The 'Queen Charlotte' Ending, Explained

Dearest Reader: If you have yet to binge Netflix’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, stop here! Spoilers from the finale ahead.

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is now out on Netflix, and the show's emotional ending is just the fix we need as we await the third season of the original series. 

The prequel reveals how our beloved Queen Charlotte’s marriage to King George shaped her into the unapologetic monarch we see reigning over the "present-day" Regency Era. Young Queen Charlotte (India Amarteifio) persists as the first of her kind in a foreign world, all while living apart from her king who struggles with a mysterious mental illness.

Related: How Much of Queen Charlotte's Royal Romance Is True?

“I think what I love about Queen Charlotte is that it's much darker than Bridgerton,” Golda Rosheuval, who's portrayed the titular role for the past four years, tells Parade.

“She was pushed into the situation that she found herself in, but even then she knew who she was. The kind of duty and love and passion that she has for her husband, although the journey was difficult, makes her the person that she becomes in Bridgerton. But the person she becomes is still the person that she was at 17 years old, because she knows herself. She knew who she was and she was gonna do it on her own terms.”

How Queen Charlotte's final under-the-bed scene was shot

Throughout the show's six episodes, Charlotte asks her staff whether George has died, leading the audience to assume that she eagerly anticipates his passing. In the finale, however, we see the truth, which is that Charlotte still loves her husband deeply. She remembers the man he once was; she knows how to connect with him. The final moments of Episode 6 prove just that.

In the scene, we see adult Queen Charlotte rush to the King’s residence to share that they will soon have an heir to the throne. He's in the midst of having an episode, but their years together have taught her how to command his attention: She asks him to join her under the bed to “hide from the heavens,” just as we saw them do earlier in the season as newlyweds.

What makes the moment so impactful is that it cuts together contrasting shots of the older queen and king (played by Rosheuval and James Fleet) with shots of their younger selves (played by Amarteifio and Corey Mylchreest). Although viewers might assume the scene came together strictly through the magic of editing, they would be wrong—all four actors actually shot the scene together.

Related: All About Queen Charlotte's Heartthrob, Corey Mylchreest

Talking with Parade about the scene, Rosheuval says, “It was really an amazing moment for the four of us because we never filmed together." Although she'd of course worked with Fleet before for the Bridgerton series, she hadn't yet shared a scene with the pair's younger counterparts (and why would she, given that the characters exist in different time periods?).

"When we filmed that scene, a lot of the series had been filmed, so India and Corey had gone through the journey of Charlotte and George. James and myself, we've been playing the characters for a while, so we kind of understood and we had that connection. But to have our younger selves literally in the same room …”

“I don't think that scene was written like that,” she continues. “The scene was for myself and James, but Tom Verica, the director, made India and Corey learn the lines. James and I shot the scene together, then James and India shot the scene. Then I think, India and Corey filmed the scene. … Then me and Corey filmed the scene. It's through Tom's creativity and vision that that scene has come to pass. I think it really encapsulates that whole journey for Queen Charlotte.”

Elsewhere in the season, we see what some of the other characters endure to become who they are in the fully integrated society of Bridgerton. Young Brimsley has a forbidden romance with the King’s Man, Reynolds, for instance, and we meet a tween Violet Ledger (later Bridgerton), whose father has a dalliance with Lady Danbury after Lord Danbury’s climatic death.

Rosheuval reiterates that Queen Charlotte is not as whimsical as Bridgerton; the origin story digs deep into difficult topics such as racism, LGBTQ+, and how we perceive and treat mental health. “In that scene when he [young King George] decides to take himself back to the torture, it's a real moment of wow, people suffer from that stuff,” she says. “We as individuals all have mental health. Even the healthiest person has problems with their mental health.”

By the end of the Episode 6, one can’t help but wonder if there will be a Season 2 of Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. “That’s an interesting question, I have no idea,” Rosheuval replies. “I would be rooting for a spinoff. There's so many characters in Bridgerton that you could do a little spinoff about; I would love to see either Brimsley, Lady Violet, Lady Featherington or Lady Danbury.”

Next, Will There Be a Season 2 of Queen Charlotte?