On Saturday, Netflix hosted a three-hour virtual fan event called “Tudum”, which is supposed to be onomatopoeia for the sound that plays when you start a program on Netflix. It’s more of a “da-dum” sound than a “tu-dum” sound, but whatever. Here’s something to put in your pocket: Studios have had two years to figure out hosting in-house fan events. To put on a good virtual show costs about as much as mounting a presentation in Hall H at Comic-Con (maybe less, if you don’t have to fly a huge cast to San Diego and put them up in a hotel for the weekend). When Comic-Con is able to return to full capacity, will we see a diminishment of Hall H in favor of these virtual events? 

 

One of the biggest things to come from Tudum—please don’t make me say “Tudum” every year, I am begging you—is our first look at Bridgerton season two. The clip shows Kate and Anthony meeting, maybe not for the first time, but it seems to be their first direct, private conversation. It does NOT go well for Anthony. Look at his dumb flirting face, trying to put the moves on this woman alone in the garden—didn’t he try to kill his best friend over that very thing just one year prior? And look at Kate, having NONE OF IT. She DISMANTLES him. Look at his face! He has no idea what just happened! And he clearly wants more of it. He wants Kate to step on his neck! Is this what the youths call “simping”? 

This is the Kate-Anthony dynamic that makes the book, The Viscount Who Loved Me, so great. There are better individual characters in the books, but no couple greater than Kate and Anthony. They’re HILARIOUS together. Kate is constantly 110% done with Anthony, and Anthony is always begging for more of her foot on his neck. Benedict and Sophie have the Cinderella story; Colin and—er, I guess that’s a spoiler, technically?—have the slow burn; Michael and Francesca are bittersweet; and the other Bridgertons and their spouses are varying degrees of hijinks and mayhem. But only Kate and Anthony have this enemies-to-lovers dynamic that is vaguely kinky and grounded in their delicious verbal sparring. They don’t flirt, they word-fight. The teaser ends with a promise that Bridgerton will return in 2022, but there is no specific date (my guess is Valentine’s Day). Please don’t make us wait too long for more of Kate demolishing Anthony with her superior wit.