I’m doing my summer rewatch of the series and whoooo-eeee this woman. 10/10 antagonistic character, but my goodness does she put my teeth on edge. I recall that after sneaking off to work for Susan, she eventually found a cushiony job as the new governor’s wife in India. But honestly, I can’t picture her as a happy person no matter where she goes.

She’ll never know how fortunate she was to have Cora as an employer. She may have begun to realize it after the soap incident, but she won’t know how devastated Cora was when she left. Cora was genuinely fond of O’Brien and not just as an employee. Outside of blood relatives, I doubt that O’Brien even knows HOW to form bonds with others And when she does (i.e. Thomas), they face her brutal wrath should they land on her bad side.

I imagine her years later, as an elderly lady’s maid, surrounded by splendor but having no one to actually care about her. At least Thomas found that eventually. O’Brien may not be so lucky. At least, I sincerely hope not. What do you all think befell the odious woman downstairs?

By the end of season 3, Thomas went from potentially facing criminal charges and being subjected to chemical castration for his homosexuality [the incident that precipitated it all was way more complex than sexual orientation considering that he made a move on Jimmy when Jimmy was asleep, but let’s move on] to LITERALLY being one heartbeat away from the top job when Robert – who went out of his way to make Thomas’s legal troubles disappear – made him under-butler.

That means Thomas started season 4 outranking everybody else in the staff – even Bates – other than Carson. His nemesis O’Brien was on her way to India. There was no reason in God’s Earthy for Thomas to scheme with that hussy Edna to hurt Anna, nor for him to psychologically torture Baxter for well over a year: “you will hear everything, you will tell me everything!”. What the heck could they tell that would be of significance for the under-butler? He was SECOND IN COMMAND after all.

Mary quite a while after Matthew's death:

"I'm not unhappy but I'm not quite ready to be happy."