Marian and Larry’s Night Together Brings Morning-After Panic

The Season 4 premiere of The Gilded Age brings Marian Brook and Larry Russell together after Oscar van Rhijn and Enid Winterton’s wedding. At the newlyweds’ after-party in a downtown dance hall, Marian and Larry reconnect on the dance floor, despite having broken off their engagement. A tropical storm disrupts their carriage ride home, leaving them to take separate rooms at a hotel.

Larry later visits Marian’s room, and the two have sex. Louisa Jacobson, who plays Marian, said the scene’s joy was important because it made the character’s fear the next morning more powerful. In the show’s 19th-century setting, Marian worries that premarital sex could cost her standing in society and prospects for marriage, while Larry faces far less risk.

The next morning, Marian is dressed and anxious to leave. She tells Larry she may be ruined, then rushes home, where her aunts have already learned she stayed at a hotel. Jacobson said Marian’s response reflects the unequal consequences women and men faced in that period, and Harry Richardson said the episode gives Larry a clearer understanding of the stakes for Marian.

Co-showrunner Sonja Warfield said the writers had considered how to create a situation in which the pair could be alone. A historically based tropical storm provided the disruption that brought them to the hotel. The premiere leaves their relationship’s next steps unresolved.