‘Downton Abbey’ season 5 premiere preview: First look at Laura Carmichael, Rob James-Collier

Now that we are mere days away from the start of “Downton Abbey” season 5, we are going to kick off what has become an annual tradition her on the site: Photo previews! We take an in-depth look at individual images, and try to figure out what is going on with them.

We start this today with a peek at Thomas (Rob James-Collier), who for some reason is carrying Edith (Laura Carmichael). What in the world is going on here? One simple explanation may be that we are looking at a fire, judging from the sheer amount of haze that we see coming in through this picture. Also, why else could she need to be carried? Maybe she is very sick, but even this is unlikely.

Also, you have to consider society here. For someone like Thomas, a servant, to carry around someone of higher society is something that may not be extremely well-received by others. Therefore, we would imagine it would only be done in dire situations.

In the end, we do anticipate this being a fantastic start to the season, but we cannot see a character like Edith dying anytime soon. She is far too important to the show as a whole, and also, it would be a little too crazy to have two out of three daughters for Robert dying only a couple of seasons apart.

We will have more photo previews later this weekend on some other characters, so be on the lookout for those.

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Photo: ITV