The Gilded Age Season 3 Review: The Architecture of Power Crumbles

The third season of The Gilded Age arrives after the smoke from the opera war has cleared, leaving Bertha Russell victorious atop New York’s social hierarchy. A lesser show might have coasted on this victory, but in a move indicative of prestige television’s modern trajectory, the series smartly pivots from external spectacle to internal fracture.

The great battles are no longer fought in ballrooms against rivals, but inside the mansions themselves, testing the foundations of the Russell empire and the inverted power structure of the van Rhijn household. This narrative turn reflects a sophisticated understanding of storytelling; having built its world, the show now dissects the people within it.

The lavish gowns and opulent estates remain, yet they feel less like aspirational fantasy and more like the beautiful, suffocating architecture of a prison. The central drama is fueled by questions of marriage, female autonomy, and personal ambition, making the historical setting a resonant mirror for contemporary anxieties. By intensifying the personal stakes, the series finds a sharper, more perilous edge, suggesting that the true cost of immense wealth and rigid status is paid not in dollars, but in personal freedom.

The Architecture of Power Begins to Crack

While the Russells’ new-money empire grapples with the anxieties of its own success, the old-money citadel across the street faces a more fundamental collapse. In the van Rhijn household, a quiet revolution has occurred: the flow of capital has reversed.

Newly widowed and unexpectedly wealthy, Ada Forte (Cynthia Nixon) now holds the purse strings, an arrangement that effectively dethrones her sister Agnes (Christine Baranski). The result is a masterful study in status dislocation. Agnes, stripped of her financial authority, becomes a queen in exile within her own home, her famously sharp pronouncements now sounding less like decrees and more like the grievances of the powerless.

It is a darkly humorous portrait of a system undone not by rebellion, but by a checkbook. In the vacuum, Ada cautiously steps into her own agency. Her explorations of the temperance movement and spiritualism are not mere diversions; they represent a woman with newfound resources seeking a voice and purpose in the wider world, a public sphere Agnes ruled from her drawing room but never had to actively join.

Meanwhile, the Russell union, once the show’s indestructible engine, begins to fracture under the weight of its own ambition. Bertha’s (Carrie Coon) latest project is not a building but a dynastic merger: marrying her daughter Gladys off to a British Duke. It is a chillingly pragmatic expression of female power, using her child as currency to launder new American wealth into ancient aristocratic legitimacy.

This scheme, however, creates an ideological chasm with her husband George (Morgan Spector), whose sentimentality about his daughter’s happiness clashes with his wife’s unsentimental statecraft.

Their conflict is juxtaposed against George’s ventures in the Arizona desert, a raw, dangerous landscape of railroad expansion that reminds viewers of the violent machinery churning beneath their opulent lives. An internal spy leaking family secrets to the press further underscores the fragility of their gilded fortress, proving that even the strongest walls are porous.

Courting Progress: Romance as a Site of Rebellion

While the older generation jockeys for control of households and industries, it is in the romantic fortunes of their children that the season finds its most potent social commentary. The courtships of the young are less about affection and more about the struggle for self-definition against the crushing weight of expectation.

Marian and Larry’s secret romance, while charming, feels like a deliberate nod to a more traditional form of period drama. Her reluctance, born from a rational fear for her reputation after past public failures, grounds their affair in the harsh realities of the era’s sexual double standards. Their stolen moments are sweet, but their story functions primarily as a familiar baseline against which the season’s more complex romantic conflicts unfold.

The true emotional core of the family power struggles lies with Gladys Russell, who is transformed from a background figure into a potent symbol of resistance. Her mother, Bertha, views her marriage not as a personal milestone but as the capstone of her own social architecture—a transaction of a daughter for a ducal title.

Gladys’s quiet preference for a simpler suitor and her growing opposition to her mother’s plan is a powerful depiction of a young woman’s fight against being treated as human capital. Her inner conflict, a choice between love and her role as a dynastic asset, becomes the catalyst for the central crisis threatening to undo the formidable Russell partnership.

Yet, the season’s most significant and welcome evolution is the narrative space finally granted to Peggy Scott. In a long-overdue course correction, the show moves beyond her isolated position in a predominantly white world and constructs a vibrant, self-sufficient universe around her.

Her romance with Dr. William Kirkland serves as a gateway to the affluent Black elite of Newport, Rhode Island—a vital act of historical reclamation that presents a world of balls, social hierarchies, and complex family dynamics that television has too often ignored. The story gains immense depth by introducing conflict from within this community, as Dr. Kirkland’s mother (Phylicia Rashad) embodies class and colorist prejudices against the Scotts.

This refusal to present a monolithic Black experience is a mark of sophisticated storytelling. Watching Rashad and Audra McDonald, two giants of American theater, face off is a a landmark moment, a powerful demonstration of the dramatic richness that becomes possible when representation is treated not as a checkbox, but as an opportunity.

The Unseen Currents Beneath the Gilded Surface

Beneath the sheen of romantic entanglements and power struggles, the season engages with the foundational ideologies that defined the era. The precariousness of a woman’s position is laid bare through the ordeal of a society wife whose husband discards her, triggering her immediate social death. Divorce, for her, is not a private sorrow but a public execution.

This chilling context powerfully reframes Bertha Russell’s seemingly tyrannical push to marry her daughter to a Duke; it becomes a warped act of maternal protection, an attempt to secure for Gladys the only permanent armor a woman could possess in a world that saw her as disposable.

This theme radiates outwards, touching all the female characters—from Peggy’s professional ambitions to Ada’s deployment of newfound wealth—who are each, in their own way, seeking a foothold of autonomy in a system built to deny it to them.

The definition of progress itself is presented through a fascinating dual lens. On one hand, there is the optimistic, small-scale capitalism of footman Jack Trotter, whose patented alarm clock represents the classic American myth of the ingenious individual rising through merit.

His journey is contrasted with the colossal, impersonal machinery of George Russell’s railroad—an empire built on crushing competitors and high-stakes gambles. The show places these two models of advancement side-by-side, subtly questioning the nature of the era’s industrial spirit and who truly benefited from it.

Most significantly, the series stops whispering about history and begins to speak in a clearer voice. The polite veneer of Fifth Avenue discourse is shattered in moments of startling candor, most notably when Arthur Scott dismisses the notion that “good manners” can cure the wounds of slavery. It is a line that cuts through the drawing-room chatter to expose the raw, unhealed history beneath.

This commitment to a more honest dialogue is further deepened by the show’s exploration of prejudice within the Black elite, where class and skin tone create their own painful hierarchies. By refusing to paint its marginalized characters with a broad, idealistic brush, the series demonstrates a mature and vital approach to history, acknowledging its full and often uncomfortable complexity.

The Human Architecture of an Opulent World

While the narrative critiques the structures of its era, its success rests on the human performances that give these ideas life and the meticulous production that makes its world tangible. The veteran cast continues to operate with breathtaking precision.

Carrie Coon portrays Bertha Russell as a creature of immense will, her ambition a palpable force, yet she masterfully reveals the flicker of vulnerability beneath the surface, showing the psychic cost of maintaining such a formidable front. Across the street, Christine Baranski’s Agnes wields her wit like a fencer’s foil, each line delivered with a perfect timing that underscores her new position as a deposed monarch whose sharpest weapon is her tongue.

Morgan Spector imbues George with a simmering rage, the quiet pressure building within a man whose authority is being tested at work and at home, while Cynthia Nixon gives Ada a gentle, determined strength that feels truly transformative.

It is a testament to the show’s evolving focus that the younger cast members ascend to meet this high standard. Taissa Farmiga steps firmly into the spotlight, giving Gladys a compelling interiority and charting her evolution from a sheltered pawn to a person with her own developing will.

Denée Benton’s performance as Peggy is particularly vital; she navigates her character’s new romantic and social challenges with a combination of fortitude and sensitivity that anchors the show’s most important representational strides.

This acting is framed by a visual production that is far more than simple decoration. The opulent sets are both a spectacle and a cage, their grandeur often emphasizing the isolation of the characters within them. The sumptuous costumes function as a second skin, particularly for Bertha, whose gowns are clearly constructed as armor—each elaborate creation a strategic tool in her social warfare and a barrier against the world she seeks to conquer.

A Series That Has Found Its Center

This third season solidifies The Gilded Age’s identity, marking its transition from a sprawling historical pageant into a more focused and potent character drama. By shifting its central conflicts from the public arena of social acceptance to the private crucible of family, the series finds a new and more sustainable intensity.

It now confidently embraces its own soapy extravagance, recognizing that melodrama can be a powerful vehicle for exploring the enduring questions of power, gender, and race. The deliberate move to create richer arcs for its younger generation and, most critically, for its Black characters, signals a program that has learned and matured.

Leaving key storylines unresolved and hinting at darker times ahead is not just a narrative hook; it is a promise that this gilded world has lasting consequences, finally deepening the drama that lies just beneath its magnificent surface.

Full Credits

Director(s): Michael Engler, Salli Richardson‑Whitfield, Deborah Kampmeier, Crystle Roberson Dorsey

Writers: Julian Fellowes, Sonja Warfield

Producers: Holly Rymon, Claire M. Shanley

Executive Producers: Julian Fellowes, Gareth Neame, Michael Engler, Salli Richardson‑Whitfield, David Crockett, Robert Greenblatt, Sonja Warfield, Bob Greenblatt (upcoming), others

Cast: Carrie Coon, Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Morgan Spector, Louisa Jacobson, Denée Benton, Taissa Farmiga, Harry Richardson, Blake Ritson, Ben Ahlers, Ashlie Atkinson, Dylan Baker, Kate Baldwin, Victoria Clark, John Ellison Conlee, Michael Cumpsty, Kelley Curran, Jordan Donica, Jessica Frances Dukes, Claybourne Elder, Amy Forsyth, Jack Gilpin, LisaGay Hamilton, Ward Horton, Simon Jones, Celia Keenan‑Bolger, Ben Lamb, Nathan Lane, Andrea Martin, Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Debra Monk, Hattie Morahan, Donna Murphy, Kristine Nielsen, Paul Alexander Nolan, Kelli O’Hara, Patrick Page, Rachel Pickup, Taylor Richardson, Douglas Sills, Bobby Steggert, Erin Wilhelmi, John Douglas Thompson, Leslie Uggams, Merritt Wever, Bill Camp, Phylicia Rashad

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Vanja Černjul

Editors: Colleen Sharp, William Henry

Composer(s): Harry Gregson‑Williams, Rupert Gregson‑Williams