Disney+ Officially Has a New ‘Bridgerton’ Rival With Its Lavish Romance Series

Erielle Sudario is a Collider News and Feature Author from Australia and has worked in the journalism industry since 2018. She has a passion for entertainment and pop culture news and has interviewed YouTubers, voice actors, film directors, and musicians throughout her career. When she’s not writing, you can see Erielle building keyboards, reading a good book, playing video games, and creating content on social media.

It’s been nine months since Season 4 of Bridgerton aired. With Season 5 greenlit and scheduled to premiere in 2027, this latest Hulu series could fill the gap, featuring royal drama and a two-episode-per-week release schedule. It has also recently become a streaming hit, even without an official Rotten Tomatoes score. As a result, the series could be the perfect binge for fans waiting for the next season of Bridgerton to arrive on Netflix.

In recent years, several South Korean productions have adapted popular web novels and webtoons, with many finding success. One notable example is Solo Leveling, which began as a web novel before being adapted into an anime. The show has received two seasons, and a movie has been greenlit, making it one of Crunchyroll’s most successful titles. Another example is the K-drama series All of Us Are Dead, which premiered on Netflix in 2022 and has a second season in development. Clearly, these adaptations have an audience and also introduce new viewers to the original stories.

Recently, Disney+ and Hulu released their live-action adaptation of The Remarried Empress, based on the webtoon of the same name, which began publication in 2019. The show follows Empress Navier (Shin Min-a), whose marriage to her husband, Emperor Sovieshu (Ju Ji-hoon), falls apart when he falls for a runaway slave named Rashta (Lee Se-young), whom he takes as his mistress. Sovieshu eventually files for divorce, which Navier accepts on the condition that she can marry Prince Heinrey of the Western Empire (Lee Jong-suk). Since its debut, the series has become an instant streaming hit, landing at No. 2 on Disney+’s Top 10 TV Shows Worldwide chart, between VisionQuest and All’s Fair. As of this writing, the first four episodes have aired, with six more scheduled and the finale set to premiere on November 25.

Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to
be somebody’s person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of
you.

You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have
already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most
durable way anybody has found to do this.

• When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy,
  conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
• You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is
  doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
• The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly
  until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
• You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own
life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the
relationship easier.

• This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of
  them equally seriously.
• You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a
  rival, and that never entirely goes away.
• It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each
  other, but whose turn it is this year.
• You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are
drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting
somebody you are not supposed to want.

• Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides,
  meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
• You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things
  more real than public ones.
• The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what
  it would cost either one to say it out loud.
• Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally
  stop hiding.

You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is
immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version
of it.

• Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five
  days, which is precisely the point of it.
• You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats
  decades of something merely comfortable.
• The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an
  enormous life afterwards because of it.
• You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the
  same way.

What To Watch If You Like ‘Bridgerton’

As of this writing, filming for Bridgerton Season 5 has ended, and while Netflix has confirmed the series will return in 2027, it has yet to announce an official release date. According to the streaming giant, the upcoming season will take place two years after the events of Season 4’s finale and follow the romance between Michaela Stirling (Masali Baduza) and Lady Francesca Stirling (Hannah Dodd). So, while fans wait for the next season, as well as the next episode of The Remarried Empress, here are some other shows worth watching.

One show worth watching is The Crown, a Netflix series based on the reign of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. The show ran for six seasons, with its final season covering events from 1997 to 2005. The final season was also filmed during the period of Queen Elizabeth II‘s death in 2022, which influenced how the series concluded. Just like Bridgerton, this show is filled with royal drama, but its story is inspired by real historical events.

But if you’re after something short, then this very specific Doctor Who episode should do the trick. Season 14’s “Rogue” follows the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and his companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) as they travel to 1813 to attend a ball, only to cross paths with a bounty hunter named Rogue (Jonathan Groff), who’s hunting down an alien shapeshifting species called the Chuldur. These aliens happen to be Bridgerton fans, “cosplaying” as humans to experience the drama and emotion. Just like The Remarried Empress, this Doctor Who episode is also available on Disney+.

The Remarried Empress is available to stream on Hulu and Disney+. Follow Collider for more updates.

The Remarried Empress

The Remarried Empress

The Remarried Empress is a 2026 miniseries about Empress Navier, who rules the Eastern Empire with Emperor Sovieshu. When Sovieshu seeks a divorce after falling for a runaway slave, Navier consents on the condition of remarrying Prince Heinrey of the Western Kingdom.