We acknowledge it, autumn can bring us many interesting series premieres, but if there is something we truly crave sitting down to watch, it is the fourth season of The Gilded Age. Because a year has passed since the finale of the third installment and we still have not recovered from the surprises and emotions that finale delivered. And because there is nothing we like more than a fiction in which lavish parties, betrayals, verbal jabs, and impossible relationships are not missing.
The production that we can watch in Spain on HBO Max is at its best moment, after a third season that was the most-viewed since its January 2022 premiere. And few can resist its careful ambiance, Julian Fellowes’s scripts, the father of Downton Abbey, and characters like the ones played by Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon or Denée Benton. Although perhaps you are simply in front of the screen for the gossip and for the inspiration drawn from real events and people that the fiction uses in its plots. It doesn’t matter the reason when what it’s about is enjoying a good series.
Something we will be able to do again very soon, because there are 64 days left before Mondays become our favorite day of the week for two months, thanks to the premiere of a new episode of The Gilded Age (the fourth season).
The Battle for the Throne Continues
It will be on November 2 when HBO Max premieres the new episodes of the period series nominated for eight Emmy awards. And with the date a trailer has arrived, thanks to which we can get an idea of where they are going to take us. We have already been able to see, for example, what remains of the Russell family after the enlightening convalescence of the head of the family. For now, it seems that Bertha and George continue sharing a roof, to avoid fueling gossip, but when they do not appear together at social events there is always someone who asks.
Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijn and Cynthia Nixon as Ada Brook in an image from the fourth season of The Gilded Age.
And the struggle of Carrie Coon’s character for the rights of divorced women seems to have turned against her and perhaps now she will have the opportunity to suffer in her own flesh the contempt and comments of those who previously criticized others. Something that, as has become customary in every season, will be exploited by the neighbors across the street, in this kind of Upstairs-Downstairs dynamic that are the Russell and Agnes Van Rhijn houses.
Aware of the difficult moment her neighbor is going through, Christine Baranski’s character sees in the party they are going to throw in honor of President Grover Cleveland the future of the family and of its reputation. In the preview offered by HBO Max we see how she urges her sister not to be stingy with the celebration’s budget (and she responds as this incomparable pair is used to doing). We do not know how the celebration will unfold, but what is certain is that seconds later Agnes calls for revenge, although her sister prefers to leave it in God’s hands.
Mother-in-Laws, Dreams, and Undefined Couples
With Peggy entering a family that does not want her, and that threatens her, alongside the detestable Mrs. Kirkland (Phylicia Rashad), mother of her husband, after watching the preview HBO Max has offered there also seems undeniable that Mrs. Enid Winterton (Kelley Curran) will be very present in the plots of the new episodes, alongside Oscar van Rhijn, determined to recover the honor (and the money) lost in the previous season.
Ben Ahlers as the young inventor Jack Trotter in an image from the fourth season of The Gilded Age.
Another one of the trailer’s protagonists for the fourth season of The Gilded Age is Jack Trotter, Ben Ahlers’s character who tries to find his own place in New York society after leaving Mrs. van Rhijn’s service and becoming independent as an inventor. “I will never be one of them,” he laments, while Mrs. Armstrong has little time to tell him that she could have said that to him. But we will always be with Trotter and with his fight for a better future.
To those whom the trailer has left without a word, though with some image, are Marian Brook and Larry Russell, who from the smile they wear dancing can lead us to think that everything has been resolved between them. And who has been left out, or kept as a card up the sleeve for later, is the dear Gladys. Since the time jump of the new season isn’t clear, we don’t know if she has already become a mother. But what is certain is that she is in England, far from her family, and unaware of the crisis her parents are going through.
