‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6 Spoilers: Julian Fellowes Says Series Finale Is Not Written, Hints At Focus On Lady Violet

The end is near for the Crawley family. “Downton Abbey” Season 6 will be the British drama’s final season, but no one knows how the series will end -- not even creator Julian Fellowes. The executive producer revealed he has yet to work on the final episode.

At a panel for the series at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, California, Saturday, Hugh Bonneville, who plays Lord Grantham on the drama, revealed he hadn’t received a script for the last episode. “I haven’t read the series finale,” Bonneville said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

“I haven’t even written it,” Fellowes told him.

Fellowes did hint at some of the focus of Season 6. He discussed the praise he received for focusing on older characters like Lady Violet (Maggie Smith) and Mr. Carson (Jim Carter). It sounds like that will continue in the final season.

“I like older characters to have emotional lives, because I think it’s truthful,” Fellowes said. “In movieland, everyone stops being a sexual creature at about 32, or at least the women do. The men are allowed to keep going until they are 78 -- I’ve never worked that out. In my world, on the whole older people have emotions like everybody else, and I think the show demonstrates that."

A trailer shown to journalists at the event seemed to confirm the series would continue to focus on the elders. The Hollywood Reporter said the Season 6 teaser revealed more attention to Lady Violet and Isobel's (Penelope Wilton) disagreements as well as Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan) and Mr. Carson’s romantic relationship.

The cast seems just fine with Smith's character being in the spotlight. Laura Carmichael, who plays Violet's granddaughter Lady Edith, called Smith “a joy” with whom to work while Bonneville claimed she is better than the entire cast. “You may as well retire, because Maggie Smith will steal every scene,” he said, Variety reports.

While specifics weren’t mentioned about the ending Fellowes wants “Downton Abbey” to have, recently he seemed to assure audiences there wouldn’t be a cliff-hanger. “So we entered into doing [Season 6] knowing six was the end,” he told the Telegraph. “And, in a way, that's quite nice, because you have a sort of agenda, which is to kind of wind everything up.”

“Downton Abbey” Season 6, the final season, will air on PBS in 2016. Are you excited to see more Lady Violet next year? Sound off in the comments section below!