After six seasons on TV and two movies, Downton Abbey is saying goodbye with a third and final film, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. Series creator and writer Julian Fellowes says there’s a good reason he decided the story needed one more film.
He tells ABC Audio that after the last movie, where they said goodbye to Maggie Smith‘s Dowager Countess of Grantham, he felt that after 15 years fans needed a goodbye to the rest of the cast.
“I felt they were entitled to have a clearer idea of where they were all headed,” he says, “and that’s what I hope we’ve given them in this film.”
The movie is set in the 1930s, and as the times change, the family and the staff are going through some major changes themselves. Fellowes says he wanted fans to know they were all going to be OK in this new era and were going to “make a place for themselves.”
And while it may have been bittersweet saying goodbye to these characters, Fellowes believes it was the right time to do so.
“Knowing when it’s time to bring something to an end, whether it’s a romance or a TV show, it’s something that, on the whole, it’s good to accept, that everything earthly is finite and the end will come,” he says.
And Fellowes hopes fans come away with a simple message from the film.
“I hope what they take away is that what we all have to do is accept that we must deal with change and that if we can do that, we may be OK. But if we dig in, and refuse to accept change, we won’t be OK.”
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is in theaters now.
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