Season 4 of The Gilded Age has officially entered a decisive stage of production. With costume fittings already taking place in early February and filming scheduled for March, work is now underway and set to premiere in the second half of 2026, as HBO Max has announced. This detail matters because, in a series of this scale, none of this happens unless the first episodes are already defined in narrative, visual, and dramatic terms.

Louisa Jacobson, Kelley Curran, and other cast members have shared on their Instagram stories that they are already doing costume fittings. And these are not merely technical adjustments. Costume tests only happen when characters, settings, and social hierarchies are clearly established on the page. In the Gilded Age, this carries even more weight. The series uses clothing as a language of power. No one dresses for a house, a function, or a social position unless the season already knows exactly what it wants to say with it. In other words, the fates of characters left unresolved at the end of Season 3 are already mapped out.

This behind-the-scenes movement directly echoes how the third season ended. The finale did not offer a comfortable closure for everyone. Perhaps only Peggy Scott has something to celebrate, and even Gladys cannot fully rest in her new position as Duchess while her parents are barely speaking at home.

So let’s return to the main couples. Peggy Scott ended the season faced with a public and grand marriage proposal. William Kirkland chose her despite family objections. While many of us assume a clear yes, it is worth noting what others have pointed out: Peggy is visibly moved, but we never actually see her answer. Her future mother-in-law is openly opposed to the match and will almost certainly continue trying to undermine it.

Oscar van Rhijn, by contrast, moves forward by replacing affection with arrangement. His approach to Enid Winterton is a strategic decision that benefits both of them. In The Gilded Age, this kind of pact tends to carry significant narrative weight, requiring consistent presence at social events, aristocratic interiors, and status-driven power games.

And we will have to see whether Agnes chooses to accept a lavender marriage or oppose her only son marrying a former domestic servant. In the first season, the mistaken belief that this might become reality led her to act impulsively and, paradoxically, helped create the conditions for it to actually happen. For me, this may be the most entertaining and revealing arc of the season: the clash between the two Mrs. van Rhijns.

Gladys Russell perhaps represents the most romanticized transition in the series. Forced into a marriage that began without love, she ends the season adapted to a new social role, pregnant, and genuinely in love. But as mentioned earlier, the entire process of her marriage effectively destroyed her parents’ union. Not even Gladys’s happiness is enough to soften George toward Bertha. Gladys may try to intervene and rebalance that dynamic, especially since Larry, still angry over everything that prevented Gladys from marrying for love, does not forgive his mother and fuels the tension whenever he can. Perhaps the focus on investigating who ordered the attempt on George’s life might help bury the past? Then again, it is no mystery who has reason to hate the Railroad Baron. But who knows?

The couple that continues to divide the audience remains Marian Brook and Larry Russell. Both made serious mistakes with each other, and after a breakup that felt final, they chose to stay together and try again without denying the fractures between them. It is a reconciliation without easy promises, entirely consistent with a series that prefers process over resolution. Very different from the dynamic between George and Bertha Russell.

That is why the proximity of filming matters so much. It suggests that Season 4 will not begin by resetting the board, but by advancing on already unstable ground. The series is no longer asking who these people are. It is deciding what happens when choices made in public begin to demand their price in private.

But the best part is knowing that Season 4 of The Gilded Age has already begun, even before reaching the screen. And very soon, we will know more.