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'Downton Abbey' season finale: Here's how it ended

The season finale of the fifth season of 'Downton' aired in the US on March 1, and there were more happy conclusions to storylines than other 'Downton' finales have featured.

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Nick Briggs/Carnival Film & Television Limited 2014 for Masterpiece
'Downton Abbey' stars Michelle Dockery (l.) and Oliver/Zac Barker (r.).

In contrast to previous season finales that ended with tragic surprises (the death of a certain leading man, anyone?) or suspenseful cliff-hangers, the newest “Downton” season finale finished with some satisfying resolutions.

Three of the “Downton” characters may be headed off to America. Rose (Lily James), cousin to the Crawley sisters, and her new husband Atticus (Matt Barber) are moving to New York, while Tom Branson (Allen Leech), who was the Crawleys’ chauffeur and then became their son-in-law when he married now-deceased daughter Sybil, says he’s going to Boston. 

While it was revealed earlier that a former competitor for Mary’s hand, Tony Gillingham (Tom Cullen), is marrying someone else, Mary seemed intrigued by Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode), a guest at a shooting party she attends. 

Anna (Joanne Froggatt), a maid in the “Downton” household, was arrested for the murder of a man named Green – Anna’s husband, Bates (Brendan Coyle), was previously suspected of having murdered Green, but a witness told police that he or she saw Anna near Green before Green’s death. However, Bates pens a letter saying he killed Green and vanishes. Two of the other servants prove that Bates was elsewhere and not in London, where Green was killed, on the day in question, so Bates is presumably exonerated and Anna is released after the witness becomes unsure of what happened.

Meanwhile, Carson (Jim Carter), the “Downton” butler, and Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan), the head housekeeper for the household, have decided to buy property together and get married.

Isobel (Penelope Wilton), Mary’s former mother-in-law, refuses a proposal from Lord Merton (Douglas Reith), and the Dowager Countess, Violet (Maggie Smith), brings her former paramour, the Russian Prince Kuragin, and his wife back together.

Most of the family now knows that Marigold, the girl that Crawley daughter Edith (Laura Carmichael) adopted, is Edith’s illegitimate child.

And heads up, Dowager Countess fans – is Smith leaving the show? She recently told the Sunday Times of the upcoming sixth season, "They say this is the last one, and I can’t see how it could go on. I mean, I certainly can’t keep going. To my knowledge, I must be 110 by now. We’re into the late 1920s."

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