Diksha Sundriyal
Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones returns for a new romantic adventure in ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.’ Once again, she finds herself in the middle of a love triangle, but things are much more complicated this time. As she prepares herself to open her heart to a new person, she is reeling from the loss of her husband and the father of her two children, Mark Darcy, with whom she’d received her happy ending. Interestingly, there is another person who was supposed to be dead but is fully alive: Daniel Cleaver. SPOILERS AHEAD
Daniel Cleaver is a Major Part of Bridget Jones’ Life After Mark Darcy
Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver has always been a menace in the Bridget Jones world, especially due to his promiscuity, which makes him forget even the closest of relationships. He did sleep with his best friend’s first wife, after all! In the first two films, ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ and ‘Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason,’ he is a major love interest in the triangle that includes Bridget and Mark Darcy. In the third film, ‘Bridget Jones’ Baby,’ however, he is revealed to have passed away. Or so we think.
The third installment opens with Bridget attending a memorial service for Daniel, where it is revealed that he died in a plane crash in Australia. The details of the crash are kept from the viewers, but it is enough to show that the service is just an excuse to bring Bridget and Mark back into each other’s orbit. By the end of the film, Bridget is married to Mark and has given birth to their first child. Interestingly, before the credits start to roll, we see a newspaper headline that reveals that Daniel is alive after all. It is not known what happened in that plane crash, but somehow Daniel survived it.
Considering that the news of him being alive comes out about a year later, it seems that he may have been stranded somewhere, most likely at sea, and it would have taken some time for the authorities to rescue him or for him to rescue himself. It could make for a great movie of its own if Hugh Grant agrees to it, but by the time the events of ‘Mad About the Boy’ happen, that mystery has been shelved. It is mentioned when Daniel says that he was presumed dead for about a year, but what he did in that year and how he survived the crash is left for the audience to speculate on. Moreover, Daniel also seems to have made up with Bridget and, more importantly, Mark, such that he is now a godfather to their kids.
Curiously, Daniel’s character was supposed to have been alive and kicking in ‘Bridget Jones’ Baby,’ but Grant didn’t approve of the storyline that would potentially pit Daniel and Mark against each other once again, this time to find out who is the father of Bridget’s baby. So, the plot of the film was changed to bring Patrick Dempsey’s Jack Qwant into the mix. However, when Helen Fielding, the author of the Bridget Jones book series, wrote the book (which was published after ‘Mad About the Boy’ novel), she went forward with the original idea of the triangle between the main trio, giving us an alternate world where Bridget came pretty close to having his baby and not Mark’s. Fortunately, Fielding had already decided the end of the story in ‘Mad About the Boy’ where Bridget’s kids are revealed to be Mark’s. One could say that the fourth book was a way for her to give a happy, even if eventually tragic, ending to Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy.
Read More: Where was Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy Filmed?
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