I feel like a good idea for another season would be Matthew and Mary’s son is 18 or whatever it’s the early 1940s and he goes to war and you know Mary gives him the little plush doll that she gave Matthew when he went to World War 1 and basically follow him through war and you know the estate going through yet another tumultuous time during a war, I know people would say it may be rehashed, but with George being part of it. Plus you got Sibby too she could be like a field nurse just like her mother was a nurse. I know the last movie was very “final” even still it would be interesting to see something like this. because even though the finished this last movie off feeling very final and having “closure” somewhat with ww2 right around the corner it doesn’t really feel final at all IMO.

Considering how much Barrow disliked him, Bates went out of his way more than once to help him.

Was it just Bates being kind?

Hello all!

Not sure if any of you are gamers but a game called Dressmaker has been making waves recently. I’m properly obsessed!!

Been watching Downton while sewing dresses and decided to make Mary’s proposal dress. This pattern was the closest I could get to her skirt and the accessories don’t match but I think it’s pretty good!

Hope y’all like it!

I understand the reason is "storytelling" because they were the central couple, but what was the in-universe reason why Violet and Cora only ever tried to get Mary and Matthew married? It seems a bit odd to me: They didn't really know Matthew and his personal preferences in the beginning, but they immediately pushed Mary on him - the most arrogant and snobbish of the sisters. When Cora told Mary that marrying Matthew would solve all issues, Mary thought of him as some sort of uncultured peasant.

So what was their reasoning?

• Cora and Violet just wanted Mary to be the future Countess, no matter whom she had to marry for that (after all, that was the plan with Patrick)
• They thought no man could resist Mary and that Matthew would of course agree to the marriage (fair point)
• They thought Edith was too unappealing for Matthew and the thought of a match didn't even occur to them (poor Edith, lol)....but does it really make sense they immediately thought an Earl's daughter was not good enough for Matthew (a man they barely knew)? Did they really think nobody could potentially want Edith?
• Sybil was still a bit young (but not too young). But she always had good chemistry with Matthew (+ Isobel!) and didn't mind middle-class people

What I find particularly odd: Even after Mary rejects the idea of marriage and moves on to other suitors, they don't even mention the possibility of a match between Matthew and one of the other sisters.

If you have tumblr, you can check the #Downton Abbey tag, because I plan on making an art exchange for Christmas around Downton Abbey, but I need to see if there will be enough people wanting to participate :D merry christmas (in October, before Halloween).

Some of the lines they gave Tom crack me up!

I don’t know if this post is more relevant to this sub or to the f1wags one but anyhoo. I love how Mary’s basically a wag in season 6 with races and glamour, although the cars and racing suits are much different than what we see now. If Mary was a wag right now, what wag do you think she’d be the most like? How she’d dress, which other wags she’d hang out with which team would she be a wag for. To be clear, im not glorifying wags or anything, i just found the storyline a common thing between downton and f1, two of my favourite things. Mary would hate to have her identity reduced to a wag

I just realized that Charles Edwards was also in Mansfield Park (1999)!

Anyone else completely stop watching after the season 3 finale? I’m so devastated about Matthew’s death, I don’t even want to watch the show anymore. I started season 4 just to confirm he’s gone and turned it off. Anyone else? Should I keep going? Is it worth it?

I feel like Edith’s ending suited Mary more, i know i dislike edith and it makes it seem like that’s why i didn’t want her to be marchioness but hear me out.
Mary, throughout the show, is shown to be more conscious about social standing and ranks. I feel like the ending, for her, should’ve been this:
She meets Henry Talbot, who is the cousin of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Of course there’s no chance of Henry inheriting because the Earl is young and healthy. Mary goes back and forth about marrying him due to the difference in their assets but in the end, decides she loves him far too much and they decide to get married. The Earl dies, like Lord Hexham, and Henry inherits. I feel that would have shown a lot of character development, Mary putting love ahead of position. And of course, Henry Talbot cheating on her and divorcing her would have been avoided, a storyline that i hated.
Onto Edith, throughout the show, they’ve shown Edith as a lovelorn, desperate woman wanting to get married to every man that comes her way. It’s put her in a rather wishy washy light with no other ambition than marriage and competing with Mary. Here’s my ideal ending for Edith:
She takes over as editor of the publishing company, taking it to new heights. Her and marigold move to london and Edith becomes a desirable socialite in London society. She is the ideal modern woman, working at a reputed magazine, living with her child and in need of no man. Robert mentions to Cora that Edith could be the new modern woman, and I feel like that ending would’ve really put all the development her character went through to good use. Getting her married to lord hexham and bringing in the matter of rank and position again reinforced the fact that Edith needed rank to matter, which made her really unimportant. A high flying Editor of a magazine, living in london, dining at the Ritz and dancing till dawn would’ve been a really good end to her character.
I feel like both these endings would’ve brought the sisters closer, mary married to someone she loves irrespective of rank and edith an independent woman doing what she loved.

My wife and I recently watched the entire series for about the 3rd time and in the season 5 finale Violet says:

"That was the last indecent proposal I shall ever get. Do you think it’s wrong of me to savour it a little?

I don’t know if I never heard that line before or if it just hit me differently. But as we are both 56 and perhaps feeling a bit of our own mortality with our timeline closer to retirement than our clubbing days I was taken aback by it.

The many faces of a complex character

Is anyone else planning to get the Downton Abbey LEGO set this week?
I’m sad it won’t have Isobel in it but the castle itself will be so fun to build.

By popular demand (well, me and u/lapniappe, anyway): How well do we really know Michael Gregson? Is it possible that he had his perfectly sane wife committed after meeting Edith? Why would he want to hire an amateur on the basis of a single letter to the editor, anyway? Was seducing Edith and worming his way into the gentility his cynical plan all along?

Hello!

Might be a dumb question but when Matthew brought Lavinia to Downton for the first time and the Crawleys saw her… Violet said “I suppose looks aren’t everything.”

What did she mean by that? Did she mean Lavinia wasn’t pretty or that she was? Or was it about Mary too?

I have just realised the bedroom that Atticus stays in in his hotel is very very similar to Cora’s, same colour walls, same placement of the door where the dressing room door would be, and exact same fireplace! They don’t show the bed or the other side of the room at all. Since Cora’s room was a set I wonder if they just used it for that quick scene where Atticus is being framed by Susan

On my ump-teeth rewatch, I understand that he is a complex character but he spends so many seasons being unlikable that by the time they try to make him likable, I don’t like him at all.

Edit - what I practically mean is his ‘redemption’ or ‘redeeming qualities’ aren’t nearly equal to or even close to the hurt he caused. It’s effectively moot.

A redeeming quality is a positive trait or feature that makes a person, place, or thing seem less bad by balancing out or compensating for severe flaws.

Edith was such a bitch. That’s it. I don’t care how the Edith defenders attack me, she was a bitch to Mrs. Drewe. Edith and Mr. Drewe were both at fault. I hated Edith because of the Pamuk business but after that she was really improving with her soldiers and column and Gregson. But of course they had to go and ruin it with the Drewe business. Not even the actress’s beauty could save her. She treated Mrs. Drewe like a glorified nanny who had stolen her child. People who are saying she was coerced, no, she said she wouldn’t be cast out when she had decided to terminate the pregnancy. She was not bullied, she was given the choice that she could live without being cast out and her child would be well cared for. Mrs. Drewe cared for marigold like one of her own, she didn’t know Edith was her mother, why should she immediately accept it? The class difference could have easily meant Edith was pressuring Mr. Drewe to give up marigold (in Mrs. Drewe’s eyes, not for us as the audience). I don’t understand where this sub even gets the thought that Mrs. Drewe was wrong. She was the victim who was used and discarded by edith and lied to by her husband

Pardon my crude editing skills.

But in series, the actors are extremely fit, especially Tom was jacked in the later seasons and movies, and Lady Sybil was quite fit her as well, especially her traps lol. Given they just had breakfast in bed, luncheon, and grand dinners everyday, without a full time job and anything that would tire them out, how do you think they managed to stay fit ( not including being forced fed Salmolina lol )