Some shows you watch. Others you settle into like a velvet chair on a Sunday afternoon with a cup of something warm, and The Gilded Age has become that for me. Julian Fellowes wrote a world I keep wanting to return to, where ambition wears pearls and faith hides behind brocade curtains. Now that HBO has confirmed Season 4 is on the way this year, my heart has been counting the days.

What pulls me back is not the gowns, though the gowns are glorious. It is the women. Watching Peggy Scott walk into rooms that were never built for her and refusing to make herself small is the part that stays with me. Her engagement to Dr. William Kirkland in those final breaths of Season 3 felt like a quiet exhale after years of holding her breath. She has carried so much, from the loss of her son to a father who tried to manage her grief. To see love finally meet her, gentle and steady, the kind that does not have to be earned, was the moment that made me set down my coffee. I want to see her at the dinner table of his family in Newport, navigating a new set of expectations, and I want to see her keep writing the truth no matter who is watching.

Speaking of acting that quietly knocks you over, Audra McDonald and Phylicia Rashad were doing some of their finest work in season 3. Audra carries Dorothy Scott with a restrained ache that lives just under the surface, a mother who has already lost too much and is bracing for whatever this new chapter will ask of her. Phylicia plays Elizabeth Kirkland with a polished reserve that tells you everything about how she sees the Scott family without ever needing to spell it out. Watching them share a room, every glance carries so much history that words barely need to follow. No wonder this cast keeps getting Emmy and SAG nominations.

Then there is Larry, and the mess he made of something that was almost beautiful. I watched that brothel storyline with my hand over my mouth, not because Larry was the first young man to be foolish, but because Marian deserves better than a fiancé who lies. She lost one engagement already. I am praying Season 4 gives her the love she is owed, whether that comes through a repaired Larry who has done the inside work, or someone we have not yet met.

And Jack. Sweet Jack Trotter, who went from clearing breakfast plates to a man of his own means. That clock patent windfall changed his entire life. Money does not change who a person is, it reveals it, and Jack has always been one of the most tender hearts downstairs. I hope he keeps that softness as society starts opening its doors to him.

Then there is Gladys or shall I say Duchess Gladys. The girl whose mother traded her across the Atlantic into a marriage she never chose somehow fell in love with the Duke of Buckingham anyway. Her story feels like a parable. So many of us have walked through doors we did not choose and found grace waiting on the other side of them. I want to see her step into Season 4 as a woman who knows herself, not the girl Bertha tried to shape.

Which brings me to Bertha Russell. Lord, Bertha. She is the character I love and despise with in equal measure, and that is exactly what makes her unforgettable. She sat at that windowsill in the finale watching George ride away, and for the first time the cost of her ambition was written on her face. I have known women like Bertha. I have, in seasons of my own life, been a woman like Bertha. Wanting something so badly you forget who you wounded along the way is a very human story, and the show keeps treating it with more honesty than I expected. Whatever Bertha conquers next, and we know she will conquer something, I want to see her reckon with George first. Their marriage was the quiet foundation under all of her empire building, and I am not ready to watch it crumble for good.

A two-year time jump to 1886 has been hinted at, which means we may meet these characters as different versions of themselves. New seasons of life have a way of doing that. Jim Gaffigan is joining the cast as President Grover Cleveland, which means the political stakes are about to find their way into Bertha’s drawing room. Eight episodes are coming sometime this year with no official premiere date pinned down yet. I am patiently waiting, are you?

In the meantime, you can catch up on the first 3 seasons on HBO MAX.