INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Countdown To ‘Downton Abbey’s’ Final Season

By Amy Feinstein
Published on: 11:02 PST, Jan 1, 2016

The countdown to the U.S. debut of the final season of Downton Abbey is just days away, and fans can’t wait. In the U.K., the final season has just ended, but here, it is ramping up to tie up each loose end. The questions of will they, or won’t they, have been bugging fans for nearly a year now, but the answers are just days away.

According to the Inquisitr, the final days in Highclere Castle are coming to an end, and the Crawley family and their employees are moving on. As the cast of Downton Abbey was finishing the filming, there was not a dry eye in the castle. From the timeframe the show started, just as the Titanic was sinking through the 20s, when many of the great houses were crumbling, a lot changed, and fans got to see the changing of the guard, and who will be the next Lord Grantham.

Variety is reporting that the cast is more than sentimental about the final season of Downton Abbey. Producer Gareth Neame is holding out a bit of hope that this final season will not be the last we’ve seen of the Crawley family.

“I want to know what happens to Downton when baby George is now Lord Grantham in the 1960s,” Neame said, joking that he’d just planted the seeds “of our next commission.”

Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary, read the script, and realized that Downton Abbey was more than just another costume drama.

“Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary) went in to the audition thinking her character would be something like the one played by Kristin Scott Thomas in 2001’s Gosford Park, the Robert Altman-directed parlor mystery for which Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes earned a screenwriting Oscar. She realized that was not the case when she read the episode that involved her momentous dalliance with Mr. Pamuk.

“She became so much more after that episode,” she said.

Hugh Bonneville, Lord Grantham, said the opportunity to play Elizabeth McGovern’s husband yet again was enough encouragement.

“It’s the third time we’ve played husband and wife,” Bonneville noted, citing their unions in the British TV comedy series Freezing, and TV movie Thursday the 12th.

“Third time lucky,” he added.

USA Today believes that the final season of Downton Abbey is worth watching for fans worldwide. The final days at Downton Abbey are coming to an end, but this last season will be filled with two seasons worth of drama and adventure. There will be weddings, babies, and shocking departures and returns, something for everyone who has fallen in love with the show over the years.

The best thing about Downton Abbey ending now is that the show had not run out of steam, and it was ending while still on an upward arc that makes sense with the time period. By the 1920s, the great houses of England did not have the same grand staffs that had previously been the norm. People drove their own cars, and did not need lady’s maids, and several footmen.

New plot lines for the final season will show new love interests for the Crawley sisters, and new relationships for the house staff. Some characters will show who they really are, and others will finally be redeemed. A character or two will pass, and some new ones will be born, but the Downton Abbey loyal will just have to wait and see how it all plays out — and how it ends.

Will you watch the final season of Downton Abbey? What do you hope will happen?

[Photo courtesy of PBS]

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