WARNING: SPOILERS FOR SEASON THREE.
With Siobhan Finneran, aka Miss O'Brien, keeping her promise to her family and not returning for Downton Abbey season four, we will be left with a nasty little hole. No one can be so vile in quite such a likeable way as O'Brien and I for one will miss her forked tongue.
Though hints were left in the season three finale that the character would like a change, and the signs would point towards a trip to India, nothing was set in stone. The actress herself has no idea how the character will go. Here are our suggestions:
- She is coerced by Mrs Levinson into leaving Cora for an American life.
- The family goes to Bath for a season, to recover from the trauma of season three, she takes an afternoon off to dip herself in the salts and slips on a bar of soap as she exits.
- She is poisoned, by Bates, via a pie. Wait, that sounds familiar.
- She is wooed by a mysterious admirer and they arrange to meet on the rooftop. It ends up as a trick played upon her by Thomas, they get into a tousle and Miss O'Brien is sent plummeting to the ground.
- Cora decides that she would like to be a more adventurous woman and she and O'Brien go shooting to impress Lord Grantham. O'Brien is shot when Cora drops her gun.
- Mrs Levinson brings a treat for the family and staff of Downton, peanut butter, O'Brien suffers a deathly allergic reaction.
- They realize that it was O'Brien who poisoned the first Mrs Bates and off to prison she goes.
- Cora wakes up and is greeted by her ladies maid, Daisy, it appears that O'Brien was merely a dream.
- Riker and Troi walk through the Holodeck doors remarking how interesting things were back then, they say "End program" and O'Brien is gone.
- She falls in the woods and cannot move, she is slowly eaten by Isis, Lord Grantham's dog, who mysteriously disappears at breakfast every day.
- She runs away with Tom Branson for a life in Liverpool.
- It is discovered that O'Brien is the love child of the good Doctor and the Dowager Countess, she is sent to Guernsey with a good pension to hide their shame.
Hopefully we won't have to wait as long for season four, or my imagination may just exceed my expectations for the show.
