'Bridgerton' Season 3 Episode 3 recap: Debling or nothing (2024)

At the end of Episode 2 of Bridgerton‘s third season, Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) engaged in a passionate kiss, after Penelope asked Colin to kiss her just once, lest she die a kiss-virgin. At the beginning of Bridgerton Season 3 Episode 3, we watch a dream sequence: Colin arriving once again to Penelope’s gate and explaining that ever since their kiss, he’s been unable to think of anything but her. They embrace passionately once again. If you’re like me, you assumed this was a dream of Penelope’s because this literally is her actual dream. The twist is that it’s actually Colin who wakes up in a cold sweat. It’s been over a week since their kiss, and a week since Lady Whistledown revealed that Colin had been helping Penelope find a husband. Since then, Colin can’t stop thinking about Penelope, and Penelope hasn’t ventured outside, a social pariah once more.

Of course, since she is Whistledown, this is a problem of her own making, but you’ve got to applaud her for being honest and making herself one of Whistledown’s victims. She knows best of all that as long as the ton is gossiping about something, it’s worthy of making it into Whistledown’s newsletter, even if she has to suffer for it.

When Penelope finally does begin to make appearances in public again, she meets Lord Debling (Sam Phillips), a naturalist who is somehow both a catch (because he’s rich), but also an outsider (because he’s a vegetarian. A right old Regency hippie if ever there was one. He identifies Penelope as an outsider, too, and the pair bond – he doesn’t read Lady Whistledown, so Penelope fills him in on what was written about her, and he actually appreciates the fact that she bucks convention rather than adhering to society’s strict rules. For the first time, Penelope might have found a suitor for herself. (Colin handles this by constantly watching Pen from a distance, jealous now that he’s having sex dreams about her.)

At a fair celebrating the Hawkins Balloon, a hot air balloon, Penelope tries to flirt with Lord Debling, but she’s got competition: Cressida Cowper, whose top-heavy hair knows no bounds this season, also fancies him, mostly for his money, but she’s already done her homework on him. She borrowed some nature books from Eloise and makes herself sound much more impressive than she is, and Penelope finds herself faking her way through a false love of nature to keep up.

As this is happening, Colin realizes that the hot air balloon has broken free of its ropes. He grabs one and gets the rest of the men in attendance to help land it safely, but it’s headed straight for Penelope.

As Colin wrestles with the ropes, Lord Debling throws himself on Penelope to protect her. It’s a dashing, honorable thing to do, but it also creates an endless cycle of one-upmanship, as Cressida later collapses claiming one of the ropes injured her ankle, seeking help from Debling who is more than happy to shower her and her huge hair that’s full of secrets with his attention. Cressida is our resident mean girl and always has been, but in classic teen movie fashion, we learn that the roots of her mean girl-ness lay with her rich parents’ harsh expectations of her, in this case they need her to land a richie, in the vernacular of Pretty in Pink. She sucks, yes, but her suckiness is not all of her own doing.

Penelope realizes the only way she’ll get through to Debling is with the truth. At a party, she reveals her past phoniness, explaining she’s no nature lover, and she hasn’t been honest with him, and he falls for her candor. He also appreciates the fact that she has her own life and interests, something that not many men do.

Colin has been watching Penelope and Debling all night, and seeks advice from his mother. Violet has never been quiet about what she wants for her children: to find true love and happiness, not simply marriages of convenience or financial comfort. Colin asks how to turn a friendship into a romance, because he can’t stand to watch Penelope flirt with another man any longer, and his mother tells him that the only way her own marriage, which began as a friendship, came to be was when Lord Bridgerton finally came up with the courage to ask her for her hand.

Armed with that information, Colin walks over the Penelope and tells her he needs to ask her a question. Alas, he never gets the chance to because Debling cuts in, asking her to dance.

Bonus Bridgertons:

• We now know that Lady Danbury’s mystery visitor is her own brother, Marcus Anderson. And while we don’t quite know the nature of her relationship with him, we do know that he’s extremely charming because he’s been non-stop flirting with mama Bridgerton. It’s about time Violet got some action on this show!
• Eloise is slowly coming back around to Penelope. Every time she has to deal with Cressida or one of the other shallow girls in her friend pool, you can just tell how much she loathes them and misses Penelope. In this episode, she went so far as to make a visit to the Featheringtons to apologize for spreading the information that Colin was helping Penelope find a husband. She opts not to stay and socialize, but hey, baby steps.
• Now that Francesca is the Queen’s “sparkler,” everyone has high hopes for who will win her over. While the Queen’s pick is Lord Samadani, he’s a little too “I want my future wife to bear eight whole kids” for her taste. Instead, she finds some quiet comfort in the presence of a mysterious, not-chatty stranger.
• Benedict Bridgerton won’t get his own dedicated storyline till at least season four, but he’s certainly getting some action with the arrival of Lady Tilley Arnold (Hannah New), a widow who has recently arrived back on the scene. Arnold looks like a noir femme fatale, which is probably one reason Benedict is so drawn to her. And you thought The Gilded Age was the only show with a hot widow!

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.