'Bridgerton' showrunner Jess Brownell says season 4 has 'incredibly subtle clues' regarding the new Lady Whistledown

• Between declarations of love, a tragic death, and an evil stepmom, Penelope quit as Lady Whistledown.
• But just as quickly, a new Lady Whistledown stepped up to the challenge.
• Spoilers ahead for season four, part two of "Bridgerton."

Don't worry: The "Bridgerton" writers know who the new Lady Whistledown is. A "Dan is Gossip Girl" situation, this is not.

Ahead of the release of the last batch of episodes of "Bridgerton" season four, Business Insider spoke with showrunner Jess Brownell, who assured us that the writers have a plan for one of the biggest twists of this season — Penelope Bridgerton (née Featherington) is Lady Whistledown no more.

Of course, you can't keep Julie Andrews down for long. After Penelope told Queen Charlotte that she was done as Whistledown (and after she made a huge spectacle out of it at Cressida Cowper's ball) in episode six, the finale concludes with Colin bringing in a new Whistledown gossip sheet, not written by Penelope.

But should we have any ideas on who the next Lady Whistledown is? Brownell says that the eventual reveal won't come out of nowhere, but it will be hard to solve.

"I think there are some incredibly subtle clues that I wouldn't necessarily expect people to pick up on," Brownell told Business Insider.

"We've allowed ourselves to create a genuine mystery with red herrings and clues and whatnot about who Whistledown might be, which we're really excited about," she continued, and added that she had spoken to executive producer Shonda Rhimes about the show's new gossipmonger.

"We always knew that once Penelope came out publicly, that the stakes of that storyline were only going to get us so far. And it also just felt right at some point for Penelope to move on to another chapter," she said. It's a fitting way to describe Penelope's ending this season; the last we see her, she's working on a novel.

However, we don't need to worry about the reveal making no sense, unlike a certain other show revolving around gossip that had a somewhat disappointing ending involving a man from Brooklyn named Dan Humphrey.

"I don't want to speak ill of our predecessors," Brownell said, "but I know that there were some feelings around like, 'Wait, what, Dan?' So, I do think it is important to have clarity of suspect."

Let the theorizing commence.