As Charles Dickens once said in A Christmas Carol, “life’s made of meetings and partings.” While the 2025 movie schedule won’t feature any new adaptation of Tiny Tim’s hypothetical death, it will mark the release of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. With its debut, the film will certainly be closing the curtain on an era of pop culture. However, series creator/writer Julian Fellowes has hinted at a couple ways in which the Crawley legacy could continue and, at the same time, there’s an ongoing fan theory that could make fans shed happy tears.
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale Might Not Be The End Of The Crawley Family Legacy
Deadline caught up with Julian Fellowes, as he prepares for the Tribeca Film Festival’s event honoring The Gilded Age Season 3’s premiere. So, of course, the subject of Downton Abbey 3 came up, and how that confirmed finale event is set to conclude the ITV series’ cinematic trilogy. However, Fellowes doesn’t seem keen on writing off some sort of revival completely, as he shared this promising development when asked if the threequel will truly be the end:
I don’t know. Every time I say, ‘Oh yes, that’s definitely it. Goodbye, and I’ll never do it again.’ Then, within a year, I’m back doing something. So I never say never anymore. But I think it’s the last with the original cast. They’ve done 15 years, and that’s a long time on a TV show.
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’s teaser, I wonder if it’ll even connect to the storied estate at all.
potential Downton Abbey crossovers. As he continued to avoid using the world “never,” Julian Fellowes seemed to provide some hope regarding cross polination:
Maybe. We’re not done yet, so we’ll see.
While the Max subscription offering most recently featured events unfolding in 1883 New York and Downton starts in 1912, the possibility has always seemed to exist. The strongest potential thread in that pitch has always been the American-born Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), whose family relations made their fortune prior to the events we saw in Downton Abbey. Despite that, as of the first two seasons, no connections between the two series have been forged.
It’s not for lack of enticing options, though. Perhaps the Levinson family will be a party that tries to do business with George Russell (Morgan Spector) and his volatile holdings? Maybe a young Violet Crawley will stop in New York and trade jabs with Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski)? There’s no limit to what could happen, except the conditions Julian Fellowes potentially lays out. Whatever the case, I’d love to see Downton continue in some form or fashion.
Get ready for a summer of speculation, as The Gilded Age Season 3 premieres on June 22nd at 9 PM ET on HBO/HBO Max! Meanwhile Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is set to send off the franchise in style, only in theaters, starting September 12th.