That’s great! BTW, when they were talking about Bertie’s cousin in Tangiers, I wondered if they were hinting he was gay. It sort of had a very Brideshead Revisited ring to it.
I don’t think it was “hinting” so much as “doing everything but coming right out and saying it”.
Barrow is a complete & total asshole and deserves no such happy ending. In fact, in all reality, he would have been sacked several times by now.
- being a thief
- being a asshole when he got some authority during the war.
- being a homosexual
- many other cheap weaselly things he has done.
He’s simply evil.
Yeah, I have zero sympathy for Barrow.
Yeah, I think you’re right.
Here’s a Huffington Post interview with the actor who plays Thomas Barrow. He explains some of what makes the character who he is, “I’d have been happy if it’d remained like it was in the first season, where he was the bad guy and we didn’t see why. But I’m so glad that Julian told his story, not because he was gay — that’s not a big story these days. But he was gay at a time when it was illegal and against God. You would go to mass and be told that sodomy meant you’d burn in hell. These things inform why Thomas is why he is and there’s a lot of drama there to tell his story. We’ve seen the result of why he is like he is, but it’s great to tell the audience why there is nastiness and bitterness.”
IOW, he’s an asshole because he wasn’t allowed to be himself openly.
As for all the loose ends, I’d rather they didn’t try and tie everything up with a nice bow on it-- that would make for an uninteresting last episode. I wouldn’t at all mind, though, if they spent a few of the last minutes with a flash-forward to the Dowager Countess Mary and her grandchildren.
Alas, with Matthew dead Mary will never be the Countess of Grantham.
Yes, she’ll be Lady Mary Crawley until she either dies or remarries (actually Lady Mary Talbot, for the moment). But given her competitive nature, I wouldn’t be surprised if she makes it her business to find herself a duke. Then she could, in the fullness of time, become the Dowager Duchess (of that house).
I didn’t mention anything about “living openly with a partner,” let alone “everyone being OK with it.” If he had chosen to do so, Fellowes could have shown one or more gay characters living “happy, long, productive”* lives, without specifying the presence of a partner. He did not so choose.
Whether or not that says anything about the message Fellowes has to impart on the topic of homosexuality is (as I said earlier) a matter of opinion.
*that’s what I actually wrote.
Since there’s been talk of a big-screen DA movie, I don’t expect a flash-forward in the final minutes.
You don’t think that he’s been redeemed in recent seasons? He seems genuinely contrite about his past. He’s been helping the other guy learn to read, and seems to have no ulterior motives. I dunno, I think that he’s evolved to the point where he is an extremely sympathetic character.
Yeah, I think Carson and Daisy both merit more scorn than Barrow does nowadays.
And how would he have shown that?
So then a “happy, long, productive” life means living in secret, alone, with no one knowing they are gay? You can’t have it both ways…
Look, I have certainly had many problems with how Fellowes has written some of his storylines over the years, but your insistence that he wrote Barrow as the villain because he is anti-gay is, frankly, bullshit.
I hope he didn’t choose the direction of the ending of the series based on a possible movie.
Considering that the main theme of Downton Abbey has been the inevitability of change and how the Crawley’s way of life is at an end, it would feel like a wasted opportunity not to give the viewer a glimpse of where all that change led.
Then again, where-are-they-now endings are often pretty hokey.
Then again, it’s a pretty hokey show.
Maybe it will have an Animal House style ending.
DOWAGER COUNTESS -TOUR GUIDE, UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, HOLLYWOOD.
Why is that? Violet’s husband is dead, no? Is it because Robert is still alive when Matthew died? So, the next Countess of Grantham will be whomever George Marries and when Robert dies?
Pardon my American ignorance of aristocratic inheritances…
Mary will never be the Countess of Grantham because the only way she was going to get that title was by being married to the Earl of Grantham. Matthew died before he could inherit the title from Robert, so he wasn’t and never will be the Earl.
The widow of a nobleman keeps whatever title she had when he was alive, so Violent didn’t stop being a Countess when the former Earl died. Cora will also continue to be able to use the title if she outlives Robert. There won’t be a new Countess until there’s a new Earl with a wife.
Like Spratt? 
I’d think that service, like the priesthood, is a field which attracts a lot of closeted gay men looking for a lifestyle where no one expects them to have a wife. Barrow’s drive to become butler and dismay that the role seems to have gone out of fashion right as he was at the cusp of getting it stems from that.
I find it interesting that in an episode that makes a big to do about Mary’s bitchiness, she is the one who comes to Barrow’s sick bed and asks about his loneliness. There’s really no one else she has (visible) empathy with the entire episode.
This blog post from last year dives deep into the historical inaccuracies that increasingly marred Downton Abbey in its post-Dan Stevens years, with a particular (and rather prickly) focus on Mary and the problems facing unmarried women in the post-war years. Representative quote:
It’s hard not to conclude that Mary is a classic Creator’s Pet, and that the show suffered for it.
[Note that the post was written before the Christmas Special aired, so nothing spoiled there.]
I’m familiar with this fact about England after the war, and the shortage of men … but I’m also willing to believe, at least enough to watch it on TV, that of the enormous surplus of women, Mary still shakes out as desirable because if you married her you could live in a swanky house with nice things and servants, and she’s hawt. I know we’ve seen that the estate’s assets are terribly tied up, and economies are being made, but this family will always have enough money that their standard of living will be at the upper end of the curve.
Great link there!