‘Downton Abbey’ season 3 spoilers: Hugh Bonneville looks at finale

Even though we still have several episodes of “Downton Abbey” to go until the series ultimately airs its annual season-ending Christmas episode, isn’t it always enjoyable to take a sneak peek at what is coming up ahead? With that in mind, we turn to an actor who obviously knows a thing or two about what is going to be happening on the show moving forward: leading man Hugh Bonneville.

In a recent chat with TVLine about this episode, Bonneville begins with a rather interesting comment on its own: this episode is not actually going to be that Christmas-oriented as you would think given the air date:

“It goes out to Christmas, but it’s not set at Christmas. It has a very different flavor [and] lots of thrills and spills along the way.”

As if this was not interesting enough, Brendan Coyle (John Bates) also suggests that there is going to be a little bit of the good mixed in with the bad that we can anticipate seeing from the show’s stellar cast of characters:

“It’s very, very romantic and deeply heartbreaking. It’s very Downton.”

Does this mean that a couple of characters that we love together are on the rocks? We hope not, mostly because we already feel as though we have been put through a lot this season in between Edith being left at the altar and Bates being behind bars. How much more sadness can we really take? Of course, the word “heartbreaking” does not necessarily confirm that there will in fact be a great deal of sadness involved in the episode, as there could very well be a number of other events that transpire here to fit that description. As for “romantic” … there’s really no other way to say that, is there?

What are you hoping to see from the Christmas episode this year?