‘Downton Abbey’ season 5, episode 4 spoilers: Maggie Smith’s Violet and an old flame

Is love going to be in the air for the Dowager Countess Violet on Sunday night’s “Downton Abbey“? We cannot quite say that at the moment, but we can at least confirm that she will at least entertain a night on the town with the Russian man we saw near the end of this past episode. (Warning: Spoilers ahead for Americans!)

The irony of Maggie Smith’s character having a secret history romantically was obvious, given that she chided Mary previously in the episode for having her own secret back-and-forth with Anthony Gillingham. Still, the hypocrisy is what makes Violet such an interesting woman to follow.

But why act as though her secret past was such an egregious thing? There is only one reason that we can think of, and that is because she was legitimately hurt in some way by what happened to her, and she doesn’t want to see Mary have something similar happen to her. Maybe there is a little bit of social mores mixed in here to go along with it, but remember that the Dowager was not so keen on completely humiliating Mary for what she did. If that was the case, then she already missed out on the prime opportunity to devastate her based on how she lied for her about the trip.

Clearly for this meeting, Violet has brought along a little bit of a support system in Isobel, and suffice it to say, we are very interesting to see how all of this shakes down when the episode airs. Maybe it will be awkward, or maybe it will also be fun!

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Photo: ITV