wait what is the mary/sybil/thomas thing, i am very interested lol
Okay so: I think the fandom recognizes Mary and Thomas’s overlap as characters--their interest in men, their personalities, their arcs generally. Sybil’s role isn’t as immediately obvious, but from the beginning her place in the dynamic starts to take shape.
Take the Duke’s entrance in Episode 1--we all remember Mary’s anticipation, we all know, ‘surely a footman...’
but there’s another beat in there, another moment: when the Duke meets Sybil and Mary is visibly like...Uh-Oh. This is a scripted moment as well--Fellowes notes that Sybil is “really charming,” and the original script has Mary cut the moment short by pushing the Duke inside (Cora gets the line in the episode).
But it’s a misdirect on their relationship, isn’t it? Because something similar happens later on in the season--the first time Mary and Matthew kiss is when Mary tells Matthew that she thinks Sybil has a crush on him.
This is characterized very differently from her encounters with Edith over men. The conflict is really about Mary and her own feelings...Sybil’s crush (if it even really existed) is fleeting and innocent, and it serves as a way for Mary to see and acknowledge her own feelings for Matthew.
Season 2, Episode 2 was initially conceived with Courtenay having an interest in Sybil--all of those scenes were cut, but in that cut we lost some of the nuances of what was happening there.
And then there’s Tom, who people ship with Mary and Thomas (usually post-Sybil, and there are compelling ties you can draw on for either ship because of Sybil’s existence)
IMO, Mary and Thomas are both aware of Sybil as someone who is fundamentally more daring than they are--they would also say she is kinder, but I think what they truly envy is her freedom to express everything she feels, to be who she is without apology.
Mary says that she can’t be like Sybil because she cares too much what others think of her (we see an echo of this scene when Thomas says he “minds what people say”)
Thomas, who in S2 struts around like he’s “grander than Lady Mary,” perceives the difference between them in his own way, in his own words, during a deleted scene between himself and Courtenay: when Courtenay asks if ‘Lady’ Sybil is “very grand, then?” Thomas decides that “no [she isn’t]. Not in herself.”
This scene--though it is cut from the final episode--is really effective as a prelude to the first time we see Thomas commit to being emotionally vulnerable with another person. He sees it, sees the attraction in it, before choosing it for himself.
It is deeper than all three characters simply being attracted to the same men, or jealousy or love triangles or anything like that--because Mary and Thomas are both so fond of Sybil, and so encouraged by her rather than put off by her energy and charm. She runs ahead of them, and they don’t resent her for it. I think they both want to be her, in a way. They certainly respect her, and are grateful that she thinks well of them when they don’t know if they deserve it.
Sybil is the one who gets away...except she doesn’t. Except she gets pulled back in by the very man who was supposed to take her away. And when she dies, Mary and Thomas lose so much of what her aspirations gave them. The rest of the show happens in the fall-out of that moment--when the woman who aspired to the most, and deserved it entirely, dies.
Where do emotional honesty and sensitivity fit into that world? That’s what Mary and Thomas have to deal with, especially after their own massive traumatic events in S3.
“I’ve said and done things...I don’t know why” / “I could say the same” -- the aliveness that Sybil brought into the house, the awareness, the recognition of Feeling...Thomas and Mary need that and when we reach the end of the show, they are struck with just how much of it has passed through their fingers without them even quite knowing where it went or how they lost it.
I think where canon stands, they are still hoping to find that spark again.
