‘Downton Abbey’ season 4 finale review (PBS): Did Lady Mary doom Anna and Bates?

The “Downton Abbey” finale contained a few surprises across the board, but after watching it some time ago and then re-watching it in conjunction with the PBS airing, we do have to sit here and question whether or not this was the most uneventful finale in the show’s history. There was no big event that completely rocked the characters’ lives, even if Lady Rose being presented was something that was still very significant to her.

This was more of a standalone episode that served many purposes, with the primary one being that it was a tale of how embarrassment almost came to the Royal family.

What was a little more surprising to us was that Lady Mary briefly pondered turning in Bates to the police for the possible murder of Mr. Green, even though she was well aware of what he did to Anna. This is the sort of ethical debate that many fans have had ever since that moment first happened earlier the season, and will likely continue to. But what this showed to us that Mary’s definition of moral is somewhat skewed. When Bates kills someone, he is a “bad man.” However, Bates is somehow a good man when he commits another crime in forgery, and helps to stop an incident that could be very bad for the family. This was quite a complicated was to look at the character, since we wonder if Bates would be behind a jail cell in this fictional story were it not for this one moment.

But thanks to the decision that Brendan Coyle’s character made, he gets to start season 5 potentially free of having any sort of substantial worry about either his life or his future.

You can read our full review of this episode from back when it first aired here, and the real highlights of it to us are that Mary chose nobody for the time being, Daisy turned down an offer to go to America, and Edith now has moved her child back closer to her … even if she is not the caregiver. We stand by our B+ grade for the sake of high quality, but it is not the sort of story that we feel we would want to watch again.

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Photo: ITV