‘Return to Downton Abbey’ Episode 6: The Death of Downton 1.0
Congratulations to Dan Stevens on making interesting career choices once his character shuffled off this fictional mortal coil.
Well, here we are, at the end of our first season of Telly Visions’s rewatch podcast. Thank you so much for joining us on this experimental and sentimental journey into the past with Downton Abbey’s first three seasons. We’ll be back to dish on Seasons 4 through 6 when they air on PBS later in the TV season.
We said in our first episode about Season 3 that it has something for everyone to relish, to critique, and to mourn, and that’s even more true in the back half of the season. The proportions are different this time, leaning far more heavily on the downs rather than ups.
All of the below-stairs storylines are either boring or depressing: Bates finally gets out of jail and is immediately sucked into the drama of O’Brien’s nasty little spider web engulfing Thomas, Jimmy, and Alfred. The alleged love quadrangle of Alfred, Daisy, Ivy, and Jimmy goes exactly nowhere, and poor Ethel’s financial situation becomes so dire that she resorts to sex work to keep herself and her son fed. The only one that works is the flirtation between Mrs. Patmore and the new village grocer, which is effective due to its brevity and to Mrs. Patmore’s very funny relief when she learns from Mrs. Hughes, Girl Detective, that the grocer is a gross would-be lech. There’s lots of good fish in the sea, and Mrs. Patmore is right to maintain her standards. She works absurdly long hours in a hot kitchen, but she is still an independent person with her own income and a comfortable-enough home. There’s no reason for her to surrender what autonomy she has just to work absurdly long hours for a faithless husband. Good for her, we say!
In addition to the dreariness of the below-stairs plotlines, we have to process another of Downton’s worst losses. If Sybil’s death colors our view of the first half of this season, Matthew’s death at the end of the finale retroactively hangs over its entire second half. We’re charmed by his and Mary’s “Gift of the Magi”-style separate visits to a fertility specialist, and delighted by Mary’s healthy pregnancy. We rejoice at wee George’s arrival, and are wholly gutted by the car crash that claims Matthew’s life as he happily drives back to Downton to tell everyone he’s met his son. RIP, Matthew Crawley, and congratulations to Dan Stevens on making such interesting and varied career choices once your character shuffled off this fictional mortal coil.
(PSA: this is your reminder to watch Legion and his hilarious turn in Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga!)
The one wholly positive development in these episodes is the introduction of Lady Rose McClare, the Crawleys’ free-spirited Scottish cousin, who comes to live at Downton when her parents are sent to India for her father Shrimpy’s diplomatic tour. Lily James is a much-needed breath of fresh air, and we look forward to Rose livening up everything she touches in Yorkshire.
Downton Abbey Seasons 4 through 6 are expected to re-air later in the 2026-2027 television season. All six seasons are available to stream on the PBS app.
Since this podcast renaissance is something of an experiment, we are currently running a special subscription tier for it, priced at $48/year (or $4.88/month) for 12 episodes. Your subscription dollars – for which we are eternally grateful! – will help fund future episodes. The more listener subscriptions we have, the closer we get to a regular biweekly (or, dare to dream, weekly) podcasting schedule.
The 12-episode podcast (two episodes per season) will span most of this year and take us into 2027. Masterpiece is rerunning the entire series, soup to nuts, on Sunday nights at 10 p.m. ET; Seasons 1 through 3 will air back-to-back, starting Sunday, May 17, and running through mid-September 2026. As always, we will follow the airing schedule. The debut dates for Seasons 4 through 6 have not yet been announced; once they are, we will follow accordingly.
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