‘Downton Abbey’ season 6, episode 8 ratings: Big Michelle Dockery story draws huge numbers

As it turns out, “Downton Abbey” made the right choice to end with its sixth season. Over the past few weeks we’ve expressed a little concern that they may have over-stayed their welcome by a year, and that there was no way that the show was going to be able to top some of its previous numbers at this point in its run.

Yet, we’re more than fine to be proven wrong sometimes. The last regularly-scheduled episode of the show (there is still a Christmas Special coming to tie together loose ends) drew in total 8.8 million viewers. This is the largest audience for the show in two years, and it showed that ITV managed to get back some people who either had previously recorded the show, or had bailed on the show at one point or another.

We do not anticipate the Christmas Special matching these numbers, even if it is the last episode you are ever going to get of the series. It is just hard to fathom that the series will somehow be able to get that many more people interested in watching on a day when there are so many other things to do (like spend time with your family), even if watching television at the end of the day is somewhat of a British tradition.

Those who did watch the 100-minute episode on ITV yesterday were in for quite of a treat, as (spoiler alert!) Michelle Dockery’s character of Lady Mary finally set her insecurities aside and decided to marry Henry Talbot at the end of the episode. We also saw Edith forced by Mary to reveal the truth about her daughter Marigold, and Mrs. Patmore tried her best to make her bed-and-breakfast business a success.