We May Have Already Met Eloise's Future True Love on "Bridgerton"

If Netflix's "Bridgerton" follows the same trajectory as the book series it's based on, it will be at least a couple more seasons before the love story for Eloise Bridgerton is explored. The feisty middle daughter of the Bridgerton family has so far been focussed more on ambition and dreams of an unconventional future, rather than romance. But readers of Julia Quinn's "Bridgerton" book series know that true love is down the road for Eloise, too — and, if the show sticks with the books' story, we've already met him. If you want to go into future seasons unspoiled, this is where you should turn back! For everyone else, let's get into it.

Eloise is the main character in the fifth book in the "Bridgerton" series called "To Sir Phillip, With Love." If that name — the name of her future husband — sounds familiar, it's because we caught a glimpse of him at the end of the first season of the TV series. In the books, Sir Phillip Crane is the widower of Eloise's distant cousin, Marina. He and Eloise first connect when she writes him a note of condolence after his wife's death, and the two become pen pals. Eloise is 28 years old at the time and has rejected six proposals, being in no hurry to marry. Over time, they grow closer, until he writes to her with an unexpected proposal that soon spins out of control and, eventually, into true love.

The basic groundwork has been laid for this story in the first season of the Netflix adaptation. Just like his book counterpart, the TV version of Phillip Crane is a second son, the younger brother of Sir George Crane. George dies unexpectedly in battle, and Phillip is left to take care of the family title, as well as George's fiancée, Marina. The TV version gives Marina much more of a backstory, though. Instead of just being George's fiancée, she's pregnant with his child, and she has a character arc of her own before her reluctant marriage to Phillip. The other major difference is that, in the TV version, she's a distant cousin of the Featheringtons, rather than the Bridgertons.

It remains to be seen how Phillip and Eloise's story will play out, or if it will happen the same way in the TV series. Since Marina is already a major character, it's harder to simply write her off as a piece of Phillip's backstory; we actually got to know her, while we still don't know much about him. Eloise's book does take place in 1823 and 1824, which is a decade after "The Duke and I" (aka season one of Netflix's "Bridgerton"), so there is plenty of time for the story to develop.

If the TV series follows the books, with one Bridgerton sibling as the focus of each season, then we'll probably have to wait until a potential fifth season to see Eloise find her own love story, but it will be worth the wait!