Key Points
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Season 3 of The Gilded Age ends with upheaval for nearly every character on the show.
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Creators Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield take us through everything from the cracks in the Russells’ marriage to the future of Larry and Marian’s relationship.
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They also touch on Peggy’s night at the ball, Oscar’s proposal to Mrs. Winterton, and the ever-evolving Agnes-Ada dynamic.
Warning: This article contains spoilers about Sunday night’s episode of The Gilded Age, “My Mind Is Made Up.”
Society’s changing at a rapid pace on The Gilded Age, and the characters are just trying to keep up.
The finale of the HBO show’s third season was perhaps its most eventful yet. It opened on George Russell (Morgan Spector) arriving home, bleeding from his chest after being shot at the conclusion of last week’s episode. Desperate to save him, Bertha (Carrie Coon) calls for a doctor, and salvation arrives in the form of Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica) and Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson).
Through a miracle and Dr. Kirkland’s quick work, George survives and demands that the police and the papers know nothing about this incident. The horrors of the night bring Marian and Larry (Harry Richardson) back together, though Larry is now uncertain if he can be with someone as distrustful as Marian. Though Larry’s father warns him not to let a misunderstanding get in the way of his happiness, Larry and Marian only reach a stiff detente, unsure if they’re able to trust each other again.
“There’s a lot of challenges that need to come up in order for them to find a very happy union,” Harry Richardson tells Entertainment Weekly of Larian’s prospects as a couple.“ For him, all his complications that come with the inheritance and this battle against where he comes from and him wanting to be his own person. For her, all of the grief from the previous situations and how society will perceive her.
“Both of them need to find a way to release their own egos,” he continues, “and fall into the heart and offer what they have to give, rather than what they have to get. I’d love to see that exploration of them coming up against themselves and reflecting each other back to each other because that’s what we all go through in trying to love each other.”
Peggy (Denée Benton) faces another romantic disappointment when she confesses the truth of her lost child to William, and he asks for time to collect his thoughts. That is until William and his father, Frederick (Brian Stokes Mitchell), learn what William’s mother, Elizabeth (Phylicia Rashad), has done, spreading rumors about Peggy to the Black elite in Newport. Frederick and William both lambast Elizabeth for what she’s done, and William happily meets Peggy at the ball. There, he asks for her hand in marriage (after seeking her father’s blessing).
Agnes (Christine Baranski) and Ada (Cynthia Nixon) finally start to adjust to their new and reversed roles in the household, with Agnes finding an outlet in an invitation to become the Vice President of the New York Heritage Society. This, in turn, prompts Agnes to finally give up her seat at the head of the dining table to Ada, to whom it now belongs.
Oscar (Blake Ritson) doesn’t remain beaten down by grief for long. Instead, he schemes with Mrs. Winterton, formerly the Russells’ ladies’ maid Turner (Kelley Curran). He gets her an invitation to Bertha’s ball, and there, he proposes that they marry, using his connections and her money to conquer society.
Meanwhile, things fracture even further between George and Bertha. His near-death experience pushes him to re-evaluate his life. He shows up to the ball but he tells Bertha that it is only out of his desire to protect the business. Before she and Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) can tell him that Gladys is expecting a child, George and Larry ride off in an early morning carriage to return to the city.
There’s enough in the episode to fill an entire Ward McAllister tell-all, so we called up the show’s creators, Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield, to take us through these ups and downs — and tease what might be ahead for the characters in season 4.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We start with this very stressful surgery to try to save George’s life, which is successful, but he’s still healing as the season ends. Might this continue to cause complications in his life going forward, be they physical or emotional?
SONJA WARFIELD: Don’t you think getting shot would have some implications in anyone’s life going forward? You’ll have to watch season 4.
George really admired Bertha’s ambition in previous seasons. Is it the Gladys of it all that makes him change his mind, or what brings him to this point of seemingly no return?
JULIAN FELLOWES: He realizes that, without being fully aware of it, he is in a marriage where his wife is able to overrule his own moral instincts and make him do things that he doesn’t agree with or approve of. I don’t think he’s particularly taken that on board before, but he loves his children. He is a good father and an affectionate father. I hope we’ve made a point of that all the way through because I was interested in Jay Gould, who was a very, very ruthless robber baron indeed. Too ruthless for Mrs. Astor and various others, and yet a very affectionate father and husband.
This was at a time when most of the robber barons couldn’t have picked their children out of a police lineup, and Jay Gould was taking his daughter around the garden on a pony with a leading rein. I like that double of being ruthless in business and tender as a family man. So that’s what we’ve set up with George. But, nevertheless, in a way, Bertha is a stronger personality, and she just steamrolls over anyone who disagrees with her. And George is not aware of the fact he’s been steamrolled, like a lot of husbands and wives in real life. But here he has found, to his shame, that he has been part of something that he profoundly disapproves of. Although, of course, he’s happy that Gladys is not unhappy and all the rest of it, nevertheless, he can’t forgive that easily that his own moral code just went to sleep and he played along with Bertha.
What will it take to repair their marriage? He still doesn’t know about Gladys’ baby.
WARFIELD: I’m a divorced person, so I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask about what it’s going to take. A baby doesn’t doesn’t repair marriages. I agree with Julian that George has been through something existential and he’s asking a lot of questions. He has not been able to forgive himself for losing his moral compass and allowing his wife to make this decision for him.
FELLOWES: And his wife has made him break his word. HE gave his word to Gladys that she could marry for love when the time came. And the time did come and she wasn’t allowed to marry for love. She was pushed into this marriage by her mother. And however he slices it, he went along with it. He walked down the aisle with her on his arm.
WARFIELD: He’s complicit.
FELLOWES: He has to somehow address that. He has to face what was the weakness that made him give up his own standards. What was he afraid of? How did it happen? Bertha, who is more pragmatic, as far as she’s concerned, she’s given her daughter this extraordinary life, and now, she will be famous on both sides of the Atlantic. Gladys is happy, and she’s getting along with Hector, so what’s the problem? Whereas George realizes it’s not to do with Gladys. Of course, he’s happy if she’s happy, but that’s not the point. The point is that his morals were suspended at his wife’s behest when he went along with it. And so how does he resolve that? Does he forgive himself? Does he forgive her?
Gladys has reached this place of happiness where she is really thriving in this marriage and is now expecting this child. She is heavily inspired by Consuelo Vanderbilt. Given that, should we be worried that this is temporary?
FELLOWES: No, she’s partly inspired by Consuelo Vanderbilt, but she’s also partly inspired by Mary Goelet, who became Duchess of Roxburghe, who is less famous now because Blenheim is more famous than Floors Castle. But the situation wasn’t very different except that they were very happy, and it was a marriage that lasted until their deaths. Some of those marriages were perfectly content. Bertha’s not mad. The wife [of an aristocrat] did have a much more interesting life than most wives. She was essentially running a small kingdom. So, I don’t think it’s as simple as saying it’s Consuelo and Marlborough, even though, obviously, they’re the most famous.
We see Marion and Larry reach a truce where they’re at least speaking to each other again. But how badly burned has Larry been? Might he be influenced by his father’s own crisis?
WARFIELD: Love is never easy. That’s all I have to say. Marian definitely has abandonment issues. So they’ll either work it out or they won’t.
FELLOWES: Marian has trust issues. She’s been let down a lot in her life. Because of the way things have worked out, she has to spend a lot of her life being grateful to her aunts and behaving properly and wearing what they picked out for her. Only now is she beginning to find areas of action where she is herself and she is not acting on the behest of her aunts. She’s finding herself, really, and whether Larry fits into that, you’ll have to watch the next season.
What can you tell us about Oscar and Mrs. Winterton? Because from the outside, it seems like a terrible idea.
FELLOWES: Well, there was a lot of lavender marriage at that time. They would have presented themselves as a more or less 100 percent heterosexual, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe that the percentage of homosexual people in 1885 had any significant difference from today. The difference being that most of them have to hide it if they wanted to have careers, places in society, whatever it was, If they were homosexual publicly, they were excluded from it. So, they have to fake it. The situation of Oscar and Mrs. Winterton was by no means unusual at that time. She wants to be in society, but she doesn’t really have enough muscle. Oscar can give her that muscle, and she can give Oscar the way of life he is determined to lead without earning it. In that sense, they have a completely viable exchange. As to whether it works or not, if you look back at violet marriages in the 19th century, some of them worked on a level and some of them didn’t.
Well, Agnes is aware that Mrs. Winterton used to be a servant. I have to imagine she won’t be thrilled with the notion.
FELLOWES: I don’t know what Agnes is aware of with her own son. Ada is aware and has a clearer idea, and Marian is aware. But Agnes is pretty good at editing her own brain, and what she allows in is not necessarily her full knowledge if she plumbed it. Because she, on the whole, believes that appearances are everything. As long as they live properly and they have a nice house and they function in society and so on, she doesn’t need to ask any embarrassing questions. That is how she lives.
Peggy, over the first three seasons, has really been through the ringer. How satisfying was it to finally give her a fairy tale moment?
WARFIELD: It’s really beautiful. This is her soft life era. Sometimes when we think of Black Americans in this period of history, it seems as if it’s all trauma. It’s post-slavery and the beginning of Jim Crow. But the truth is that Black people were human beings, who had joy, who had laughter, who had babies, weddings, and fun. It’s been erased from history. Our show and a couple of books have delved into this Black middle-class Afro-istocracy. But for the most part, when we see television and film in relation to that period of time, it’s about enslavement, post-enslavement, Black trauma. What they don’t show is that these worlds coexisted. So, I think it was about time, and we’ll see if it works out.
Finally, the Reverend Kirkland really lays into his wife. Do we think that sufficiently chastens her, or is she really not capable of that?
WARFIELD: It’s a marriage. That’s probably a long-running argument in their household.
FELLOWES: In almost every marriage, there is an area where the couple feels very differently about it. On the whole, the trick of making a success of your marriage is not to spend too much time in the areas where you profoundly disagree. I don’t think it’s subversive to say that, it’s realistic.
WARFIELD: If you want to stay married, yeah.
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We watched Agnes really struggle this season with her new position. What does it mean for her to have this new outlet of the New York Heritage Society?
WARFIELD: It’s everything for her. I’m so happy for her. I felt really terrible for Agnes this season.
FELLOWES: it’s quite a common phenomenon for people not to realize that their status has changed, or indeed, not to accept it, whether or not they realize it. How many people do we know in show business who 30 years ago were quite big stars and they will not accept that is different now? It’s why you so often see some great movie star just before she died, the last time she went out was to see a movie with her hairdresser because only her hairdresser is still treating her as the great star she once was. It’s hard to accept those changes. It’s just as hard for Agnes. Agnes and Ada are both learning that the difference in their circumstance has changed things between them. At the beginning, it had hardly changed anything, but by the end of the season, Ada was beginning to understand that she had the salient voice.
Well, we do have this moment in the finale where Agnes finally offers her place at the head of the table to Ada. Should we take that as a massive step forward? Or is it going to be two steps forward, one step back?
FELLOWES: It was a step forward for both of them. It was a step forward for Agnes to realize that sitting at the head of the table and playing the queen of the house was in fact dishonest and had become a lie. And for Ada, who’s spent most of her life being semi-ignored and has always been very much overshadowed by her witty, charismatic sister. she now has accepted the head. She doesn’t fight it. She doesn’t demand it, but she doesn’t fight it because it is the truth. Now these people who are coming around offering them their dinner are working for her. It is a moment of truth between the two women involved and, in a way with Marian, accepting the truth of how the house is.
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