Well, Ethel isn’t dying, it appears. Just not eating much. But, as of last nite’s episode, she’s now working for Mrs. Crawley, although she gave her kid to her ex-lover’s parents. Will be interesting to see where this character development ends up. The shocker, of course, was Sybil dying. Now THAT was unexpected. Although when you think about it, that character line had to be manipulated in a way that her husband could somehow go back to Ireland without looking like a cad. Now he can leave his new baby girl that Sybil had before doing her swan song, at Downton while he goes back to Ireland to fight the British.
And now the Bates/Anna saga is heating up again too. Now they know how Bates’ ex-wife committed suicide to make it look like Bates did it (while it was the pie that actually did it). And now a bunch of new maids/cooks/footmen to provide new story lines, with jealousies abounding everywhere. Oh what fun it all is!
Depending on how many years this saga covers, the child will probably grow up to become a solicitor who will be appointed to the bench and will one day sit in judgement of Ethel, who went back to the streets as a prostitute, having failed as a cook and maid, and unbeknownst to him that she is his mother, he will throw her in prison in the effort to rid the lower classes of the scourge of prostitution. He will have been raised by his grandfather to detest the “low life scum” that is becoming a growing menace to society. While they are dragging her away in shackles, she will then cry out to him over her shoulder that she is his birth mother and he grew up to become cold and heartless and will burn in hell. He will have a revelation, curse his grandfather on his grandfather’s death bed for lying to him about his mother (who he believed had died) and raising him as a judgmental sob, and he will turn from his life of privilege and become a crusader for the poor.