'Downton Abbey's' First Season Finale Embraces the Drama
We can't have him assassinated...I suppose.
The first season of Downton Abbey ends with a literal bang, as Lord Robert announces the start of World War I, but that's hardly the only world-changing event that takes place across this supersized hour. From a shocking pregnancy and a tragic miscarriage, to multiple proposals, heartbreaks, longheld secrets, and no small amount of petty revenge, it's...well, it's a whole lot.
As Cora's unexpected pregnancy throws the house into turmoil, the prospect of change is in the air. (A change that is narratively reflected in the episode's – and subsequently the entire series's — turn towards the decidedly soapy.) But in terms of the show's story, should Cora give birth to a son, the problem of the entail is essentially moot. That child would become the heir to Downton and Cora's fortune, effectively bumping Matthew down the line of succession and turning him back into a middle class lawyer once more.
This is a big deal for the Granthams, obviously, given that Robert's always wanted a son, and it offers a neat solution to a issue they've generally lost hope of fixing. Unless, of course, Mary marries Matthew, which suddenly starts to look a lot more likely than perhaps it once did.
Though — and I have to assume the following comment isn't a spoiler at this point given that this show started airing fifteen years ago — Mary Crawley would go on to have several other major romantic partners over the course of Downton's six season and three feature film run, nothing ever quite equaled her relationship with Matthew. And this episode is a perfect microcosm of why.
Matthew, for all his flaws and general alienness to her way of life, is one of the few people in Mary's world that sees her and likes her for who she is rather than for who she pretends to be. But, because he comes from such a different background, he's also one of the only people — excepting maybe Violet — who's willing to call her on her shit. And, to be fair, she really deserves everything this week.
The speed at which the two have gone from sniping at one another across a dinner table to a proposal is...let's just call it less than ideal for those of us who like a little yearning in our period romances. But it's also hard to be but so mad about it. We've seen Mary be honest with Matthew in a way she's never managed with anyone else. and he's listened without judgement.
Their conversation after he helps bring Sybil home from her disastrous trip to watch the vote count is super adorable, and the only thing that might have made it better was to actually see him propose. But, of course, Mary can't do anything the easy way.
First, she's convinced she has to tell him the truth about Pamuk's death. Whether this is out of an honest desire to wed Matthew with no secrets between them or if she's simply the sort of person who likes to destroy her own happiness as quickly as possible is up to you, the viewer, to decide. (I tend to fall somewhere in the middle, personally.) But, it's really Cora's pregnancy that throws a wrench into their courtship.
Despite the fact that Mary says she loves Matthew (and seems to actually mean it!), she waffles about giving him an answer to his proposal. Again, there's a Choose Your Own Adventure buffet of possible reasons for this: Nerves, self-sabotage, genuine anxiety about what it means if Matthew suddenly isn't the heir to an earldom but just a regular guy with a boring day job. Whatever it is, she's not subtle about the fact that she's hedging her bets, though it's at least somewhat to her credit that she refuses to lie to him about it.
By the time Cora's lost the baby, it seems as though Mary's missed her moment. You can't really blame Matthew, either, it's an awfully uncomfortable moment to be confronted with the fact the woman he loves didn't love him enough to say yes to him when he might be poor. (Even though I think we can all agree Mary Crawley would not exactly take to middle class life in Manchester.) The season ends with Mary in tears, the pair estranged, and Downton itself having drawn a line in the sand about what sort of show it's going to be moving forward.
Despite its very serious ending ("Ladies and gentlemen, I very much regret to announce that we are at war with Germany."), this hour represents a hard turn into the purely soapy. Even its spikiest class-based subplots, namely Thomas's attempt to frame Bates for his own thieving and O'Brien's revenge meltdown when she mistakenly believes Cora's about to replace her, are more about dramatic twists than social commentary.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but this is an episode that's full of ridiculous plot twists. Sybil gets physically injured in a local political riot. Mary finds out that Edith's the one who told the Turkish ambassador the truth of what happened to Pamuk. Anna gets her Nancy Drew on, tracking down Bates's mother in order to find out the (unsurprisingly noble) truth about his time in prison. Mary proposal blocks Edith, completely derailing her relationship with Sir Anthony Strallen out of revenge. (Honestly, Edith probably deserved worse.) William finally decks Thomas, who decides to quit his job and join the army. There's so much, and it just couldn't be clearer that we're firmly in soap opera territory now. Buckle up.
The Season 1 finale is both an end and a beginning, an episode that shifts the series tone even as it lays plenty of groundwork for all the drama that is to come in Season 2. But while things are shifting a bit, tonally and narratively speaking, the series' second season also happens to contain some of the best episodes in the show's entier run. Not all change, as it turns out, is bad.
Downton Abbey Seasons 1 through 3 are re-airing this summer through mid-September 2026 at 10 p.m. ET on most local stations and the PBS app. All six seasons are available to binge on PBS Passport for members and on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.
Join the conversation on Discord server. Sign up today!
