It’s Cricket in ‘Downton Abbey’ Season 3’s Penultimate Episode
I knew you wouldn’t agree. I know how you hate facing facts
The penultimate episode of Downton Abbey Season 3 is another supersized installment, which is both a blessing and a curse. Its extended runtime means that we get a double dose of the show’s worst storylines, dragged out to what feels like eternity. But it also means that, as the show settles into a new post-Sybil reality, tantalizing new stories take shape, some of the dead weight (read: Ethel) is finally jettisoned, and family dynamics rearrange themselves.
Watching this episode now, over ten years after its original airing, there’s a surprising amount of table-setting going on, from the start of Edith’s journalism career and Tom taking over as estate manager at Downton to the introduction of Lily James as Lady Rose MacClare. Meanwhile, every second of Matthew and Mary’s Gift of the Magi-style doctor’s appointments in the name of figuring out whether they can have kids is deeply adorable.
Given that this installment served as the original Season 3 finale — next week’s episode is the 2012 Christmas special — it wraps things up fairly neatly. (Too neatly in some places, probably.) But its ending, complete with a spirited Downton cricket match between teams representing the house and village, is everything we love about this show, complete with poor Molesley publicly humiliating himself.
