This piece may contain spoilers.
When Bridget Jones’ Diary came out, I was 23. I was working in publishing (albeit magazine publishing), I had body issues, and I was a singleton. I was neurotic, an incurable romantic, naive, prone to pratfalls, and—in Bridget parlance—verbal incontinence. My life was a rom-com minus the “rom.” Minus the drinking and smoking, too, but in everything else I was Bridget Jones-coded. I identified with her. I was her.
I Loved It Just As It Was
I had read the book years before and loved it, so I had high hopes for the movie. Thank God it was pitch-perfect in every way, from the romance to the comedy to the acting to the script to the soundtrack. And that fight scene? Glorious.
When the movie ended with her running through the snowy streets of London in her underpants straight into Mark’s arms, and he wrapped her inside his coat—assuring her that good boys were effing good kissers before locking lips with her once more as the camera panned out and the music swelled—I was satisfied. Our girl ended up with Mr. Right. Everything was well with the world.
It was the perfect rom-com that came out in an era of perfect rom-coms, the kind people are trying to make these days but just can’t quite get right anymore. What should we expect from a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice after all? And one that casts the same BBC-adaptation Mr. Darcy that actually inspired Bridget Jones’ Mark Darcy? Very meta and ahead of its time, I know.
And Renée Zellweger? Stripped of all Hollywood glam, she looks like someone you’d bump into on the street—the antithesis of an “American stick insect” (her words, not mine) but far from overweight like she claims to be, dressed in M&S sweaters and too-short skirts, with an adorably plump and animated face that readily projects all of Bridget’s thoughts and emotions. She’s the perfect Bridget Jones. She completely inhabits the iconic character and makes it entirely her own.
Edge of Inanity
As for Edge of Reason, I barely remember it. To the best of my recollection, it was a mess. It felt at odds with where we left off with Bridget and Mark. And neither the book nor the movie held the same magic. The movie was just more of the first—a bloated rehash. But we did get a proposal and I was happy to know that they would finally, FINALLY, walk off into the sunset together.
After the sequel, I lost touch with our lovable heroine. I felt I had outgrown her. Even so, when I heard that in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the third novel in the series, Helen Fielding killed off our dearest darling Mr. Darcy, I was aghast. How dare she, I remember thinking. What did she have against Mr. Darcy? True love? Soulmates? Happily-ever-after?
It felt like a total betrayal. I loved Bridget Jones. I loved Mark Darcy. I loved Bridget and Mark together. They made sense together, they made no sense apart.
Hello, Daddy
But when the third movie rolled around several years later, I found myself ready to check in again with our girl. It’s been years and I had forgotten that Fielding had killed off Mark in the third book. I also wasn’t aware that the book on which the third movie is based, Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries, was written after Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. So Mark Darcy was still alive and well in the threequel.
Here, our favorite singleton was dealing with geriatric pregnancy and the dilemma of not knowing who her baby daddy was. Classic Bridget. Definitely still messy but with more age-appropriate problems. Mark has also mellowed a bit—more open, looser, warmer. And most important of all, still very much in love with Bridget. We even get a new swoon-worthy love declaration from him: “…just as I love you just the way you were, the way you are, the way you always will be.”
Our lovable heroine is back 15 years after the first movie, and she’s grown older. And so has Renée Zellweger. It was during this period that some people obsessively fixated on how different Renée looked, speculating on what she had done to her face, so much so that she had to address the rumors.
Does she look different in this movie? Of course, she does. Just as everyone looks different in their 40s compared to their 30s. Here, Renée plays Bridget in her 40s in all her unglamorous every-woman glory. Instead of the extra pounds, we get fine lines and hair so knotty a child’s toy train gets all tangled in it at some point. And we love her—the character and the actress—all the more for it.
The third movie fails to trump the first but it was much better than Edge of Reason. Did I like the fact that at the beginning of the movie, we learn that Bridget and Mark didn’t end up together after all? Or that he married someone else? Definitely not. But they do find their way back to each other by the film’s end, complete with a big wedding and a baby to boot, so all is forgiven. Emma Thompson joining the cast as Bridget’s acerbic gynecologist Dr. Rawlings certainly helped, too.
Sad About The Boy
And now we’re all caught up. I’ll admit news about the Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy movie flew under my radar. I became aware of it the day it was released. But I was game for one last check-in with our favorite London gal.
Thanks to the trailer, I was reminded that Mark Darcy was gone. So I knew what I was walking into. What I didn’t expect was how hard it would hit me.
In the fourth and final movie, Bridget is in her 50s (played with so much heart and soul once again by Zellweger). She’s an overwhelmed mother of two precocious kids—Billy, 9, and Mabel, 4. She’s more disheveled than ever (someone give the woman a hairbrush!) and, yes, still kooky. But she’s also more mature. Time passes and life happens to us all, even to Bridget Jones.
Loss also happens to us all. And in Mad About the Boy, Mark Darcy is no more, killed by a land mine while on a humanitarian mission in Sudan. His death is a gut punch. When the movie opens, Mark has been dead for four years. Bridget and the kids are barely coping with the grief.
When she opens her diary to the day Mark died and all it says is “Mark gone,” the blank page speaks volumes. Because Bridget writes. That’s how she makes sense of life.
He is dead but far from gone, his presence so strong that Bridget and Billy still interact with him as if he’s still around (Colin Firth returns as apparitions in scenes that made my heart ache) and Mabel finds comfort in a white owl (that looks very Colin Firth-ish) that visits them every night.
Mad About the Boy is marketed as a movie about a 50-something Bridget getting her groove back, finding love again, and living life post-Mark in a world of Tinder and ghosting. There’s the titular boy—29-year-old Roxster—who gently shakes her out of her funk with warmth, sincerity, topnotch flirting, and a wet shirt (in the manner of BBC Mr. Darcy). When things don’t work out, it’s not because he’s a cad; it’s because he’s 29. Then there’s Billy’s uptight Science teacher Mr. Wallaker, who may seem like a stick in the mud at first but whose warmth and wisdom help Bridget—and Billy—move forward. So yes, it’s a movie about finding new love.
But I think what it truly is, is a movie about grief and how you navigate a loss so great it stops you in your tracks. When she opens her diary to the day Mark died and all it says is “Mark gone,” the blank page speaks volumes. Because Bridget writes. That’s how she makes sense of life. And the fact that she had no words for what was undoubtedly the saddest day of her life says everything.
Still, for me, the entire movie is marked by Mark Darcy: He’s in the letter she writes to him in the middle of the night as she strokes his watch to her cheek, the balloons she and the kids release on his birthday, and the song Billy sings at the school concert. He is the through-line that anchors the film.
So why get rid of him in the first place? He was by no means perfect. But he was perfect for Bridget, loving her just as she is. Supposedly, Helen Fielding callously posited that if we were to follow Bridget on a whole new adventure, experiencing sexual awakening and romance at her advanced age—in the modern age—Mark Darcy must go. Ouch.
I can make a thousand arguments as to why it was completely unnecessary to kill him off. One of which is that, in the world of rom-coms, soulmates stay soulmates forever, frozen on that last page of the book or final scene on screen. I also have a difficult time accepting that they, if my math is correct, only had five years of wedded bliss. All that on-again, off-again drama to get together only bought them that much time in the end? Unacceptable!
But this has always been Bridget Jones’ story. This is not Mark’s story or even Bridget and Mark’s. It is hers and hers alone. And we have grown with her in the past 24 years. She’s not frozen in time. And with that comes all the things that come with growing older.
And so we watch her deal with grief, in trademark Bridget fashion. That is, with a lot of humor, courage, and love. And with the support of the community that she has built from the first time she waddled onto our screens and hearts.
And this is where, for me, the movie shines. The movie looks back fondly on the past without being cheesy, reminding us that, more than the men who come in and out of or even stay in our lives, it’s the people who have always had our backs that help us through the tough times.
To Have Loved & Lost
Bridget’s best friends Shazzer, Jude, and Tom are still around, toasting blue cocktails that are a callback to her infamous blue string soup. And although her dad is gone, his advice to live and not just survive is what jumpstarts her new journey. Bridget’s mother Pam and Aunt Una are still as ridiculous as ever. Former boss Richard and co-worker Miranda warmly welcome her back into the workplace. Doctor Rawlings pops in and out with sage advice. And her community is still growing, even now, with snobbish but well-meaning Talitha, scary PTA mum Nicolette, and uber nanny Chloe.
Even Daniel Cleaver is back (Hugh Grant returns adding his signature wit and a surprising gravitas) and has evolved into a beloved friend and Uncle Daniel to the kids. I love this development the most. It may be unexpected but it feels right.
I guess this is why this death has affected me so much and made me sob uncontrollably (no exaggeration). I’ve been with them for the past 24 years. I have, for better or worse, developed a strong parasocial relationship with these characters. And it hurts to watch all the familiar faces without Mark’s. I can’t make sense of it.
The way these characters have aged with us and the way we check in on them every few years make this franchise so unique. Here they all are, back with weathered faces and graying hair, markedly older than before. A classmate of Mabel’s actually refers to Bridget as Mabel’s grandmother!
But Bridget is still Bridget, even now. You’ll recognize the distinctive way she scrunches her now-lined lips and you’ll agonize over the worst side ponytail ever captured on film. It speaks to Zellweger’s commitment to this character and these movies that 20-odd-years on, she still plays her like she’s the girl next door we all love to love. What a gift she has given us with Bridget Jones.
And I realize I mourn not just Mark Darcy, but the past, my youth, and the passage of time. I mourn the young me who met Bridget at 23 and fell in love with Mark Darcy alongside her. I mourn how their story ends so differently from what I wanted for them. I mourn the me who believed that after their kiss in the snow, they lived happily ever after, untouched by death and grief.
Sad as it has made me, I think this is the best Bridget Jones sequel—and a fitting goodbye. It leaves her both loving and loved, showing us that even now, she still faces life and its challenges with hope, humility, and a sense of humor.
So when Mark’s notorious reindeer jumper made a return to the screen (watch for it), it simultaneously broke my heart and healed it. Because as Bridget put it, moving on doesn’t mean leaving someone behind. You can live with all that you’ve lost and be happy.
