If you love those paternity test episodes of Maury, this most recent Bridget Jones film was the one for you. In Bridget Jones' Baby, the self-declared singleton (Renee Zellweger) once again finds herself juggling suitors. This time, one of them is the biological father of Bridget's unborn child. The candidates are her ex-love Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and tech billionaire American Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey), making this love triangle the best kind of problem to have. Of course, Mark and Bridget's happy ending was always in the bag and Jack has to be rejected. So why does Jack attend Mark and Bridget's wedding in Bridget Jones' Baby?
Structurally, Jack is at that wedding so the movie can stretch out the paternity mystery for just a little longer. Because not only is Jack front and center at Bridget and Mark's nuptials, he's also holding Bridget's one-year-old child. It's possible, for a few of the film's final minutes, that Bridget chose Mark but is raising her kid in conjunction with Jack, his father. It would have been a interesting and adult choice for a romantic comedy to make. Jack and Mark already had to learn to coexist and even work together despite their predicament. (See the scene where they haul Bridget to the hospital on foot.) Bridget Jones' Baby could have chosen an unconventional romantic ending where Jack, Mark, and Bridget become an unusual blended family.
After the ceremony, Mark fake-demands that Jack give him back his son. So there's no controversy to Bridget's romantic choice. The child's paternity luckily matched what her heart was telling her. The audience could have handled a more complicated conclusion, but the movie is determined to give them the full Mark-and-Bridget fairy tale: domestic bliss at last.
The paternity results leave Jack's presence at the wedding up to interpretation. A couple of off-screen plot developments can be gleaned from it: first, Jack is still close enough to Mark and Bridget to score an invitation. There's no awkwardness between them, as evidenced by Mark's display of mock-aggression. And Jack doesn't seem to hold on to any hard feelings about Bridget choosing to spend her life with another man. Second, that baby seems awfully comfortable with Jack, suggesting that they spend a lot of time together. So maybe Jack and the newlywed Darcys are a bit of a blended family after all.
Throughout the movie, Bridget is reminding the men that the child she's carrying is more important than either one of their egos. Both of them step up to help her during the pregnancy and both are present at the birth. It would be cruel of Mark and Bridget to send Jack on his merry way if he'd formed an emotional attachment to the kid, which it appears he has. It's progressive and generous of them to invite Jack to be a part of their son's life. And what kid wouldn't want a cool, rich uncle like that?
Since this wedding proves Jack to be a close friend of the Darcy family, it's only right he also be included in any hypothetical Bridget Jones sequel.
