'Bridgerton' Season 3 Breaks Series Record With 45 Million Views

Bridgerton season 3 drew in the show’s biggest opening weekend to date.

According to a Netflix press release, the first half of the third season brought up 45.05 million views (total hours watched divided by running time) worldwide after its premiere on Thursday, May 16. In math terms, that is about 165.2 million hours of viewing time by Tuesday, May 21.

Season 2, which debuted in March 2022, delivered more than 193 million hours of viewing time for all the episodes. The newest season is the first time the series is splitting a release into two installments instead of dropping all the episodes at once. Netflix didn’t publicly release weekly viewing numbers for season 1.

Bridgerton also received the highest single weekly view count for any Netflix series since the streaming service started ranking titles by views in June 2023.

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The historical drama, which is based on the book series written by Julia Quinn, follows the members of the wealthy Bridgerton family as they search for love in 19th century London. Bridgerton is expected to have eight seasons based on the eight novels written by Quinn about each sibling.

After following Daphne Bridgerton’s (Phoebe Dynevor) love story with Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page) and Anthony Bridgerton’s (Jonathan Bailey) journey with Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley), season 3 centered around Colin Bridgerton’s (Luke Newton) friendship with Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) turning into something more.

Earlier this month, Quinn reflected on making Colin and Penelope’s romance come to life on the page.

“For me, the most exciting thing is that this season — unlike most ones we’ve had before and probably mostly ones that would come after — is about two characters that we already know quite well,” Quinn told The New York Post on Thursday.

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Quinn said there was one issue while writing Romancing Mr. Bridgerton, adding, “I just think there’s a different type of emotional investment coming into it. It’s interesting because when I was writing the books — this book, Romancing Mr. Bridgerton, which is actually the fourth in the series, was the hardest one to plot.”

The author pointed out that Colin and Penelope were already “very established characters” before they became the focus.

“I usually maybe have one character you’re bringing in from before and then you can mold the other one into what you need. So this time it was really hard to come up with a plot that actually worked for everything. I’d already made these characters with the experiences that they had.”

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While discussing the show’s success, Quinn admitted the response took her by “surprise.”

“I did not expect it to be as crazy big as it is,” she continued. “It took everyone by surprise, in the best possible way. I really think that people could look at Bridgerton as a masterclass in adaptation. Because each season doesn’t follow [the books] word for word. And there are things that are changed in the plot. ”

Quinn concluded: “But, if you look over the arc of the whole season, the characters are absolutely true to who they are. The main conflict is actually true to what it was. So, I think it’s really brilliant.”

The first half of Bridgerton season 3 is currently streaming on Netflix. The remaining episodes drop on Thursday, June 13.