‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’ is not what I expected.

Being only slightly familiar with the franchise, I assumed the close to the 15-year-old Downton Abbey storyline would be hard to follow. I planned, much to her despair, to ask my wife (by necessity, I’d claim) the names of each character, information on their motivations, and details of prior relationships.

And even with that, I expected to be lost.

My presupposition proved true at first. “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” spends no time introducing characters. If you’re watching the film, you know who these people are, the movie believes.

After about 10 minutes, however, the plot is clear. As is the unhidden and blatantly progressive message of the film.

Mary, the heiress of Downton Abbey, and her husband Henry, are getting a divorce. Due to her position in the society and this being the 1930s, the divorce becomes a regional, if not national, scandal. “HIGH SOCIETY SHOCK,” a newspaper headline reads. “LADY MARY OF DOWNTON ABBEY FILES FOR DIVORCE.”

Immediately, Mary becomes untouchable in her circles. When the news breaks, before we even see the headline, she is asked to leave an event simply because “she is divorced.”  Princesses are coming, we hear, and they simply cannot be in the presence of a divorced woman.

Mary’s parents – the current Count and Countess of Downton Abbey – exist here as the voice of the modern person, who see this as a ridiculous request. In protest, they threaten to dishonor the host and the royal family by leaving with Mary. By nature of their role and their delicate financial situation, they can’t actually leave, so Mary exits alone.

The response of the servants at home is mixed. “I admire you, Lady Mary, you’re very brave,” one maid tells her. In the kitchen, however, we hear disapproving remarks. Unhappy women have always been married to unfaithful husbands – they just learned to deal with it, one cook proclaims.

The costs of Mary’s decision to divorce her husband are steep. The staff try to cheer her up by hosting a dinner party at Downton, but no one will attend because of Mary’s new marital status. She has, it seems, no friends.

Worse still, Mary’s rise to Countess of Downton Abbey is in question. How can Mary run the estate if her neighbors, if society, see her as an outcast?

Cora, Mary’s mother, suggests, “We must challenge them and change their mind.”

That becomes both the goal of our protagonists and, in some ways, the clarion call of the movie overall. Society must change – and individuals must change, too. We must become more tolerant, we must adopt modern sensibilities. If we don’t, the movie suggests, we remain just as backwards as those asking Lady Mary to leave a party because she is divorced.

For those who stick with tradition, one character declares, “Convention makes cowards of us all.” Yet another suggests, “Perhaps we should all have a different [moral] compass these days.”

The film is, in fact, full – almost ad nauseum – of comments about how things change and how we must accept it. In all my years of watching movies and television shows, I’ve rarely seen a theme laid on as thick as this. Change, we’re told, is necessary and good. Especially when it comes to what is socially acceptable.

This lack of subtlety leaves no space for continuing to hold to tradition. To do so is to be cowardly, unreasonable, and perhaps even hateful. In a franchise that romanticizes a more traditional time, this hits me as a strange message.

But it is clear.

And though few would argue that we should handle divorce like they did in the 1930s, the message for us is obvious. If we are to progress, the movie argues, society must change. We must accept what was once unacceptable.

Unfortunately, in pushing viewers to accept change and abandon tradition, the film offers no insight into what values might have enduring worth. Instead, it offers a blanket prescription: discard the old, embrace the new. Such a message is neither insightful nor helpful for navigating a complex world.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image Credit: YouTube-Focus Features