‘Downton Abbey’ season 4 spoilers: Episode 3 hysteria forms for the press; why?

Ready for some new “Downton Abbey” controversy? Well in this edition of it, we are dipping back in to some news that is coming from a very familiar source at this point: The British tabloids. This is a place that is now notorious for stirring the pot, so can you really be all that surprised to see that they are doing it yet again?

What we are hearing from across the pond is this: Mass speculation is brewing that Sunday night’s new episode on ITV is going to contain a drastic and shocking event, mostly because the entire episode was not handed to the press beforehand. The two times in which this has happened before are clear and easy to identify: The episode featuring Lady Sybil’s death, and also the season 3 Christmas special that also had the death of Matthew Crawley. When such events happen, it is easy to uncertainty forcing people into a panic. and it is doing so here.

But, we must still encourage caution here for a number of key reasons. For one, it has already been confirmed by the producers of the series that there is not going to be any major death at all that happens in the episode. Will there be a potentially shocking thing that transpires? Sure, but it’s going to be something of a little bit of a different variety.

There is also another interesting theory as for why the press may not be seeing this episode in advance: Maybe ITV has just decided to be more tight-lipped now to avoid spoilers coming out. It’s rare for American media outlets to get most episodes of their shows; with “Breaking Bad,” for example, almost everything was of the “watch live or else” variety.

If you do want to watch at least a tiny morsel of Sunday’s episode now, we still have you covered. If you head on over to the link here, you can see a sneak peek.

Photo: ITV