The Emmy-nominated period drama returns with Bertha Russell's social climb unraveling and most of the core cast back for eight new episodes.
HBO put out the season four trailer for The Gilded Age on Tuesday, and the preview makes one thing clear: Bertha Russell's climb up New York society has a bill coming due.
The new season premieres Sunday, November 1 at 9pm ET on HBO, with streaming on HBO Max to follow. Eight episodes this time around, matching the format of previous seasons.
According to the synopsis released alongside the trailer, Bertha's family now has to deal with the fallout from the ground she's gained. Agnes van Rhijn, meanwhile, spots her chance to claw back the social standing she's lost. Marian is heading somewhere new entirely. And Peggy is working through the trickier business of winning over her future in-laws.
The tagline tucked into Just Jared's report of the trailer sums up the vibe: you must be careful what you wish for. That's the whole show in eight words, honestly. Everyone on The Gilded Age wants something, gets it, and then has to live with what that costs them.
Who's back, who isn't
The returning list is long and stacked. Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Louisa Jacobson, Harry Richardson, Denée Benton, Jordan Donica, Ben Ahlers, Audra McDonald, Blake Ritson and Kelley Curran are all confirmed for season four, per Just Jared's coverage of the HBO announcement.
But it's not a clean sweep. Several actors have already exited the series ahead of the new run, Just Jared noted, without naming names in that particular report. For a show built on a rotating ensemble of Gilded Age New York, that's not unusual on its own, characters marry off, move away, or simply fall out of the main plot. Still, with the marriage-in-crisis angle teased for this season, fans are going to be doing some detective work on exactly who's missing and why before November 1.
The show has been an Emmy-nominated fixture for HBO since it launched, built on the Julian Fellowes playbook of old money versus new money, with Bertha Russell as the engine of social upheaval and Agnes van Rhijn as the old guard trying to hold the line. Season three ended with that balance of power shifted hard in Bertha's favour. Season four, going by the trailer, is about what happens when the people she stepped on start pushing back.
Marian forging her own path suggests the show is finally letting its original entry point into this world grow up a little, after three seasons of being mostly defined by who she might marry. Peggy's arc with her future in-laws continues the show's more grounded thread, away from the ballroom politics of the Russells and van Rhijns.
HBO hasn't released an episode-by-episode breakdown yet. That, along with the full list of who didn't make it back, will likely surface in the weeks before the November 1 debut.
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