The grand finale is almost here… or rather, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. This capstone to the historical drama that’s been running across small and big screens since 2010 premieres on the 2025 movies schedule in less than two weeks. One of The Grand Finale’s main storylines revolves around Michelle Dockery’s Mary Crawley getting divorced from Matthew Goode’s Henry Talbot. We now know the reason for the divorced thanks to a new Downton Abbey 3 clip, and I also like what Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Mary’s mother, Cora, said about why she’s “glad” for this storyline.
Why Mary Crawley And Henry Talbot Got Divorced
The latest Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale clip posted by Focus Features shows Mary reuniting with Dominic West’s Guy Dexter, the Hollywood star who was introduced in Downton Abbey: A New Era, and meeting Arty Froushan’s Noël Coward, the real-life playwright, actor, director, composer and so much more. When Coward inquires about why she and Henry Talbot are no longer together, she answers:
We fought like cats. He wanted to be kingpin, but I was the heiress, and he was just the husband. He hated that.
So there you have it. There was no infidelity from either party, the divorce simply boiled down to Henry’s dissatisfaction with his status as Mary’s husband. So they decided to go their separate ways, and it sounds like Mary isn’t too broken up about it. THat said, I do wonder what the custody arrangement is like with their daughter Caroline, who was born after the events of the Downton Abbey TV show.
Matthew Goode debuted as Henry as a guest star in Downton Abbey’s fifth season, then was upgraded to series regular in the final season. Then, after cameoing in the first movie, he was absent from A New Era, and Goode, who has most recently been seen in the Netflix subscription-exclusive series Dept. Q, confirmed in June he wouldn’t return for The Grand Finale. While the divorce plot twist hadn’t been revealed to the public yet, the actor did say he thought Henry being gone could be a “really positive thing” for Mary.
Why Elizabeth McGovern Appreciates The Divorce Storyline
Of course, with Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale being set in 1930, divorce was a much bigger deal among British high society compared to nowadays. We even see in one of the trailers that Mary is asked to leave a fancy ball because at that time, divorced people couldn’t be in the presence of royals. Because of that, Elizabeth McGovern believes that this aspect of The Grand Finale pierce helps pierce through some of the romanticism that surrounds the franchise, sharing in the first episode of Downton Abbey: The Official Podcast:
In some ways, I’m glad of this divorce story because a lot of the time with Downton, you look at it and think, “Oh, I wish we were back then.’ And everything was so simple and people were more polite, but then you’re reminded that actually there are some things that were just so restrictive.
Between how Mary’s divorce affects her standing among the other elites in the United Kingdom, as well as the Crawley family facing financial trouble tied to Cora’s brother, Paul Giamatti’s Harold Levinson, there’s a lot for these characters to deal with in this final movie. While there has been talk about potentially having a Downton Abbey crossover with The Gilded Age through the late Violet Crawley, the time has come to close the book on this family as they enter the 1930s. Mary’s divorce just goes to show how the times are further changing for them, and perhaps that’s for the better.
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale opens in theaters on Friday, September 12. The original TV series and first two movies can all be streamed with a Peacock subscription at the time of this writing.