According to IndieWire, Bridgerton season 2 pulled in 251.7 million hours of viewing time in its first week of availability from March 28 to April 3, which is higher than every other show outside of Squid Game at 571.8 million hours. As it stands, Bridgerton is on track to become the most-viewed English-language series on Netflix, beating out its predecessor, which previously held the record for a little over a year before Squid Game more than doubled its numbers last year. Bridgerton is a show based on Julia Quinn’s best-selling books that first debuted in 2020. Since then, audiences have swooned over the steamy dynamic between Phoebe Dynevor’s Daphne and Regé-Jean Page’s Simon, the Duke of Hastings. With Page’s departure, the follow-up season shines the spotlight on the relationship between Simone Ashley’s Kate Sharma and Jonathan Bailey’s Anthony. In the meantime, the mysterious gossip columnist, Lady Whistledown, who is played by Julie Andrews, continues with her ever-judgmental ways. Series producer, Shonda Rhimes, as well as showrunner, Chris Van Dusen, have mentioned before that they want to adapt all of Quinn’s novels. Given the show’s continued success through two seasons, this might just happen. Unfortunately, with scripts still in the writing process for season 3 right now, Bridgerton’s third season likely won’t be around until 2023 if not possibly later. This isn’t all bad news, as the significant downtime could give newer audiences a reason to buy into the hype and check out both seasons of Bridgerton for the first time. Bridgerton’s first season wasn’t far behind season 2, amassing 53 million hours of viewership, which was good enough for the number-two spot. Netflix subscribers either re-watched the show or finally gave in to their urges and jumped on the bandwagon. Speaking of Rhimes, Netflix’s investment in the Grey’s Anatomy’s showrunner has produced some of Netflix’s biggest hits since signing with the streaming giant in 2017, such as Bridgerton and Inventing Anna. As for Netflix, the streaming wars continue, with the world’s leading streaming service padding its library with more seasons of The Witcher, which recently started production, and a new Spy Kid movie from Robert Rodriguez. Netflix is also tapping into the comic book movie market with another superhero project in Irredeemable.
