what Lady Whistledown is writing, but Penelope herself hasn't quite made the choice yet. If you look really closely at that scene, she hasn't quite made the choice to pick up the quill yet. The voiceover of Lady Whistledown is literally the voice in Penelope's head. You just usually hear it as Julie Andrews. But for this time, I thought it was a really interesting device to switch it up for just a second.

You're moving on, and this was your last season to show-run. What is your wish for Benedict in season 3? You've made him so much goofier and artistic and even more sexually curious than he might appear on the page. What do you hope his journey is going forward?

With Benedict, I've always been interested in exploring what happens outside the confines of Mayfair and seeing the world beyond Grovesnor Square. Benedict's key to that idea. He's been able to take us out of these drawing rooms and into this more bohemian world that's full of art and all these colorful characters. At the end of the day, he's someone who's trying to figure out where he fits into this family as a second son. He's been afforded some special freedoms and privileges because he is a second son. He doesn't have the pressure of carrying on the family mantle like Anthony does. I've always loved seeing what Benedict chooses to do with that freedom. We've seen what he chooses to do in the first two seasons. I hope he carries it on after this season. I can't wait for the sole focus to turn onto Benedict Bridgerton, and we can really dig into his story.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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