Lady Mary Crawley is going out in style. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, the cinematic return of the global phenomenon, sees the Crawley family and their staff navigating the 1930s. When Mary lands at the center of a public scandal and the family faces financial ruin, the entire household must rally to protect their legacy and embrace a new era. But in the process, Mary doesn’t just secure her own place in history—she cements her status as a queer icon.
Michelle Dockery, who has embodied Lady Mary since 2010, couldn’t agree more. “Yeah. Well, she’s a gay icon, isn’t she? And I love that. In this movie, those characters are all being invited into the house,” she tells Gayety.
“They” being Mary’s former butler Thomas Barrow, his movie-star beau Guy Dexter, and none other than playwright legend Noël Coward.
Mary and Barrow: An Unlikely Duo
We’ve seen Mary and Barrow, the closeted butler who found love with Dexter in the second Downton film, grow their friendship over the years. Dockery said Mary always sympathized with his struggles.
“She sees something in Barrow really early on, and I love that relationship between them in the series where she can see how much he’s resisting and having to change who he is for the sake of the time and the society,” she explained.
“And it’s such a great resolve that he ends up, obviously in this relationship with Guy Dexter and Mary’s thrilled for him.”
Their friendship has always been one of the show’s most layered, and Dockery loves how it culminates here: “It’s such a great moment when she invites him up to have cocktails with everybody because why not? He’s now not working at the house and he’s no longer a footman and he should be part of the environment.”
Happy Endings
Dockery also imagines a fabulous future for Mary once the credits roll. “I think that she, after the film ends, I think she’s about to go into the library and write some letters to Noël Coward and Guy Dexter and say, are you up for a party this weekend? I like to think that the new generation is going to be more of a party for them.”
Who Knew Divorce Would Cause Such a Scandal
Even with her own hardships—mainly being shunned from society because she’s going through a divorce—Mary always stands tall. Dockery noted, “Reading the script for the first time, I was really shocked as to how she was treated and how a woman would’ve been shunned out of society. As a modern woman, I just couldn’t believe it. Who cares?”
Downton Abbey may be ending, but Lady Mary’s reign as a gay icon is only just beginning. Plus a happy ending for the gays? What more could you ask for.
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is now playing in theaters.
