In our best Lady Whistledown voice: Dearest readers, we have some very exciting news to share — queer love is coming to The Ton.

While our bosoms were already practically heaving in anticipation ofBridgerton’s return next month, this news is one more reason to be excited about season three of the hit regency romance series.

The show has had a queer fanbase from the start, and there have been touches of queerness in the first season, but it wasn’t until the spinoff Queen Charlotte that we got an actual gay love story between Brimsley and Reynolds. Much appreciated but long overdue, it naturally raised the question: Will we ever see anything similar on Bridgerton itself? Thankfully, new showrunner Jess Brownell, who has taken the reins this season from creator Chris Van Dusen, says queer inclusion is a priority for her.

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“This is a show about love in its many forms and I think that it’s only right for us to foreground queer love and to tell queer stories,” she tells PRIDE. “I want to see more queer joy on my screens and that was definitely a priority for me when I stepped into the showrunner role.”

So who will these queer characters be? New introductions? A secretly gay Bridgerton? Time will tell, but Brownell isn’t. “How exactly that plays out over this season and the next couple seasons, I can’t say specifically, but I will say I’m excited for fans to see that,” she teases.

Brownell’s not the only one who’s thrilled over the idea of LGBTQ+ representation on the show. “I’m desperate for it. I cannot wait. I think it will be so beautiful,” Nicola Coughlan, who stars as Penelope Featherington (this season’s romantic lead), tells PRIDE. “The wonderful thing about Bridgerton is it’s an invented world that has never existed. It’s a Regency London in which we wear all these mad bright colors, it’s really diverse, there’s glitter eyeshadow. So I think there’s so much space there for queer love stories and I think all love stories deserve to be celebrated.”

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Where Queen Charlotte gets all the credit for breaking the queer ceiling in the world of Bridgerton, the love story was admittedly a secondary — if steamy and sweet — plot. Coughlin would like to see Bridgerton proper do an even better job of presenting queer love on-screen. “I hope that in time we get a leading queer love story in this show,” she says.

Same, Nicola, same.