Benedict

Dearest gentle reader, Lady Whistledown — voiced by Julie Andrews — is back.

Netflix released a trailer for the fourth season of “Bridgerton” on Monday, and the Ton’s resident gossip columnist promised to have all the delightful details. The teaser also revealed that the next chapter of the Regency-era romance will be released in two parts on Jan. 29 and Feb. 26.

The eight-episode season will follow Benedict Bridgerton’s (Luke Thompson) fairy tale-inspired romance. The beloved second-eldest sibling of the Bridgerton brood is is known for being commitment averse and uninterested in marriage, but, if the trailer is to be trusted, it seems a masked mystery woman he brushes past on a staircase might change that.

“With each passing season, one is known to experience plenty of ups and downs,” Whistledown says in the teaser footage. “So then we must ask ourselves, do we rise to the occasion? As always, time — and this author — will tell.”

Unbeknownst to Benedict, the mystery woman, also known as the Lady in Silver, is Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha). According to Netflix’s in-house blog Tudum, the staircase encounter featured in the trailer is the first time the pair cross paths during Lady Bridgerton’s masquerade ball.

Benedict and Sophie’s romance is based on the events in “An Offer From a Gentleman,” the third book in Julia Quinn’s “Bridgerton” book series. Much like the wicked matriarch in “Cinderella,” Sophie’s stepmother (Katie Leung) is more concerned about her two daughters’ (Michelle Mao, Isabella Wei) societal debut and marriage prospects than whatever her stepdaughter is getting up to.

“Bridgerton” showrunner Jess Brownell previously told The Times that Benedict’s character arc “has a lot to do with being someone who is learning how to exist between society and and being unconventional.”

“Benedict [is] trying to figure out what his place is in the world and how to circumvent certain rules, which is something Tilley Arnold (Hannah New) [taught] him [in Season 3],” she said last year. “I think we will continue telling the story of his [sexual] fluidity going forward.”

The brief “Bridgerton” Season 4 teaser focuses solely on Benedict and Sophie. Those interested in updates about the state of Penelope’s writing career or what Francesca, John and Michaela Stirling have been up to since the end of the third season will have to keep waiting.

Aug. 30 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1780, Gen. Benedict Arnold betrayed the United States when he promised secretly to surrender the fort at West Point to the British army. He fled to England where he died in poverty, and his name became synonymous with treason.

In 1918, Fanta Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, attempted to assassinate Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Lenin, shooting him twice. He survived wounds to each shoulder, one of which pierced his lung.

In 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in Japan to oversee the country’s formal surrender at the end of World War II. MacArthur told United Press Japan’s “punishment for her sins, which is just beginning, will be long and bitter.”

In 1954, Hurricane Carol prompted evacuations along the North Carolina coast. The storm later battered states along the northern eastern seaboard and killed 72 people.

In 1963, a hotline was established between Washington, D.C., and Moscow, allowing President John F. Kennedy direct phone access to the Kremlin for the first time.

In 1967, the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court was confirmed. Marshall was the first African American to sit on the court.

File Photo courtesy Library of Congress

In 1983, Guion Bluford became the first Black American astronaut in space aboard the Challenger as part of the STS-8 mission. Bluford participated in four Space Shuttle missions, his final in 1992.

In 1994, the Lockheed and Martin Marietta corporations agreed to a merger that would create the largest U.S. defense contractor.

In 2003, more than 120 people, including prominent Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, were killed in a bomb attack on Iraq’s Imam Ali Mosque.

In 2003, a Russian K-159 nuclear-powered submarine was lost in the Barents Sea, claiming the lives of nine of its 10-member crew. Russian authorities blamed negligence by navy officials.

In 2011, two senior U.S. Justice Department officials charged with overseeing the failed government gun-smuggling “sting” operation dubbed “Fast and Furious” were replaced amid bitter congressional criticism of the mission. The plan was to pass thousands of weapons to suspected Mexican gun smugglers and trace them to drug leaders, but hundreds of firearms were lost, some showing up at crime scenes, including the 2010 slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

In 2021, the United States completed its evacuation mission at the international airport in Afghanistan, officially bringing an end to the longest war in U.S. history.

In 2024, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the suspension of the social media platform X across the country after it missed a deadline to name a local legal representative. The ban was lifted in October.

File Photo by Ismael Mohamad/UPI

In 1885, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. was incorporated in New York as a subsidiary of American Bell Telephone.

In 1935, nylon was invented by DuPont researcher Wallace Carothers.

In 1942, Japanese forces landed in Java, the last Allied bastion in the Dutch East Indies.

In 1983, the concluding episode of the long-running television series M*A*S*H drew what was then the largest TV audience in U.S. history.

UPI File Photo

In 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated on a street in Stockholm.

In 1992, a bomb blast blamed on the IRA ripped through a London railway station, injuring at least 30 people and shutting down the British capital’s rail and subway system.

In 1993, federal agents attempting to serve warrants on the Branch Davidian religious cult’s compound near Waco, Texas, were met with gunfire that left at least five people dead and 15 injured, and marked the start of a month-and-a-half-long standoff.

In 1994, NATO was involved in combat for the first time in its 45-year history when four U.S. fighter planes operating under NATO auspices shot down four Serb planes that had violated the U.N. no-fly zone in central Bosnia. The action came to be known as the Banja Luka incident.

UPI File Photo

In 2008, Prince Harry, third in line for the British throne, was pulled from the front lines in Afghanistan immediately after word got out that he was on army duty. He had spent 10 weeks in the war zone.

In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI officially stepped down as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, citing a “lack of strength of mind and body.” He was the first pontiff to resign in nearly six centuries.

In 2024, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he planned to step down as Republican leader after serving in the position for 17 years. On February 20, 2025, he said he won’t seek re-election in 2026, ending four decades in the upper chamber.

File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI

Doctor Strange is going on hiatus in the next Marvel sequel, “Avengers: Doomsday,” according to a spoiler-happy, secret-spilling Benedict Cumberbatch.

“Is that a spoiler?” the actor asked Variety in a recent interview. “F— it!”

Speaking of no effs to give, the Oscar-nominated “The Imitation Game” and “The Power of the Dog” star also helped explain a “good WTF,” thanks to Marvel and Robert Downey Jr.’s surprise announcement at Comic-Con last summer that Downey would be returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as someone other than Iron Man.

Cumberbatch found out about Downey’s Marvel homecoming while watching live coverage of the 2024 Comic-Con presentation. So, according to Variety, he immediately grabbed his phone and sent a message to Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige.

“I texted, ‘What the f—?’ and then quickly added, ‘Good what-the-f—. I mean, good what-the-f—,’” the 48-year-old star told the outlet.

For Cumberbatch, Downey’s return is a good WTF that would keep things light on set, despite the pressure of making the multimillion-dollar movies, he said. The British actor, whose parents also were thespians, told Variety that Downey would refer to him as “Mr. Shakespeare” and make quips about them both playing literary detective Sherlock Holmes onscreen. (Unfortunately, a meta line about their past roles didn’t make it into the film, he said.)

The “Sherlock” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” star, who joined the MCU with 2016’s “Doctor Strange,” said watching Downey play billionaire playboy Tony Stark and hearing his banter with Spider-Man Tom Holland in 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming” helped him take a looser approach to his character, whom he believes he played too stiffly in early appearances.

“I learned a lot by seeing how at ease and improvisatory they are,” Cumberbatch said. “It’s hard because you have this huge apparatus around you, but it’s so important.”  

Cumberbatch, along with his SunnyMarch production company, has been leaning slightly toward “European sort of world cinema” with his latest projects, including “The Thing With Feathers, which premieres at this week’s Sundance Film Festival, and Netflix’s “Eric” and “Roses.” Although the Marvel films take time away from his auteur-driven projects, Cumberbatch describes the franchise — with its 34 films and counting — as “the modern myths of our times” and appreciates how the epics “transport” audiences to different worlds.

“Yes, it’s huge and unwieldy, but Marvel is so committed to getting it right,” Cumberbatch said. “Even when we make one of these Avengers films and it gets exponentially huger, we’re still just kids playing in the sand pit. We’re still just making s— up and having fun with it.”

Oscar winner Downey famously launched the blockbuster MCU when he starred as the title superhero in the 2008 comic-book adaptation “Iron Man.” He concluded his run as the lead Avenger when his character sacrificed himself to save the universe in 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.” Downey is set to take on the role of the villainous Victor von Doom, a.k.a. “Doctor Doom,” a character who originated in Marvel’s “Fantastic Four” comic books. The new villain in “Doomsday” is believed to be a variant of Stark, according to reports.

Alas, with all that groundwork to lay, rebooted “Fantastic Four” characters to introduce this summer and a reported return of Chris Evans to the MCU, “Doomsday” is getting awfully crowded. So, it appears, Cumberbatch’s neurosurgeon-turned-Sorcerer Supreme will not return in the May 2026 film. Although “momentarily horrified by his candor” about that plot point, Cumberbatch proceeded to spill the beans about the ultra-secretive studio’s plans for the next phase of Marvel movies.

The actor explained that much had to change when Jonathan Majors was fired last year after being convicted of assault. Majors, who played the enigmatic villain Kang the Conqueror, was lined up to be the main antagonist in the upcoming installments, but the studio had to pivot after letting him go.

Enter: Downey’s big bad Doctor Doom. With that reshuffle, Cumberbatch, whose character last appeared in 2022’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” said he won’t be in “Doomsday” because his character is “not aligning with this part of the story.”

Again acknowledging that he probably shouldn’t be saying it, Cumberbatch revealed that his Doctor Strange is “in a lot” of the “Doomsday” sequel “Avengers: Secret Wars,” which is slated for theatrical release in 2027. Both films will be directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, who co-directed the climactic “Infinity War” and “Endgame” installments.

“[Doctor Strange is] quite central to where things might go,” Cumberbatch said, hinting that the character will appear in a third stand-alone film.

He also praised the Disney-owned studio for being collaborative, saying that it was open to discussing where Doctor Strange goes next, who he would want to write and direct the forthcoming film, and what part of the character’s comic lore he would want to explore “so that Strange can keep evolving.”

“He’s a very rich character to play. He’s a complex, contradictory, troubled human who’s got these extraordinary abilities, so there’s potent stuff to mess about with,” Cumberbatch said.