‘The Gilded Age’ Officially Replaces Bertha and George Russell With a New Power Couple

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 4 premiere.

The Gilded Age is full of ambition and surprises as it explores high society in 1890s New York, and a large part of that is tied to the relationships between characters. As the series has gone on, more pairs have been introduced, but Bertha (Carrie Coon) and George Russell (Morgan Spector) have arguably been The Gilded Age‘s main power couple since Season 1. George rules the business world with a fortune large enough to jump social classes, while Bertha slowly but surely conquers society. However, Season 3 throws a wrench into their relationship, leaving them on uncertain terms, and husband and wife are still dealing with the fallout in Season 4’s premiere. The Russells’ separation leaves a power vacuum in The Gilded Age, but luckily, the new season introduces the perfect couple to replace them.

Season 4 kicks off with a wedding between Oscar van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) and Enid Winterton (Kelley Curran), kicking off a new era for their characters. While their marriage isn’t exactly traditional, considering Oscar’s interest in men and Enid’s societal ambitions, they enter the arrangement with a clear understanding of how they can help each other achieve their biggest goals.

‘The Gilded Age’ Season 4 Makes Things Official Between Oscar and Enid

Bertha and George Russell have always seemed perfectly matched, as both are cunning, determined, and ambitious, but Oscar and Enid share plenty of secrets between them. Though Enid has hidden her working-class background from almost everyone, Oscar is among the few who know the truth about her. While Enid worked as a maid for the Russells, the two confided in each other, and at the end of Season 3, they reignited their partnership following the death of Enid’s first husband, Mr. Winterton (Dakin Matthews). Through his family name, Oscar offers Enid a stronger foothold in society, while Enid’s inheritance as a widow allows her to save him from substantial debt.

The newlyweds may just be starting their lives together, but they already have big plans for the future. In the Season 4 premiere, Enid reveals her intention to host an exclusive salon to support art and, hopefully, give them an enviable place in New York’s elite social scene. Between a willingness to break expectations and a dream of reshaping society to their own interests, the two prove they will not be easily ignored. Admittedly, Oscar and Enid aren’t in love, but they clearly enjoy each other’s company, and their shared goals and unconventional natures mean they are evenly matched.

The New Van Rhijns Rival the Russells’ Partnership in ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 4

George and Bertha may be The Gilded Age‘s most well-established couple, but in Season 4, they’ve fallen from their lofty throne. After spending much of Season 3 in conflict, the show’s latest episode confirms that George is still living separately from his wife. With these two separated, Oscar and Enid effectively steal the spotlight — and in some ways, they are even more well-suited to each other than the Russells ever were. Bertha and George complement each other’s work, and neither could achieve what they had without the other’s trust, but they exist in different spheres. By contrast, both Oscar and Enid want to become movers and shakers in society and are willing to push boundaries to accomplish that goal. Between this newfound unity and the Russells’ persisting separation, Oscar and Enid are well on their way to becoming The Gilded Age‘s best power couple.

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.

As perfectly suited as they are, Oscar and Enid are still hiding secrets from society. Their ambitious plans have no hope of surviving if Enid is outed as a former lady’s maid, and more immediately, Oscar’s mother, Agnes (Christine Baranski), is an obstacle. At the end of the premiere, Agnes learns the truth about her daughter-in-law, and though she refuses to invite scandal on her family, Enid will have to bribe her way into Agnes’ favor. Additionally, the new couple has an understanding about Oscar’s sexuality, but are already facing pressure to have children. In a society built on bloodlines, children are instrumental to success, so Oscar and Enid’s situation raises a bigger question about their future. For now, the new van Rhijns have surpassed the Russells on The Gilded Age, making for an exciting Season 4 as Oscar and Enid have the chance to prove exactly how cunning they are.

The Gilded Age Season 4 is streaming on HBO Max with new episodes on Sundays.

The Gilded Age