just started rewatching downton and i can't stop thinking about the profound loneliness of the end of the grand finale. it happens so gradually over the course of the series that you almost don't notice it; sure, there are fewer unnamed servants in the background, and we lose the whole genus footman, but it happens so slowly. upstairs, edith gets married and leaves and tom starts his new life, but that's the natural order of things. the deaths of sybil and matthew and violet are devastating, but there's sybbie and george and rose, so the show is focused more on the absence of sybil and matthew and violet themselves rather than the concept of loss.
but when the series begins, the house is alive. there is constant motion, constant noise, people constantly coming and going. there are servants whose names we never know, but who are always in and out of the frame, working in the kitchen and going up and down the stairs. upstairs, the family is whole and intact; the house is a home, where people live. there's the revolving door of suitors and parties and distant relations who come and go.
and that shot of mary at the end of the grand finale, standing alone under the portrait of violet, literally surrounded by ghosts, is so deeply sad. not just because we, the audience, are sad that the franchise is over and that sybil and matthew and violet are dead, but because the house no longer feels alive. it's now just one sad woman, her voiceless children, and a few servants left. it's a shadow of what it was. it's tragic and haunting. the estate is intact, and mary has inherited all, and the original problem they had been trying to solve since 1912 is happily resolved. but what's the point? what is the point of the estate being intact and owned by the crawleys if it's lifeless and empty? what is the point of downton if it is no longer a pillar of the community, offering employment and benefits for the village? what is the point of protecting downton for the future when it is so obvious it is a relic of the past?
