The trailer for Downton Abbey’s final season lays it on as thick as ever

You may have heard that Downton Abbey is ending this season—as it must, lest a wanderlust-afflicted Maggie Smith burn through the show’s entire complement of media handlers in her efforts to escape. The show’s marketing team, unsurprisingly, in playing hard into that sense of finality and the ending of an era, releasing a new promo for the sixth season that employs the series’ signature subtlety and restraint. Which is to say, it’s a minute-long montage of people closing doors, hugging, and speaking wistfully, while Lauren Aquilina sings “Time To Say Goodbye” as though the thought of never seeing Rich Lordington, or his sidekick, Loyal Butlerman, was driving her permanently to the brink of tears.

In terms of plot information, there’s not much here to be found; everyone looks sad, then someone says something reflective, and then, BAM!, another door gets closed—so maybe there’s a running plotline this year about the Abbey being excessively drafty? We’ll find out when the final season of Downton Abbey debuts, Sept. 20 in the U.K., and January 3 in the States.

 
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