Warning: This post contains spoilers for Never Have I Ever season 3Never Have I Ever season 3 includes a fun nod to Bridgerton, another Netflix show, and explains why a modern version of the romance series would be so hard to pull off. Never Have I Ever returned to Netflix with a new season and a few new characters, including a fellow Sherman Oaks High School student who tried (and failed) to hide who he was from people.
Never Have I Ever season 3 introduces Eric, who goes by Lady Whistleboy on social media. Eric’s online persona is a reference to Bridgerton’s Lady Whistledown, the writer of London’s society papers and the curator of the ton’s gossip. Like Whistledown, Lady Whistleboy collects the hot gossip and scandals happening with the students of Sherman Oaks High School, excitedly sharing them to his followers on social media. However, the big difference here is that Eric’s real identity isn’t a secret to anyone in school; everyone knows he and Lady Whistleboy are one and the same. Whereas Lady Whistledown’s true identity — as the wallflower Penelope Featherington — remains a mystery to most of the characters in Bridgerton.
Never Have I Ever’s nod to Bridgerton goes a long way to show how a version of Lady Whistledown couldn’t truly exist in a modern setting. When everyone has a smartphone and access to videos, a variety of social media, and the like, hiding one’s identity becomes increasingly more difficult. And when someone like Never Have I Ever’s Eric, who is only reporting on the personal lives of his high school classmates, the character’s identity is all the easier to figure out. Lady Whistleboy pretends his persona is private, but Eric’s way of hiding who he isn’t exactly stealthy.
Why Bridgerton's Lady Whistledown Identity Wouldn't Be A Secret
For instance, if Penelope published her Lady Whistledown papers online, someone could trace her IP address to find out who she is. In the digital age, one’s internet footprint is everywhere no matter how much one would like to be private. Conversely, if Penelope posted a video to social media from a very specific location, someone could figure out her identity by narrowing down who was there at the time the event took place. She’d have to jump through a lot of digital hoops to be untraceable, but that would take away from her writing and posting time. Penelope maintaining the Lady Whistledown secret in the 19th century is proving difficult enough on Bridgerton, and bringing that same scenario into the 21st century would be nearly impossible to accomplish.
What’s more, the lack of secrecy in the digital age means the people Lady Whistledown writes about would know her true feelings about them. It would surely not go over well with them, and she’d probably have more enemies (though Never Have I Ever’s Eric seems to be doing okay so far). A modern-day Bridgerton would also be different from Gossip Girl, which took place before the era of social media and whose titular character would send elusive texts that couldn’t be traced. Similarly, Gossip Girl with smartphones would likely not work, nor would it have the same impact as the original series did regarding the mystery. Never Have I Ever’s Eric and his Lady Whistleboy social media gossip account is perhaps the closest thing to an updated version of Bridgerton’s Lady Whistledown that fans will get.