‘The Gilded Age’ Officially Replaces Bertha and George Russell With a New Power Couple

Published Nov 4, 2026, 7:28 AM EST

Kendall Myers is a Senior Author with Collider. As part of the TV and Movies Features team, she writes about some of the most popular releases before, during, and after they premiere. In three years, she has written over 900 articles with topics ranging from classic sitcoms to fantasy epics.

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Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 4 premiere.

The Gilded Age is full of ambition and surprises as it explores high society in 1890s New York, and a large part of that is tied to the relationships between characters. As the series has gone on, more pairs have been introduced, but Bertha (Carrie Coon) and George Russell (Morgan Spector) have arguably been The Gilded Age's main power couple since Season 1. George rules the business world with a fortune large enough to jump social classes, while Bertha slowly but surely conquers society. However, Season 3 throws a wrench into their relationship, leaving them on uncertain terms, and husband and wife are still dealing with the fallout in Season 4's premiere. The Russells' separation leaves a power vacuum in The Gilded Age, but luckily, the new season introduces the perfect couple to replace them.

Season 4 kicks off with a wedding between Oscar van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) and Enid Winterton (Kelley Curran), kicking off a new era for their characters. While their marriage isn't exactly traditional, considering Oscar's interest in men and Enid's societal ambitions, they enter the arrangement with a clear understanding of how they can help each other achieve their biggest goals.

'The Gilded Age' Season 4 Makes Things Official Between Oscar and Enid

Bertha and George Russell have always seemed perfectly matched, as both are cunning, determined, and ambitious, but Oscar and Enid share plenty of secrets between them. Though Enid has hidden her working-class background from almost everyone, Oscar is among the few who know the truth about her. While Enid worked as a maid for the Russells, the two confided in each other, and at the end of Season 3, they reignited their partnership following the death of Enid's first husband, Mr. Winterton (Dakin Matthews). Through his family name, Oscar offers Enid a stronger foothold in society, while Enid's inheritance as a widow allows her to save him from substantial debt.

The newlyweds may just be starting their lives together, but they already have big plans for the future. In the Season 4 premiere, Enid reveals her intention to host an exclusive salon to support art and, hopefully, give them an enviable place in New York's elite social scene. Between a willingness to break expectations and a dream of reshaping society to their own interests, the two prove they will not be easily ignored. Admittedly, Oscar and Enid aren't in love, but they clearly enjoy each other's company, and their shared goals and unconventional natures mean they are evenly matched.

The New Van Rhijns Rival the Russells' Partnership in 'The Gilded Age' Season 4

George and Bertha may be The Gilded Age's most well-established couple, but in Season 4, they've fallen from their lofty throne. After spending much of Season 3 in conflict, the show's latest episode confirms that George is still living separately from his wife. With these two separated, Oscar and Enid effectively steal the spotlight — and in some ways, they are even more well-suited to each other than the Russells ever were. Bertha and George complement each other's work, and neither could achieve what they had without the other's trust, but they exist in different spheres. By contrast, both Oscar and Enid want to become movers and shakers in society and are willing to push boundaries to accomplish that goal. Between this newfound unity and the Russells' persisting separation, Oscar and Enid are well on their way to becoming The Gilded Age's best power couple.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Romance Is Your Favorite? Harry & Sally · Love & Basketball · Heated Rivalry · Titanic

Four great love stories, and four completely different ideas of what love actually is. One is a friendship that took twelve years to admit itself. One is two people who refuse to stop competing. One happens entirely behind closed doors. And one lasts five days and never stops mattering. Eight questions decide which one is really yours.

🍂Harry & Sally(1989)

🏀Love & Basketball(2000)

🏒Heated Rivalry(HBO Max)

🚢Titanic(1997)

FIND YOUR ROMANCE →

01

How does your love story start? The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be.

AWe are friends for years before either of us says anything. BWe want the same thing and neither of us backs down. CNobody can know, including our closest friends. DOne look across a room and everything changes.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

What do the two of you keep arguing about? Every great romance has one fight it has over and over.

AWhether this is actually happening, and what to call it. BWhose career comes first this year. CWhether we will ever be honest about this in public. DNothing small. When we fight, it is about everything.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

How do you show somebody that you love them? Grand gestures are easy to write. This is the harder question.

AI remember every single thing they have told me. BI show up to the things that matter to them. CI keep their secrets like they are my own. DI would give up something enormous for them.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

What is actually standing in the way? There is always something. Which something tells you the genre.

ATiming. We keep finding each other at the wrong moment. BAmbition. We both want big lives and they do not match. CThe world. It is not safe to be open about this yet. DEverybody around us has decided this cannot happen.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

Which romantic moment gets you every single time? Be honest. There is one that works on you and you know which.

ASomebody running across a city to say it before midnight. BSomebody in the stands who stayed until the very end. CA look across a crowded room that nobody else catches. DSomebody promising to hold on, and meaning it.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

What would you actually risk for the right person? Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too late.

AA friendship I could never get back. BThe plan I have had for my life since I was a kid. CMy privacy. All of it would become public. DEverything. I would not think about it for long.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

Where are the two of you in ten years? Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying.

AStill talking. We have never run out of things to say. BBuilding something together, both of us still ambitious. CFinally open about it, after years of being careful. DApart, and I still think about it constantly.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

Which of these sounds most like something you would say? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your romance.

AI would rather talk to you than anybody else, forever. BI am not giving up either of us. We find a way to have both. CThis is mine, and I am not explaining it to anyone. DI would do the whole thing again, even knowing how it ends.

REVEAL MY ROMANCE →

Roll The Credits Your Romance Is…

Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to be somebody's person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of you.

Harry & Sally

You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most durable way anybody has found to do this.

• When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy, conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
• You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
• The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
• You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

Love & Basketball

You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the relationship easier.

• This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of them equally seriously.
• You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a rival, and that never entirely goes away.
• It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each other, but whose turn it is this year.
• You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

Heated Rivalry

The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting somebody you are not supposed to want.

• Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides, meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
• You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things more real than public ones.
• The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what it would cost either one to say it out loud.
• Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally stop hiding.

Titanic

You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version of it.

• Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five days, which is precisely the point of it.
• You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats decades of something merely comfortable.
• The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an enormous life afterwards because of it.
• You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the same way.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

As perfectly suited as they are, Oscar and Enid are still hiding secrets from society. Their ambitious plans have no hope of surviving if Enid is outed as a former lady's maid, and more immediately, Oscar's mother, Agnes (Christine Baranski), is an obstacle. At the end of the premiere, Agnes learns the truth about her daughter-in-law, and though she refuses to invite scandal on her family, Enid will have to bribe her way into Agnes' favor. Additionally, the new couple has an understanding about Oscar's sexuality, but are already facing pressure to have children. In a society built on bloodlines, children are instrumental to success, so Oscar and Enid's situation raises a bigger question about their future. For now, the new van Rhijns have surpassed the Russells on The Gilded Age, making for an exciting Season 4 as Oscar and Enid have the chance to prove exactly how cunning they are.

The Gilded Age Season 4 is streaming on HBO Max with new episodes on Sundays.