Can't believe next week is the season finale.
Personally, I think the writers made a big mistake....Downton Abby was the story of Mattew and Mary. People dont love Jane Austen movies cause all the charactors die off in the end....Removing the rock of the series has taken the need to watch it any further from me. What's next? Killing Carston off? I though the season finale was wonderful till the last five minutes....they could have left things happy and left us all wanting more for season 4. Every one ups their pledges to PBS. Now, its just another Les Mis....Life's a ***** and then you die. No thank you, Downton. If I dont want happy endings, I will watch the evening news....bah humbug. If the actor didnt want to play Mathew anymore,then there are better ways around that....but I suspect that was not the case. If he is holding out for more money, I suppose they could make this last bit a dream sequence at the start of season 4, but I won't be watching.
Dan Stevens didn't want to continue in the role. As per an interview with exec producer, they couldn't figure out a way for Matthew to disappear that would make sense. He wouldn't leave Mary and baby and she probably would've followed him anywhere. That would be 'disrespecting' their love story too - for him to just disappear and/or go away for an extended period of time. Also, as the heir to Downton, it wouldn't have made sense for him to leave the estate for an extended period of time, especially since he didn't have other properties to manage. If they had been at WWII stage, then perhaps they could've had him captured by the Germans and recast him when he was released at the end of the war.
By writing him off, this leaves more story open for Lady Mary as the mother of the heir, widow, etc. If Matthew had lived and been off screen, there wouldn't be as much for Mary to do.
If there's one thing that's common amongst soaps, it's:
If you are ecstatically happy, something bad is about to happen.
If you don't have a love interest, you're pretty much a supporting character that just listens to the other characters.
http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/02/17/downton-abbey-matthew-death/
Mini-spoiler: season 4 starts 6 months after the finale.
I read somewhere that the 3 seasons of DA have encompassed 10 years already? I know the finale jumped to 1 year after the prior episode. Then there were 4 years between season 1 and season 2.
I think the fact that the show has spanned somewhere around ten years ( it began in 1912) makes it all more plausible. We have seen all this death and heartache in three seasons and it seems like too much. But in a ten year span, in an era with less advanced medicine, shorter life expectancies, and a world war in the mix, it is not so strange.
I also read that Julian Fellowes (writer and creator) felt like he was in a corner with Matthew. He couldn't write him out by having him leave and keep it plausible at all without writing Mary out. He said he would rather lose a "downstairs" actor than one playing a family member as servants can move on in one way or another but the family would not just disappear. And both Dan Stevens and Jessica Brown Findlay (Sybil) chose to leave the show.