'Downton Abbey' Recap: Season 2 Episode 4

Downton Abbey airs Sundays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream by WTTW Passport members. Recap the previous episodes.
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Amiens, 1918. As rats scurry overhead and ominous music plays, in the dugout Matthew and William are apprehensively preparing to lead a charge on the battlefield. Under Matthew’s command, his battalion draws their weapons and bursts forth from underground. It’s hell.

At this precise moment back at Downton, both Mary upstairs and Daisy downstairs experience a chill. With good reason: on the edge of a crater, William leaps in front of Matthew to shield him from an exploding shell – both are flung backward into the crater and lay stacked and motionless atop a wagon wheel. The Germans surrender, but at what cost?

A few nights later, O’Brien abruptly awakens Cora and Robert. As the family assembles, Molesley hands them an urgent telegram addressed to Isobel: Matthew and William are grievously injured. Matthew is being brought back to Downton; William, not being an officer, has been sent to a faraway hospital – a cruel hardship for his father, Mr. Mason. Violet and Edith do battle with Dr. Clarkson on William’s behalf, and not taking no for an answer, phone Robert’s influential cousin Shrimpie (we’ll meet him later) at the war office to pull strings to bring William to Downton. While Violet, Edith, and Mr. Mason are at the hospital to fetch William home, they get devastating news: William’s lungs were fatally damaged by the blast; he cannot recover. Back at Downton, as Edith and Mrs. Patmore watch over William, Daisy is wracked with guilt for having promised to marry him when she didn’t love him.

Mary, deeply distressed by these developments, plans to be with Sybil when Matthew’s ambulance arrives at the village hospital. Cora, as ever pushing Mary away from Matthew and toward Carlisle and married respectability, summons Lavinia to Downton.

The ambulance pulls in at the hospital. Mary insists on staying, despite being warned that Matthew is a gruesome sight. As he lies bloody and unconscious, she and Sybil find the little toy dog (Mary’s good luck charm) among Matthew’s things, and a handwritten tag attached to his shirt button: “Probable spinal damage.” This turns out to be an understatement. Once Matthew is awake, Dr. Clarkson examines him and, as Lavinia arrives from London, we learn that Matthew is paralyzed from the waist down. He won’t walk again, and there will be no heir since sex is also impossible. Mary, Lavinia, and Robert are devastated, each for a different reason. No one tells Matthew.

O’Brien and Thomas have (still!) continued to plot against Bates, and that day comes the result: the evil Vera Bates materializes in the servant’s hall and threatens Bates and Anna: she will go to the newspapers with the story of Mary’s scandal with Kamal Pamuk if Bates doesn’t call off their divorce. O’Brien quickly has buyer’s remorse – what she did could bring down the entire family, as Vera has spiraled out of control. Indifferent as always to the Crawleys’ plight, Thomas characteristically pins all the blame on O’Brien.

Later, Anna fills in Mary about Vera’s threat; despite knowing she’ll live to regret it, Mary concedes that she must come clean to Carlisle. Maybe he can stop the scandal from going public.

Mrs. Hughes, laden with baskets, pays a visit to a shabbily dressed Ethel, who has given birth to a baby boy and is barely surviving alone in a filthy hovel. As Mrs. Hughes hands her a few provisions, Ethel’s desperation is obvious – she has written numerous times to Major Bryant, undeniably the baby’s father – to no avail. Mrs. Hughes reluctantly reveals that Bryant will soon be visiting Downton. Ethel begs her to give him another letter and force him to read it. Mrs. Hughes reluctantly agrees, regretting ever getting involved. And she fails: Bryant (the heel) curtly refuses to hear anything about it.

Engagements Broken and Made

Later that day, Mrs. Hughes interviews a pretty young war widow and mother, Jane Moorsum, who is applying for a housemaid position. It’s highly irregular for servants to have children, but Jane convinces Mrs. Hughes that her mother can tend to her young son Charlie. Once Robert approves, she is hired. Cora resents not being consulted; Robert, childishly, carps that she has been too busy to be bothered.

Mary is sitting alone by Matthew’s hospital bed when he slowly wakes; he is puzzled about the numbness and lack of mobility in his legs and implores Mary to tell him what’s wrong with him. Gently, Mary does her best to soften the blow, but Matthew guesses the truth. The next day, he breaks off his engagement to Lavinia – he won’t allow her to marry a man who would turn her into “a childless nun.” Over her tearful objections, Matthew bitterly sends her away: “Think of me as dead.” And later, he tells Mary despairingly that he’ll be alone for the rest of his life. As Mary struggles to hold it together, Isobel arrives from France. She has overheard and is impressed with Mary’s compassion.

At Carlisle’s London office, Mary has revealed everything about the Kamal Pamuk episode. Carlisle is delighted that he now has leverage over her. She had been waffling about a wedding date and now offers to break off their engagement which has not yet been made public. He demurs – he will keep her scandal out of the newspapers, but there will be a price. And he doesn’t mean money. Sure enough, to Robert’s surprise and dismay, the next morning he subsequently learns of Mary’s engagement in Carlisle’s newspaper.

Having nailed that down, Carlisle meets with the malicious Vera Bates and offers to buy her story. Later, she is enraged to discover that he bought it only to bury it, having already forced her to sign a non-disclosure agreement. If the scandal is made public, she will go to jail. She furiously vows revenge, especially against Bates. Carlisle, concerned only about controlling Mary, couldn’t care less.

Out in the garage, an impatient Branson is still pleading his case to Sybil, who insists they table any talk of a possible relationship until the war is over.

William, fading fast, pleads with Daisy to marry him before he dies. She worries that complying would be dishonest, but he wants to ensure that she gets a war widow’s pension. She can’t bring herself to admit to William that she never loved him. But privately, Mr. Mason persuades her to accept. The snobbish local vicar Travis is disinclined to perform the ceremony, alleging that Daisy is just a golddigger taking advantage of a dying soldier. But he is no match for Violet on the warpath.

With Edith, Violet, Mr. Mason, and the teary-eyed downstairs staff in attendance, a still-conflicted Daisy marries the bedridden William. That afternoon, she and his father are at his bedside as he slips away.