‘Downton Abbey’ season 3 spoilers: Bates, Ethel dominate episode 4 photos

“Downton Abbey” is continuing to go down a rather interesting path, and we are going to see more and more surprises and shocking moments as this season  plays out. With this in mind, we have some new photos to share from Sunday night’s new episode, though the unfortunate thing is that we are not sure any of them suggest that happy times are coming up for any of our characters in the immediate future.

See Bates, for example, who is starting to grimace more and more in his time behind bars. Is he really starting to lose hope? The promo for Sunday’s episode seems to suggest that; we really don’t think he could be guilty of his charges, but he could do a little bit of a better job acting like he is innocent.

Meanwhile, the Ethel storyline is also far from over after she turned up for the first time last week. Even though she claims that she wants nobody’s help, that can’t fully be the case … right? We do know that whatever is going to happen here will lead her to interact some more with some of the Abbey employees, and she is certainly in a state right now where she needs their help, even if she and her brand-new “profession” may not be that willing to admit to it herself.

Finally, we are going to get a closer look at a new character this episode in kitchen maid Ivy. From a personal perspective, this photo weirds us out a little bit. Why? We are not quite sure that these two are really doing anything other than staring into our soul. On a more serious note, we do hope that there is a pretty cool story that comes from the character, as it is always nice to have some new blood in Downton from time to time.