Downton Abbey sequel feels more like the end of an era than a new beginning

The sun may have never set on the British Empire when it was at its peak, but “Downton Abbey: A New Era” sure feels like a sunset for the Earl of Grantham as well as the rest of the Crawley family and their servants.

The second film continues the story of the popular television series and packs a lot of plot into its 124-minute run time. In fact, it may pack in too much plot, as the film seems determined to wrap up just about every character’s storyline in a work whose purpose appears to be putting a period on the Downton Abbey story.

Whereas the first film had one main storyline and a bunch of individual storylines branching off of that, there are about a dozen storylines, some of which are unrelated, that audiences will have to keep up with in the sequel.

It is essentially a television season’s worth of storylines crammed into a two-hour film.

All of that plot feels like it was designed to wrap up every single major character’s stories, or to at least give fans one last chance to see them.

This is not exactly peak “Downton Abbey,” but fans will still thoroughly enjoy the new film. Viewers may want to brush up their knowledge of what happened throughout the show’s six seasons as well as the first film, however, because multiple call-backs do happen.

There is a call-back, for example, of Mrs. Patmore owning a place of her own — remember the bed and breakfast that became a house of ill repute as soon as she bought it in Season 6?

And, the late Matthew Crawley gets mentioned a few times. If you cried when he died in that car crash at the end of Season 3, however, be prepared to get the sniffles as this film re-opens that wound.

The film offers the clearest picture of when it takes place when Mary says it has been seven years since Matthew died, putting this film’s setting in about 1928.

But, despite the movie’s title, a new era is never actually shown in the film. The movie is actually about the journey several of the characters and the Downton universe itself are on toward new eras. The film ends just as those new eras are beginning, though.

One aspect of the new eras the characters will have to deal with is not shown. That’s because, even though there is a flash forward at the very end, the movie doesn’t seem to make it to that fateful day in October 1929 when the stock market crashed and The Great Depression began.

There isn’t even any foreshadowing that the Depression is looming on the horizon.

It’s an odd choice to not show the Great Depression since Downtown Abbey often showed how real-life events impacted the show’s characters. The Downton story began with the sinking of the Titanic and later touched on World War I, the Spanish Flu pandemic and the Irish rebellion, as well as Hitler’s Brown Shirts and the Beer Hall Putsch.

There are two main storylines heavily promoted in the ads for the film: A movie being filmed at Downton and an excursion to a villa in the south of France to investigate a mystery from the Dowager Countess’ past.

Beyond what is shown in the ads, there are several other storylines overlapping each other, some of which seem like distractions from the main action because they have no bearing on the more important storylines.

It raises questions of whether Julian Fellowes had too much on his plate, trying to get this movie out and also put out his new period drama television series, “The Gilded Age,” which aired earlier this year on HBO Max.

This film really could have used some trimming. There is a lot of plot to plow through in 124 minutes.

Some of the storylines in the film could have used the more in-depth treatment that they would have received if this story played out over the course of a television season.

For example, Mr. Mason is back for a side story involving Daisy and Andy, but there isn’t time to properly do much of anything with this story thread. Mr. Mason feels more like someone whose place in the Downton universe Fellowes felt obliged to explain away than someone who was there to advance the plot.

And yet, the film still feels like a breezy adventure, even if the jumping back and forth between two locations for the first hour or so can become tiresome.

It begins with a wedding — which would have been a climatic event in an episode of Downtown Abbey on TV — and ends with tears, but there’s plenty of that going around like a high drama roller coaster in between.

Still, Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess gets a couple of lines that are on par with some of the great Dowager one-liners while Edith rediscovers her career in journalism, Carson finds something to grumble about and Molesley is, well, good old Molesley.

But, one plot point that fans may not be satisfied with is how the movie handles the absence of Mary’s second husband, Henry.

Henry does not show up at all in this film, but he’s not dead and Henry and Mary are still married so fans of the character can rest assured on that front. The film feels like it has to bend over backwards to deal with his absence, however, and it eventually gets tiring.

Will there be a third Downtown Abbey movie? It’s hard to tell. The movie ends in a way that several characters are gone, either to pursue new adventures or for other reasons.

But the film reaches what feels like was always going to be the natural conclusion of the entire Downton Abbey story. I won’t give anything away because I hate to be that guy who spoils an ending, but audiences will be able to see the ending coming throughout the film.

One thing is clear: Whatever other issues “A New Era” may have in its plot, if there is one thing this film does well is it nails the landing perfectly.

And even if this is the last we’ll see of these characters — at least in this iteration — who says this is necessarily the end of the Downton-verse?

There are still those rumors and theories that “The Gilded Age” is actually a Downton prequel and that a young Robert and Cora will show up 1880’s New York to rub elbows with the Russells and van Rhijns at some point.

“Downton Abbey: A New Era” opened in theaters on Friday.

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