Randi Kreiss

Now comes the really hard part: the ending

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And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.
—Stephen King

If you haven’t met the indomitable Lady Violet, dowager countess of Grantham, rest assured. You can make her acquaintance in reruns following the finale of “Downton Abbey,” the PBS series set in the early 1900s. The curtain falls on Sunday.

Dame Maggie Smith has played Lady Violet, 81, who sweeps in and out of scenes with regal hauteur and a sense of entitlement that can only come with a royal pedigree. At one point she lamented, “First electricity, now telephones. Sometimes I feel as if I’m living in an H.G. Wells novel.” In another episode, she stated authoritatively, “Things are different in America. They live in wigwams.”

Dame Maggie did not write her character’s bons mots; however, I cannot imagine anyone else delivering them with such exquisite disdain. “Does it ever get cold on the moral high ground?” she snidely asks her nemesis, Isobel Crawley. But it isn’t the words alone that lance Mrs. Crawley; it’s the turn of Dame Maggie’s head, the pitch of her voice and the sarcasm, oh yes, the wicked sarcasm, dripping from every word.

My fervent prayer: I hope the writers don’t kill her off in the finale. I also hope that we are left, in the end, with some ambiguity, for such is life. In a recent episode, it seemed as if too many loose ends would be tied up. Lady Mary is getting married. Anna, the ladies’ maid, and her husband, Bates, are expecting. Lady Edith has lost her one true love (but maybe not; stay tuned) and Mrs. Patmore, the cook, has launched (shocking!) her own B&B, with the support of the family. Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes, a match made downstairs, seem to be settling into married life.

The single most satisfying moment? Last week, when Lady Edith called out her sister, Lady Mary, as a “nasty, jealous, scheming bitch.” We waited six seasons for that. It was wonderful.

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