Sybil & Branson | A Story of Social Class | Downton Abbey 

They basically use him as a replacement for her, which is rather sweet.

The scene where Cora speaks to Sybil for the last time always gets me. She loses her baby, and the last thing she can say as she sits with her is to promise that she’ll look after her family, once Sybil can’t anymore.

Theres a small moment when gwen comes back to downton and tom mentions that sybil was a lovely person. Robert gives him a look, i think it was guilt that he didn't appreciate how much he loved sybil.

yep, couldn't watch after her death.hello, they were two good people in love, end of story.

​@@margheritarobba3164ok, thanks for letting us know.

He's such a good man and a treasure for the Crawley family. Sybil would be so happy to see Tom as part of the family 💕❤️😓😍

The family lost a daughter and a sister but gained a son and brother in Branson

These relationships are what makes the show beautiful. Add Daisy's sham marriage to William to the list. It eventually transforms into Mr. Mason losing a son but gaining a daughter to look after him and potentially take over the farm.

@@kawaiimatilda -- Excellent summation! And probably a better brother/son than most upper-crust houses experience. Being waited on, dressed and undressed by servants produces strange traits in women, but especially flawed personalities in men of that era who felt entitled to everything.

I really really miss Sybil but I feel like if Tom and the Crawleys hadn't had Sybil's death to unite them they wouldn't have become so close. Also if Sybil was alive she and Tom would have moved out because little Sybbie would have had a mother and needn't have stayed at Downton. Also her name probably wouldn't be Sybbie

JBF wanted to move on to other acting rolls. I really wish she had stuck it out fr the rest of the show!

😂😂😭😭😭😭😭😭

First my girl Sybil who was the only nice sister, and then my love Matthew! Ugh

She died because the actress wanted to do a different show. My assumption any ways, even with the actor that played Mathew. As far as I have seen though he hasn't made much of his career.

When Sybil’s actress first signed on to DA, she only agreed to a 2 year contract...she was perfectly played♥️

She sounds like she has a dry troath

She voiced lenore in castlevania recently

She was a trailblazer!!!!

sybbies being raised by tom though. a fighter that one. lol.

I hope you were able to see the second Downton movie :)

Also I wanted to see Matthew and Mary as parents . I still think it’s sad that Dan Stevens wanted to leave the show

@@kiannaknox1610 Yes he did, & Sybil's actress wanted to leave the show as well

+Tonya Meredith i think Sybil would have been a great mum if the character was alive

If Sybil had lived, she would’ve been an amazing mother and she would’ve had no objection whatsoever to Thomas playing with her daughter. I like to think he made a promise to Sybil at her funeral that he’d guard and protect little Sybbie for her.

I honestly didn’t like their relationship at all. For me, it felt too rushed and incredibly forced upon in order to move the storyline forward. They only had about 2-3 short scenes together in season one, out of nowhere, confessed their love and immediately tried to elope in season two, then got married (off screen) and Sybil was pregnant, all in just one episode in season three and everything was just mentioned in casual conversations in the house. Rose and Atticus have had much lesser screen time than Sybil and Branson but they had way more chemistry together and at least had a wedding scene where we can see their love being shown on screen. Finally, it didn’t help at all for their character development when Sybil abruptly dies after childbirth, which left Branson as a widower. It was a missed opportunity to see these two characters grow into their roles as parents and grow their love for each other both as parents and husband and wife, just like the love between what both Cora and Richard had developed for each other after they’d gotten married and had their first child.

I always thought it looked brownish to black...

How have I not picked up on that?!

That dress ain't green.

She wanted to leavr the show, so they didnt have a choice

The actress decided to leave the show, so technically it was suicide kkk

Let's investigate lol

THEY DON'T HAVE ANY CHOICE BEACUSE THE ACTRESS DIDN'T SIGN A NEW CONTRACT

Honestly I didn't sleep for a week after I watched that episode. Completely traumatised. I still can't watch that scene.

@AStoryGood It would probably be the other way around as her beau would be the one going off to war and she’d be the one waiting.

Hmm_Stella Mrs Hughes knows what is up!

Hmm_Stella I'd like to point out that they HOLD HANDS for a brief moment in that scene

:)))

First time I watched this I thought she threatened Branson, when in really she was just caring about him.

She can read people like a book

Missed opportunity and also unrealistic. She and tom clearly stayed in touch if she had the chance to tell him he was being foolish. I'd love an Irish lady in the show as well, who shows up to be an amazing grandma, not posh at all, and like Tom not afraid to be herself, but for Tom, would be polite to the crawleys for accepting him as family when he cant go back to ireland. At any rate, Tom's family should have been shown more. But the writers dont care about Tom's family because thats not a posh family and the show is still very pro upper class of old. The only lower class we get real focus on are staff members, and even then it's usualy their interaction with each other, not their families and lives outside their workplace. Daisy was like the exception to this rule with Mr Mason. But he lived close by. You never saw mr's Pattmore visiting a friend during a break, or Anna going out with friends her age. Its like all these people lived purely for downton and had nothing else going on ever. Untill they did, which usualy also ment them leaving. The downstairs is purely there for contrast with upstairs, which is the group of people the show puts more efford in. Introducing new posh families and characters all the time. Tom was a great way to put more focus on a ''normal'' family. The only time we got that was with his brother, and the brother was treated as the villain of the episode rather then a human being who has understandable reservations about dining and playing nice with an elete english family. I didnt like the brother either, but thats because the show went out of its way to make him unlikable. Which is the actual problem. the show is classist, much as I enjoy watching it despite of that. Still, maybe a future movie could have Tom's family actualy show up. I doubt it though, as he got married to Lucy, and there was no better excuse for his irish family to show up then him getting remarried. Tom is a prop for the Crawley family, not his own fleshed out character, much as I love him. We never got any episodes of him away from downton and deciding, in an episode, that he missed his new family. We never got Tom's pov in the Sybil romance, because we never got to see him interact with his mother or brother or anyone he was close with and their opinions on all this. Only Sybil's family and the staff. Everyone that isnt upper class or staff doesnt matter in this show. And if they do, it's usualy in a not so nice light (Toms new socialist romantic interest and his brother are the 2 examples that are most obvious to me where they are cast as wrong, and the crawleys ar right when it's not so black and white.)

Mama Branson and the Dowager Countess Crawley….That would’ve been awesome to see

I think that's just cause no man had ever touched her like that lol

😢 OMG it was TRUE LOVE!!!!!

I knooow my favourite line of Tom's

My favourite one is when Robert says to him" if you hurt her in any way I will.have you torn apart by wild dogs.."Tom says id expect no less "!

John Velo favourite

Well, that's dumb. Getting tired of actresses thinking they need to rush away from the role of a lifetime.

@@FavreianVengeance it was not the role of a lifetime for her. Respect her choices

@@megandurrant4000 Sure it was. Even still, you got to take pride in your franchise.

@@megandurrant4000 i can understand that she doesnt want to get stuck with one role, but sybil woudlve been a great role to get stuck with. plus it woudlnt be such a showstopper like for example playing harry potter. look at Zack Efron or Robert Pattinson, they made it out.

They are called widowers not widows.

Ingrid Dubbel I was just about to say the same.

Erm, women tend to outlive men anyway so that's why women are portrayed as widowers.

@@ingriddubbel8468 If someone were to say widower to me I would likely still think of some old woman.

Joshua Paterson not sure why you’d think that. My mom became a widower at age 42. That’s hardly an old woman. Need to take your head out of your ass. People lose their mates at all ages due to various deaths.

I felt sad for Thomas in that scene, but he deserves to be disliked by everyone. Why should people like him after everything he has done?

Thomas did look after little Sybbie's interests later when Nanny West was mistreating her.

Why does he deserve to be disliked? All he did was fall in love with her.

@@loriar1027 They are referring to the other Thomas, not Tom Branson.

Compassion has no timeframe so your comment is absurd.

Yep, me too ! She's my fave character anyway. Too bad Jessica Brown Findlay didn't wanna stay, I really missed her character in the least three seasons... *cries*

It goes her, then anna:)))

Sybil was a great character no doubt but strangely,one of my favorite moments in DA was when she died and Thomas heard bout it. I never imagined Thomas wud be affected that way. His words bout how she was one of the very few ppl in his life that actually cared about him was heart breaking even if he was a cold bastard

I wish Sybil was still alive

Violet’s seen and done some interesting things in her younger days…

Violet is always the realist and pragmatic.She is a few steps ahead of people because of that.

The bedroom scene in the hotel, when Lady Mary "rescues" Lady Sybil is the least believable scene in the entire series. There's no way in hell they wouldn't have been gettin' it onnnnnn ♥ 🛏! I was actually disappointed for the rare departure in reality that the show took.

@@keldonmcfarland2969 i was really glad they didn't do it. Because, although we can consider Sybil a rebel I don't think she was rebellious about things like that. It was exactly her morality that drove her to rebel against the old order, social classing or being bitter and down looking. I'm not saying it is indecent to have premarital sex, but you know what I mean.

Jelena Popović plus although she was ready to (literally) risk it all to marry tom, she eventually backed out of the elopement when mary told her to wait at least a moment but to fight her corner if cora and robert keep pressing her to leave branson.

they didn't have sex, Tom would have never put her in that situation, he loved her too much for that

Keldon McFarland Sad that you believe that. It was another time, with other ethics.

Why would you hurt my heart like this-

Spin off Sybil and Benson?

Georgina Mena seeing bates with his new child was even better!

I wish that there was just a series of the sisters lives. Birth-death type thing y'know

Same. 😭

Just like Matthew

I was not prepared for Sybil to die, I am still shook

Sophie Amanda Leiton Toomey favoUrite

@@kyerwhite4177 I'm not British. I don't use the u.

His reluctant acceptance came after he developed feelings for the new maid. He came very close to sleeping with her, but didn’t because they were almost caught. She left before anything more happened between them. But if he wasn’t married he most definitely would have had relations with her. He knew that and realized that he and the maid were no different than Cybil and Tom, only they were free to marry and he wasn’t.

Ooh interesting!

I love her. 😊 ❤️

Oh wow. Sybil trelawney in Harry potter makes more sense now lmao

Changes in British culture? Are you mad? They still have a full house of royals and an operating caste/class system...and it isn't going anywhere.

I honestly didn’t like their relationship at all. For me, it felt too rushed and incredibly forced upon in order to move the storyline forward. They only had about 2-3 short scenes together in season one, out of nowhere, confessed their love and immediately tried to elope in season two, then got married (off screen) and Sybil was pregnant, all in just one episode in season three and everything was just mentioned in casual conversations in the house. Rose and Atticus have had much lesser screen time than Sybil and Branson but they had way more chemistry together and at least had a wedding scene where we can see their love being shown on screen. Finally, it didn’t help at all for their character development when Sybil abruptly dies after childbirth, which left Branson as a widower. It was a missed opportunity to see these two characters grow into their roles as parents and grow their love for each other both as parents and husband and wife, just like the love between what both Cora and Richard had developed for each other after they’d gotten married and had their first child.

etcetra etcetra Honestly? This is a mood. We were watching it with my mum and she said "he's quite good-looking isn't he" and I went "yeah??? what took you so long to notice"

The actor got bulkier

SAME BYEJFBFBDB

Less hot? Clearly you've never worn a three piece suit!

I never notice before!

YESSS! I've been thinking this for years but was waiting for someone else to point it out

hollywoodshopaholic literally one of the first things that made me like tom in the first place was that he looked like him😂

hollywoodshopaholic I thought the same thing 😂 accent too

YES PLEASE THAT'S THE REASON WHY I BEGUN TO BE OBSESSED W ALLEN

Lady Mary makes no sense of you took a look at her in the series

Lol@ Carson

Lisa Smith exactly . Edith wasn’t all sweet.

@Lisa Smith there is a difference between Edith behavior towards Mary and Sybil. Edith might be a little jealous of Sybil because how everyone loved and adored her but that was just a common part of sibling rivalry that happens in every family.

That is a shame. Mary and Tom’s relationship was one of my favorites in the show, and after all the tragedy of season three I really enjoyed watching them grow closer and help each other through their grief. It’s a shame people stopped watching before seeing what the family transformed into.

I was so heartbroken after her death but kept watching because of Tom

She quit after three seasons. It's not like the show had a choice.

You missed out on a LOT! Your loss.

@@fancybrooks3156 i'm literally on s4 rn but s3-6 have NOTHING on the first half

The look on Cora's face was pure horror!

I wish I could say that times have changed since the 1910s. My parents are literally the same. They're currently in a tizzy because my man doesn't go to church (they haven't even met him.) if I were to live with him unmarried they would literally disown me 😂😂

An entirely reasonable reaction.

Yes my parents freaked out when my boyfriend and I moved in together. And I’m 29!

@@elissalombard7021 yup. guys gotta try the milk for free first before buying it and tying it with legalities! play house first. lol.

Frankly, yes. These scenes felt very uncomfortable, not romantic. She's saying no, repeatedly, but he just keeps pressing, claiming to know how she feels better than she does. It gets better after they are together, but that part in the middle is just creepy.

They were showing the difference in class and society, where the lower class could speak openly about their feelings and the upper class could not, to Sybil talking openly about love was not something she could get her head around, during an interview jessica findlay brown said that Sybil was always popping into the garage to see Tom, because that is what you do when you are in love, you want to see the other person constantly, Tom could see she was in Love and was frustrated that Sybil could not admit it. Throughout DA Julian Fellowes created complex relationships between the characters' that when we view them through modern eyes seems very challenging and a little strange.

@@tonyodonnell7189 She seemed curious about the idea of love but I never bought that she was madly in love with him. She wanted a chance to escape the confines and limitations of her lifestyle but head over heels in love? I didn't see that.

@@gee2541 I can only go by what Jessica Brown Findlay is saying in her interviews, its all on the youtube, when you hear what she says then watch again it makes more sense, "she was always popping down to see Tom because that's what you do when you are in love", She was chasing Tom, in an era when she would have no interaction with a driver besides driving, They as a couple got very little Screen Time, which was a mistake as they Kept trying to push Mary and her Love Triangles on the public, which always looked forced or unnatural and the public took to Tom & Sybil instead, I think it was about breaking down class barriers and a little more plot development would have gone a long way.

@@tonyodonnell7189 I think the public loved Mary/Matthew too and I personally think they were better developed compared to Tom and Sybil but that’s just my view. I think Tom and Sybil could have worked but he was a bit too pushy with her and I felt that he was disrespectful on a number of occasions. Maybe that’s why I never connected with their whole story and found him annoying lol

I didn't like how once she got with him she was subservient to him. Everything was about making him happy. She could have died with the baby when trying to get home and he was more worried about himself. I just hated how they wrote their story. I loved how Tom evolved but I hated that he didn't evolve to be better for and to her. She always sacrificed for him after being the more independent daughter.

@@jeps1973 And yet, men and women do exactly that in real life...all...the...time. She, giving up all to make her man happy. He, taking the role as man of the house and expecting his wife to be subservient. Especially, 100 years ago. Consider this...in the film Giant, Leslie is glad to see that Jett is learning to better himself, but Jett is no saint...just like Bick, Jett has disdain for poor, Hispanic people, even though he is poor too...he goes on to become wealthy, but never stops being the poor slob in a tuxedo. Leopards do not change their spots. At Downton, we have Tom, a socialist who is never going to stop being a socialist and, a man that sees the role of a husband in traditional ways. He will always be the chauffeur with his black/white point of view, regardless if he wears a tux or not. Just the way it is.

Taking up with Cybil meant he’d be without a job or reference. Without the reference and being Irish Catholic, he’d have trouble finding work in England. His family and connections were back in Ireland, and there being Irish Catholic was a good thing. For them to be together they had no choice but to go to Ireland.

Actually she Michael-Scott-after-seven seasons-'d.

What a stupid statement.

@@ingriddubbel8468 Why are you replying to everyone's comments in such a negative way? Just leave if you don't like it here.

She wanted out

Haha no truer statement! 😅

He would have never evolved if she was alive. It is her death that changed him and his perspectives towards her family given that they were an aristocrats.

@@neelimarajput6665 I see your point, however I do think that Sybil could have helped him see her family from her perspective. I think his change was accelerated by her death, but he was on track of being changed, or at least that's my optimistic take. 😅