Dan Stevens left Downton Abbey because he wanted to pursue other work. Creator Julian Fellowes said Matthew Crawley could not plausibly disappear from his wife, newborn son and family estate, so the character had to die. Stevens declined to return for one additional episode, and Fellowes placed Matthew’s death at the end of the Christmas special so it would not dominate the episode.
Why did Dan Stevens leave Downton Abbey?
Stevens described his decision as a career choice. In a December 2012 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said, “From a personal point of view, I wanted a chance to do other things,” and called the role “a very monopolising job.” The newspaper reported that he had made the decision before production began on season three.
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That account supports a desire to take on other work; it does not support claims that Stevens was fired or left after a dispute with the show’s creator.
Why did Matthew have to die?
Fellowes said Matthew’s place in the story made a quiet exit hard to believe. Matthew was Mary’s husband, the father of their newborn son and heir to the estate. Unlike a servant who could plausibly leave for another job, Matthew could not simply stop seeing his family or vanish from the property without a convincing explanation.
#1 Best Overall
- Runtime: 371 minutes
In a CBS News interview, Fellowes explained that he had hoped to keep Matthew alive through the Christmas episode and have him die in the next series. Stevens did not want to return for that extra episode, leaving the writers to resolve the character’s story without him.
Why did Matthew die at the end of the Christmas special?
The timing was a creative choice shaped by Stevens’s decision not to return. Fellowes said he had wanted Matthew’s death to occur in the first episode of the next series, but, without Stevens for that episode, he moved it to the end of the Christmas special. As Fellowes put it, “I didn’t want his death to dominate the Christmas special, so that’s why we killed him at the very, very end.”
Rank #2
- Duration: 50.75 hours
- Soundtrack: English
- Widescreen
- Genre: Drama; TV Shows
Why was Matthew’s exit handled differently from Sybil’s?
Fellowes said Sybil’s departure had been known earlier, allowing the show to give her death a longer story arc. Stevens’s departure came later, and Fellowes did not want to repeat that approach. In an ITV interview, he said, “But having done that, when the news came through that Dan was also leaving we couldn’t very well do it again, so that was a bit testing”.
In a later Television Academy oral history, Fellowes said deaths for family characters followed actors’ decisions to leave, while servants could be written out by taking other jobs: “Other than that, the deaths came when the actors chose to leave.” Michelle Dockery reflected that viewers had invested in Matthew and Mary and wondered how their story might have developed had Stevens stayed.
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- Runtime: 124 minutes
Where can you watch Matthew’s final scene?
PBS identifies pbs.org and the PBS app as streaming destinations for the series on its Matthew-death clip page. Streaming access can depend on territory and can change, so check the current listing where you live.
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Rank #4
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