SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 3 finale.
The Gilded Age’s dynamic Russell duo may be facing troubled waters next season, the pickup for which came at the end of July.
Following Bertha Russell’s (Carrie Coon) smashing success hosting the Newport Ball that was passed onto her by Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy), the ambitious socialite wife of Morgan Spector’s railroad magnate George Russell sees the united façade of her family crumble once more.
Throughout Season 3, Bertha and George have been at odds, mainly due to their daughter Gladys’ (Taissa Farmiga) arranged marriage to The Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb), which Bertha pushed for despite George’s reluctance that it broke his promise to Gladys that she would marry for love. George, who leaves the morning after the ball, hints that this may have driven an irreversible wedge between him and his wife.
“I think one of the things that happens as Bertha and Gladys get to come together at the end of the season is [Bertha]’s gonna have to reflect back on what she’s done, even though it’s successful, it’s not without complication. It wasn’t without cost,” Coon told Deadline. “That sort of nascent feminist awakening would be a really interesting pursuit for her, whether or not the marriage lasts.”
The added layer of Gladys’ pregnancy reveal further complicates things for Bertha in the moments following George’s departure. Her daughter is four months along and very excited to share the news. Could this bring George back into the fold?
“I think people have babies to try to save marriages all the time. Never really works out, usually, but yeah, it’s a devastating moment, because we leave her right in the moment of discovery, where, of course, the the first person she wants to share that information with is George, and George is riding off into the sunset alone, and then she’s gonna have to explain to Gladys why George left, but she doesn’t entirely understand it yet herself,” Coon said. “She feels like it all worked out, and everything is gonna be fine, and [George] survived, and [they] love each other. And then he leaves, and I think she’s not quite far down the path of that exploration to understand exactly what happened. We catch her in the middle of trying to process that moment.”
The theme of divorce starts to make cracks in the social elite as well with Kelli O’Hara’s Aurora Fane getting news from her husband Charles (Ward Horton) that he wants a divorce and Mrs. Astor’s daughter Charlotte (Hannah Shealy) facing a destroyed reputation from her doomed marriage. Bertha breaks tradition and decides to include divorcées at her ball, which could signal things to come in her own marriage.
“She certainly is smart enough and perspicacious enough to see that there’s a possibility, and she should prepare the way in case that’s true, so that she will not be ousted from society,” Coon said. “Even if it’s not entirely conscious, nothing she does is entirely altruistic. It’s not just about Aurora Fane. It is about the future. I think she also manages to talk herself into a new value, a new crusade.”
George, who miraculously recovered from an assassination attempt gunshot wound largely thanks to the fact that Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica) happened to be visiting Peggy Scott (Denee Benton) across the street when his colleagues brought him home, left things uncertain with his wife the following day as he departed the seaside town to get back to business.
“I feel like Bertha is pretty relentless. I don’t think she’s gonna let him go without a fight,” Coon said. “But yeah, it was sad that they were in conflict this season.”
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