With summer days waning, a viewer’s mind drifts to the approaching cool weather and a new season of Downton Abbey. PBS recently announced that Downton’s Season 5 will kick off on January 4 and Gareth Neame, the executive producer, let some juicy little hints fall to whet our appetites for the next season.
1. Lady Mary will throw off mourning for Matthew and begin embracing a new life. She’ll get more of her old snark back. She kind of has already but I’m assuming this means she’ll flirt with her suitors in a meaner fashion and go dancing on a semi-regular basis in London sans Rose.
2. Lady Edith will continue to face heartache and loss. To this might I add: may the future Season Six be a vindication for all Edith’s woes! It’s someone else’s turn to suffer (but not Anna’s.)
3. Violet Grantham will have a brilliant new storyline, which will be “Downton at its best.”
4.Lady Sybil will reappear as an apparition, haunting the stairwells and hallways, looking for the daughter she died birthing. She will be dubbed the “Woman in White.” Her sisters will weep uncontrollably anytime they walk through a cold spot. Oh wait. That’s my prediction and not a reveal.
Cat’s predictions:
Lord Grantham will die sailing. His dog, Isis, will survive and live to bear many adorable puppies. His wife Cora will feel the loss most acutely during dinner parties, when the seating arrangements are thrown off.
Thomas the under-butler will find true love with a new footman. The love (and sex!) will mellow him out, and someone else will play the scheming jerk. My pick for a scheming jerk is Jimmy: he’s already well on his way.
Rose will run away five times, and with each escape she’ll carry off a valuable family heirloom to pawn. Like a clock, or a watercolor, or one of the minor servants.
Edith will be so miserable that she can’t run her missing lover’s newspaper-and this is where the Dowager will come in. She’ll run the whole affair from the Dower House and show the newsies how it’s done. Her right hand man (one of the guest stars) will adore her, and eventually beg for her hand in marriage. She’ll beat her stick on the carpet and they’ll say no more of it.
Anna and Bates will have a child, but the child will be unexpectedly arrested.
Andrew’s predictions:
Lady Grantham will reveal a drug abuse problem (laudanum, perhaps?), finally explaining three seasons’ worth of spaced-out facial expressions and laughably wooden line readings from Elizabeth McGovern. Cousin Isobel will selflessly nurse her through drug withdrawal.
Daisy will succeed Mrs. Patmore as head cook after the latter has health problems—but the parentless Daisy will take care of Patmore as if she were her own mother.
Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson, last seen wading hand-in-hand into the sea, will fall helplessly in love with each other—but both will be far too professional, too shy, and too English to do anything about it or find out if their mutual affections are requited. It will all be very Remains of the Day.
The Blake-Gillingham-Mary love triangle will take an unexpected turn when the late Matthew Crawley is resurrected as a zombie, so thoroughly sweeping Mary off her feet that she scarcely cares that he only wants her for her brains.
Nothing bad will happen to Anna and Bates and they will be happy forever, the end. Just kidding, Julian Fellowes will never stop tormenting them.
