Why Kanthony Still Resonates a Year Later
One year ago today, I woke up early so I could watch as much of the first episode of Bridgerton Season Two before I went to school. I considered taking the day off just so that I could binge, but I was running an event day for the middle school and couldn’t, even though it was a half day. I came home, sat down, and promptly watched about eight hours of TV that changed my life.
Saying it changed my life, weirdly, isn’t an understatement. I’d been running my Instagram as a multifandom account for a while, but the Bridgerton section hadn’t gained much traction. Suddenly, as I started posting about Kate and Anthony, my follower count doubled in a month and my posts were getting thousands and thousands of likes. That led me to starting some fan fiction about Kanthony that grew into so much more. The love and support people gave my writing pushed me to have the confidence so that, this January, I published my first book. My second one, based on this original Kanthony fan fic, is coming out in April (The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Lover, currently available for pre-order on Amazon!). And that’s not to mention the amazing friends I’ve made, the beautiful diversification of my conversations and interactions, and the immense amount of learning I’ve gotten to do about so many things that are all owing to Bridgerton Season Two and, let’s be real, to the love story of Kate and Anthony.
So why, I find myself asking, are Kate and Anthony such a powerful couple. Why did their love story resonate with us so deeply? Why was their season able to surpass the already extremely high precedent of watch numbers from Season 1? Well, here are my thoughts, in no particular order.
Jonathan Bailey and Simone Ashley’s chemistry. It’s hard to find chemistry like that, chemistry that leaps of the screen, that screams of both desperation and comfort, of sex and emotional intimacy, of love and hate and the utter impossibility of staying away from each other. They have that in spades, and it’s intoxicating.
Anthony Bridgerton is a straight man written by women and a gay man and played by a gay man. Anthony Bridgerton has all the positive masculinity traits like protectiveness, responsibility, assertiveness, along with some forgivable flaws like jealousy and acting irrationally due to hurt. But he’s written and played with such extreme depth and care, such tenderness and understanding toward his past, that we fall madly in love. We like a wounded hero, and Anthony Bridgerton is that in spades.
Kate Sharma is a badass. I think we all see some of ourselves in Kate, or at least a lot of us do. Having too much responsibility thrust upon her at too young an age, self-sacrificing and struggling with self-worth, all while being outwardly strong and confident and capable. It’s a confusing and sometimes contradictory cocktail that’s the reality for lots of women around the world, and Kate speaks to both the strength and the vulnerability that we all feel sometimes.
The diversity gave us something new and beautiful. Interracial relationships aren’t as taboo as they once were, but they’re still underrepresented in mainstream media. Especially in mainstream romance media. Seeing Indian women as the standard of beauty, having a dark skinned woman as the centerpiece, the object of love and adoration, made the representation particularly beautiful. And the weaving in of cultural elements was strong and compelling.
The slow burn. I know some people were frustrated with how long it took Kate and Anthony to jump each others’ bones, but the slow burn is everything to me. Where I find the most compelling TV is in the sexual tension, the negotiation of hearts and minds going on between them. It’s heady and intense and downright beautiful, from the “bane of my existence” to him sniffing her…goodness, is it getting hot in here?
The complexity of the characters is also a major factor. While the genre often lends itself toward archetypal characters, ie. the rake, the virgin, the widow, the wallflower, etc., Bridgerton Season Two broke the mold in many ways. Kate and Anthony both separately and together challenge the assumptions about their respective roles, and everything they do is deeply character based. It makes for a phenomenal story and amazing watch experience.
There are, truly, so many reasons this story resonates so powerfully; these are just a few random thoughts. Things like their beauty, the writing, the costuming, the set design, the supporting characters, and so much more all play a role as well. I don’t have one big takeaway, unless it’s that we should keep celebrating this couple. They’re a remarkable, beautiful love story told with so much depth and care. And if you were looking for a reason to rewatch Bridgerton Season Two, I think you just found it!
