The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 1 Recap ‘Who is in Charge Here?’: Trouble in Railroad Paradise

The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 1 Recap and Review

George and Bertha Russell have long been The Gilded Age's number one couple, but as much as I enjoy George loving Bertha with every fabric of his billionaire being, I have been waiting for them to get into some juicy conflict. They did, briefly, in season two, courtesy of Bertha’s former maid Turner’s triumphant return to New York as Mrs. Winterton, and her revelation of her attempted seduction of her former master. But, that was all too brief. I would like to see The Gilded Age go full period DRAMA, with two strong-minded individuals who have loved each other passionately for over two decades engage in shattering conflict. Twist the knives in our hearts and give us beautiful pain, before allowing love to win again (because I neither think nor want for this to break the Russells apart). Based on the first episode of this much awaited third season, it looks like The Gilded Age will give us at least some of this. I am seated.

Bertha (Carrie Coon, magnificent as always) ruled the Russell family as George (Morgan Spector, effortlessly, as I saw a few people on Twitter call George, ‘Railroad Daddy’) ruled the business world. Whilst Larry had been mostly allowed to live his life freely as he pursued his various business interests and his clandestine love affair with Marian, Gladys was controlled and carefully watched by their mother. Bertha had planned on wedding Gladys to the Duke of Buckingham, and had been carefully laying the steps toward this, including leaking some gossip to the press and getting Gladys’s portrait done by the famous Sargent before the Duke returned to New York.

Gladys was not unaware of her mother’s desires, but her head was too wrapped up in her romance with the perfectly suitable Billy Carlton. Besides, she had her father’s promise that once she fell in love, he would back her, even against her mother’s wishes. And so Bertha’s scheming to turn her daughter into a high ranking British aristocrat forged on whilst Gladys waited for George to return from his long business trip so Billy could speak to him and ask for her hand in marriage.

Larry did not have Gladys’s confidence that everything would be all right once their father was back. He had been helping get Gladys out of the house so she could meet her beau, secretly on the street or at the opera. Whilst he had been keeping his relationship with Marian a secret too, he knew that theirs was a much more different story than Gladys’s. He asked his sister if she did not wish to elope, to marry before Bertha could force her down the aisle with a man she could barely stand. 

At first, Gladys was content to wait for her father. She was confident that her mother would not win against her father (um, I’m not so sure about this). But, when Bertha found out via Billy’s mother that Gladys and Billy met up at the opera (and Mrs. Fish’s complicity on the meeting), matters for the young lovers became more dire. Gladys packed a bag and escaped the family mansion in the middle of the night. I will pause this narrative here to comment on the incongruity of that small bag with the elaborate gowns worn through the show. What was inside that, a nightgown and a hairbrush? 

Gladys was now in a full blown rebellion against her mother, and his father was on his way home. The reason  for George’s long absence from New York was his ambitious expansion of his railroad empire. He was out West to personally supervise the negotiations of the massive land purchases he needed to make to connect the entire country via his trains. His man Clay was not all in on the plan; he thought it was too risky. Mr. Russell could simply sit back and enjoy the profits of his already massive business. The expansion would leave a significant portion of his capital vulnerable. Jay Gould would be breathing down his neck. 

But George Russell was a visionary, and the only way he knew was forward. He said, correctly, that fast freight was the future. Their route, one line from New York to Chicago, and another from Chicago to Los Angeles, would be the fastest way to get across the country. Despite obstacles raised by mine owners in Arizona, he wanted his project to move forward. Only, he needed to leave the negotiations to Clay and a middleman, Ranger, due to a telegram from New York.

There was a run at the Metropolitan National Bank. Its president George Seney was accused of stealing funds. Should the bank go down, George (Russell) would lose a fortune. In keeping with The Gilded Age’s mix of fact and fiction, real life Georg I. Seney was indeed president of the Metropolitan Bank, and was a railroad financier.  

The George who would return to New York would be a George who was under severe stress. He had a massive project he wanted to push through. He was risking a significant part of his wealth. There was a problem with the bank that could cost him dearly. With all this weighing him down, how would he react when he came home and found that his beloved daughter ran away because his wife could not be content with ruling New York society, and wanted to expand the family social influence to the British aristocracy?

George and Bertha were united in their ambition. They were two people who rose from humble beginnings to the very top of their respective fields, George in business and Bertha in society. In Bertha, George had a beautiful, charming wife who helped him in his business dealings when necessary. In George, Bertha had a powerful, monied husband who loved her to distraction and was more than willing to use his clout to help her with whatever cause she chose that week. There was a moment in the first season when the Russell fortune was briefly in danger, when George had to risk what they had to win his battle in Wall Street. Bertha backed him unconditionally, and confidently told him if they lost their fortune, they would build another one. That was Bertha from the before times, before she rose to the very top of New York society, before she toppled Mrs. Astor and handily won the opera wars, before she hooked a Duke as a future husband to her daughter. How would present day Bertha react to a George burdened with business concerns, facing the precarious reality of huge fortune, and wading into what she deemed her domain, their daughter’s marriage?

I know this is a Julian Fellowes show, and I should probably temper my excitement for DRAMA. It is as tempered as I could make it, given what I have seen on this episode and how fabulous the cast is. Mr. and Mrs. Russell on opposite sides for a few episodes would make the reconciliation sweeter. 

The Russells are fictional stand-ins for the Vanderbilts, and in 1895 Alva Vanderbilt divorced her husband William in a move that shocked society. There might be an online revolt if a Russell divorce became part of this season’s storyline, and so we are getting that from another corner. Aurora Fane’s husband Charles came home one night, announced that he and his paramour wanted to marry, and demanded that Aurora file for divorce.

Aurora was part of old New York, but she knew that as a divorcee, she would not be welcome in the spaces she was very much a part of as Mrs. Fane. Even Agnes would not commit to still inviting her to dinner if the divorce was finalised, at least, not in mixed company. The future of the shunned was not something Aurora wanted, and nor should she face it, as the wife who remained faithful to her husband. Charles wanted her to establish residency in Newport so they could process the divorce there, in relative privacy, as opposed to New York where the press would be permitted inside the courtroom. Aurora remained adamant that she would not give Charles the divorce he wanted.

Did this storyline come out of nowhere? Yes. Is the show making it work? Also yes. Aurora’s pain was evident and well handled. As someone who has been wanting The Gilded Age to wade into DRAMA, I look forward to this. Also, I hope Aurora’s family and friends band behind her and socially exile Charles and his mistress, because we need justice even if it were only in this fictional space. 

Aurora’s family, of course, included Agnes, Ada, Oscar, and Marian, who were having their own drama in their household. Agnes and Ada were in a power struggle as to who was in charge, and the servants were getting confused over the conflicting orders they were issuing. The house belonged to Agnes, but it was Ada who was paying the bills. After decades of being financially dependent on Agnes and following her lead at all times, Ada was flexing her newfound power. 

I long liked Ada as a character and of course I sympathised when she spoke of the pain she carried following her husband’s death. But, this post-wealth Ada is a pain. She was such a pain that she actually united Agnes and Marian in their annoyance at the temperance meeting she arranged in Agnes’s house, against Agnes’s express wishes. 

Pre-wealth Ada was sweetness herself, who made an effort to be kind to everyone. Post-wealth Ada was free with her money to whatever cause caught her interest that week, but not toward her own relations. For decades, Agnes financially supported Ada, housed her, paid for her clothes, very likely gave her an allowance because she had some cash herself. When Marian came to live with them, she, too, had all her expenses paid and she received an allowance from Agnes. This was not Ada’s way. It looked like it was not only Oscar who was not receiving an allowance, but Marian as well. Of course, Marian actually wanted to work for a living, whilst Oscar did not. 

What bothered me more about Ada was that, at least in this episode, she showed no signs of even wanting a compromise. She was the one paying the bills and the servants, her will was law, and if Agnes called her out, she would invoke her husband’s memory. It felt like an exercise in power and manipulation that I hope the show would move away from before the end of the season. Thankfully, Christine Baranski was still firing on all cylinders as Agnes van Rhijn, which injected energy, humour, and entertainment in her scenes with Ada. Agnes’s face when the temperance speaker thanked Ada for opening ‘her home’ was gold. 

Amongst the staff, Peggy and Jack were seeing movement in their careers. The editor of The Christian Recorder offered to publish excerpts of Peggy’s unfinished novel, which led her to pushing herself to write even when she was very ill. Agnes called her doctor to see to Peggy, but Dr. Lewis refused to treat her because of the colour of her skin. Seeing that Peggy badly needed a doctor, Agnes wrote a letter for her parents and sent Jack to  Brooklyn to deliver it. 

Jack, meanwhile, worked on drawings that Larry could present to potential investors into their clock business. I was surprised that Larry did not want to take Jack to the investor meeting, but I do not think there was anything necessarily underhanded there. It was interesting, though, that though Larry believed in Jack’s invention, and indeed thought that Jack would become so wealthy he could afford his own footman and house on 61st Street, Larry still did not go to his father for the investment money. He was trying to forge his own path in an area of business that he had little knowledge of. He did not even understand the drawings Jack made. Could Larry be trying to make his own fortune separate from his father’s so he could marry Marian  more quickly? 

Larry and Marian had been seeing each other in secret for months, but Marian still wanted more time before they went public with their romance and opened themselves up to the scrutiny of New York. Agnes had warned Marian about this and she listened; this would be Marian’s third try at love. The first was with Tom Raikes, who left her so he could marry money. The second was with Dashiell Montgomery, who was kind and handsome and wealthy, but who was still in love with his late wife. Marian was wary about potentially getting it wrong a third time, though she and Larry have been friends for some time. They’re not my favourite couple, that would be the Russells, but I’m all right with Marian and Larry. They were two upper class kids who were making an effort to make their way into the world outside of their families. They were supportive of each other’s interests. When Larry reached for Marian’s hand under the dinner table after she announced her new teaching position at the Female Normal and High School (Agnes: ‘That sounds like a mistranslation.’ Lol), it was nice to see her receive support from a man she cared for. 

I have been dutifully watching The Gilded Age since its first season; this is its first episode that I felt this kind of excitement for what is to come. Who is in Charge Here? laid out multiple storylines that carried much potential, for gilded age escapism, yes, but also for DRAMA. It helped that the costuming for this episode was even more beautiful than usual. The late snow gave the show an opportunity to showcase winter fashion, and they delivered. My personal favourites were outfits both worn by Gladys, when she glided from her house with that white muff (handwarmer) to meet her beau, and that stunning gown she wore for her Sargent portrait. If this first episode is any indication, The Gilded Age Season Three would be a feast to the eyes, not just aesthetically, but dramatically.

Rating: A

Strays

👑I appreciated the expanded set when the show opened in Morenci, Arizona, where George was conducting business.

👑Larry and Gladys’s sibling relationship was strong in this episode, so was Oscar and Marian’s. Gladys already knew about Larry and Marian’s relationship.

👑I enjoyed listening to George talk business. He said that with grants and subsidies (I’m assuming from the government), they could offset half the cost to build the expanded railway. Once it was finished, they could charge a huge premium.  

👑George was not that interested in the copper mines for now, what he wanted was the land. If Ranger and Clay were unsuccessful in getting him the land, Ranger would not get his commission and Clay would be out of a job. 

👑The Gilded Age has largely restrained George Russell’s robber baron-ness, but it briefly surfaced here. Ranger told him the mine owners wanted to see him together. George said he preferred to pick them off one by one. Narratively, it was nice to see George’s more ruthless side, if only briefly. 

👑Chef Borden and Mrs. Bruce looked happy together. Chef Borden received a letter he said was bad news. Hmm. 

👑Bertha’s conversation with Sargent referred to Madame X, which you can read about here.

👑After the temperance speaker wrapped up – Marian: ‘Are we supposed to applaud our eternal damnation if we have wine with dinner?’ Agnes: ‘My applause was in gratitude that she’s finally finished.’

👑Charles Fane’s mistress was a widow named Elsa Lipton.

👑Ada thought of inviting Larry to dinner in an effort to inspire Oscar to work as he did. The detail Marian provided about George not providing Larry with much money went a long way to further illustrating Larry’s circumstance. 

👑Mrs. Fish was certain Bertha would make her pay for her role in the illicit meeting at the opera between Gladys and Billy. 

👑Agnes supported the American Woman Suffrage Association. Agnes > Ada, especially in this episode. 

👑Oscar: ‘I was born to be rich. I was not born to make a fortune.’ Oscar looked very depressed through this episode. Marian did not have the money to help him, but she at least showed him kindness. 

👑Larry forced his footman James Bevan to serve Jack coffee, which upset him. It looked like he spoke of this downstairs because Adelheid later called out Jack about it. She said he should have refused the coffee and not made James wait on a junior footman from a smaller house across the street. Jack didn’t do anything wrong here, this scene felt like the show breaking them up and maybe setting things up for Jack to get back with Bridget.

👑Bertha: ‘Happiness as a byproduct of a well ordered life may last. As a goal, it is invariably doomed to failure.’ She’s not wrong. 

👑Bertha: ‘Don’t you know a bad marriage is a prison?’ Also true. Also the reason why Gladys was adamant against marrying the Duke. 

👑Gladys’s real life counterpart was Consuelo Vanderbilt; you can read her story here.

Episode Title: Who Is In Charge Here?

Episode Director: Michael Engler

Episode Writers: Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield

Original Air Date: June 22, 2025

Home