All 6 ‘Downton Abbey’ Seasons, Ranked
Keep your eye on that grandfather clock — the 15th anniversary of Downton Abbey is nearly here. The franchise hits that milestone on September 26, two weeks after the September 12 release of its third and final film, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.
PBS’s Masterpiece anthology opened the Abbey’s doors for us in 2010, and since then, we’ve seen the members of the aristocratic Crawley family and its staff progress through the early 20th century — getting older, growing up, starting families, starting new careers, enjoying joyous highs, and enduring devastating lows, all while calamitous world events threatened their livelihoods.
Don’t forget: It was the sinking of the Titanic that thwarted the plan to marry Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) off to her second cousin, Patrick, to keep the Crawleys’ fortune with the immediate kin. The family learns in Downton’s series premiere that Patrick was aboard that doomed ocean liner, and the next heir in line is a handsome unknown named Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens)…
So began many onscreen trials and tribulations for the Crawleys and their servants. Here’s how we’d rank the seasons that ensued.
6. Season 4
As the show passes its midpoint, we start a long slog through a dour season. After Season 3’s tragic cliffhanger — more on that later — Mary inherits a share of Downton and asserts control over the estate. That’s all well and good, but two of the women closest to her suffer misfortunes. Edith’s (Laura Carmichael) magazine editor beau disappears, leaving her pregnant and alone, and Edith gives birth in secret and arranges for a family on the estate to raise her little Marigold. Meanwhile, Anna (Joanne Froggatt), Mary’s lady’s maid, is raped by a visiting valet, who then turns up dead.
5. Season 5
Luckily, the situation improves the following season. Edith inherits her missing beau’s publishing company and gets Marigold back. Anna, meanwhile, is implicated in the dead valet’s apparent murder, but she gets a reprieve after Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle) takes the fall (and he’s later cleared, too). And speaking of chivalrous acts, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) arranges for Mrs. Patmore’s (Lesley Nicol) late nephew to be honored with a war memorial of his own. In other good news for the downstairs crew, Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) and Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan) become engaged. Downton’s penultimate season isn’t the most engaging, but it’s all leading up to quite a swan song.
4. Season 3
Downton Abbey fans will never forget the twin tragedies of Season 3: Midway through the season, Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) dies of eclampsia shortly after giving birth to her and Tom’s (Allen Leech) baby, and in the closing minutes, Matthew dies in a car crash shortly after Mary gave birth to their baby. One felt like an all-too-accurate depiction of 20th-century maternal mortality; the other felt like a shock for shock’s sake. Meanwhile, Edith is ditched at the altar, Mrs. Hughes has a cancer scare, and Mr. Barrow (Robert James-Collier) makes a dire romantic mistake. But at least Anna gets Mr. Bates cleared of his murder charge, presaging a reversal of fortune seen in Season 5.
3. Season 1
We meet the upstairs and downstairs residents of Downton Abbey at a tenuous time for all involved, since the Crawley’s fortune — i.e. the dowry paid by Lady Cora’s (Elizabeth McGovern) American family — must go to a male heir. Enter Matthew Crawley, whom Mary actually likes, but when it seems like he might not be the heir after all, Mary hesitates, and Matthew takes back his proposal. The inheritance question becomes moot, though, because Cora slips on a bar of soap left on the floor by the conniving Ms. O’Brien (Siobhan Finneran) and miscarries. Literally and figuratively, it’s a soapy twist — and it seems a little too daytime-drama for Downton.
2. Season 2
Downton’s second season begins with the Abbey serving as a convalescent hospital for World War I soldiers. By the time he goes off to war, Matthew has moved on and gotten engaged to Lavinia Swire (Zoe Boyle). Matthew returns from the trenches nearly paralyzed, but he regains the use of his legs right around the time he regains his feelings for Mary, which is right around the time Lavinia dies of the Spanish flu. (Convenient plot twist, that.) After all those narrative machinations, though, Matthew proposes to Mary in perhaps the show’s most swoon-worthy scene. And in other romantic moments, Sybil falls in love with Tom, and Daisy (Sophie McShera) indulges the injured William’s (Thomas Howes) wish for a deathbed wedding before realizing, as a widow, that her love was true.
1. Season 6
If we hadn’t gotten a Downton Abbey movie — that turned into a big-screen Downton trilogy — Season 6 would have been a satisfying end to the story. Mary starts seeing Henry Talbot (Harry Hadden-Paton), and Edith starts seeing Bertie Pelham (Matthew Goode), and while Mary took a turn for the villainous by blabbing about Edith’s secret child to her fiancé, she redeemed herself by getting Bertie to talk to her again, and we see both couples walk down the aisle. But Season 6 belongs to the staff, and deservedly so. Molesley (Kevin Doyle) is offered a teaching position, Mrs. Patmore opens a bed-and-breakfast, Mr. Carson takes on a sort of butler emeritus role as Barrow takes on his full-time duties, and Anna and Mr. Bates welcome a son. It’s an optimistic note to end on: that Downton Abbey can be a home but not the home for the characters that kept it running all these years.
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