Dearest Gentle Reader,
Large scale Netflix series Bridgerton has finally come back with its newest season featuring sibling Benedict Bridgerton. The show has always stood out amongst the crowd of large popular media because of its choice to highlight different actors of diversity. This season is now different with a lead actress of East Asian descent Yerin Ha portraying Sophie Baek.
The original season is based on the third book of the series An Offer From a Gentleman, which follows the love story of Benedict Bridgerton and Sophie Beckett, changed to Sophie Baek in the series adaptation. It is a Cinderella inspired story where Sophie is the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman who is forced to become a maid following her father’s death by their step mother. One night, she sneaks out to the Bridgerton masquerade ball where she meets Benedict Bridgerton, who is immediately enraptured by her. The rest of the book follows their story together as they fall in love.
I started watching Bridgerton after the craze of its second season with a lead actress of South Asian descent. Since then, I’ve continued to be impressed by the representation of actors and actresses of different backgrounds throughout the show. Entering this next season, I had the same high hopes and expectations for Sophie Baek, and I cannot help but be slightly disappointed.
Even though she has the last name of Baek, the writers made no point to try to emphasize or show her actual Korean culture. Unlike the second season, where Kathani (Kate) Sharma’s heritage from India is constantly shown through her costuming and dialogue, Sophie lacked any of that.
To their credit, Sophie is meant to be a character forced to be a maid, which directed many of their choices with costuming as she essentially only had one the whole show. Still, they had other opportunities to have Sophie in traditional Korean inspired Hanboks, from her huge masquerade dress where she meets Benedict or her dress at the end of the show where she meets Queen Charlotte or even her wedding dress at the very ending scene.
Not to mention, her step family is not even meant to be of Korean descent, but, instead, Chinese descent. While some might argue it is for the diversity of it, the political connotations of putting a Chinese family against a Korean girl are sketchy to me. The East Asian diaspora has always been lumped together as one monolithic race, and, even more so, pitted against each other.
In the show, Sophie’s Chinese step-family: Lady Araminta Gun, Rosamund Li, and Posy Li, do speak Mandarin Chinese briefly in one scene where they are judging the Bridgerton’s ball, another stereotype that often comes upon Asian communities when speaking their mother languages. The writers were capable of adding it into the show, and even consciously tried to make the effort, except they didn’t think far enough for it to possibly be the lead speaking Korean. It had to be side characters perpetuating another stereotype.
There is a scene in the show where Sophie is teaching Benedict French. This would have been a perfect opportunity to incorporate Korean into the show without diverging too far away from the purpose of the scene, which was to show that Sophie had knowledge beyond just a maid’s education and that the connection between the two was already brewing. The writers chose not to use this, though.
You cannot just change a last name and call it representation. Yerin Ha is an amazing actress that deserved a season that was carefully thought out. The audience of Bridgerton needs to continue advocating for better representation, because we know the writers can do it. The writers have done it with past seasons, and this season should not have disappointed in any way.
For the next season and seasons beyond, I hope that the writers will continue to make conscious choices with Bridgerton’s characters, not just changing last names on random.
