'Downton Abbey' Season Premiere Recap With Spoilers: Mr. & Mrs. Bates Catch a Break

Shortly after Downton Abbey officially ended in the UK, the sixth and final season reaches America for one last look at how the other half lives -- and on the season premiere, the long-suffering Mr. and Mrs. Bates (Brendan Coyle and Joanne Froggatt) finally catch a break, though Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is haunted by her past shenanigans.  Spoilers follow.

As The New York Times' recap of the season premiere points out, the Bates have been the two people who have suffered the most in the entire series: from the butler's secret wife who wouldn't divorce him (and then committed suicide just to spite him) to Anna becoming a rape victim and then both being charged with the murder of the man who did it. In this episode, the endlessly corny pair finally seems on the path to happiness.

In a quick turn of events, Anna is freed from the police after an unnamed woman, who was also a victim of Mr. Green's (Nigel Harman) wrongdoings, confessed to his murder. However, it's not all rosy between the suffering pair: now, it turns out that Anna has suffered a few miscarriages recently and she might not be able to have children.

In the meantime, the ever-snide Lady Mary has found her match.  Rita (Nichola Burley), a chambermaid from the hotel where she and Tony (Tom Cullen) stayed in secret, remembers Mary perfectly and is offering to tell everybody she spent a week with a man she wasn't married to in exchange for ridiculous amounts of money.

While Mary doesn't even care at this point, her father (Hugh Bonneville) does, ultimately paying off the sassy maid (who even had the nerve of going up to Mary's bedroom!) and saying he would take legal action for threatening nobility -- "only the very wealthy know how to counter-blackmail so effectively," Vulture adds.

Still, Mary's resolve also settles another tiny drama about how to run the estate, and somehow the Earl decides that Mary having been intimate with a man outside of wedlock makes her apt to have more power in Downton's management.

Another beloved couple from Downton, Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) and Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan), are now planning their wedding, but the wise housekeeper has one major problem: she's never been with a man and she's worried how her husband will react to this and whether he'd prefer a sexless marriage.

In a series of adorably awkward scenes between the two lovebirds and the helping Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol), it is ultimately shown that, yes, Carson wants a marriage with everything that entails, but only because of how much he loves his fiancée.

Aww!

Also, the ever-open Daisy (Sophie McShera) basically made a scandal when she said her father-in-law, Mr. Mason (Paul Copley) deserved to be treated better now that the owners of his land were changing, as there was a prospect of the sweet old man remaining homeless, in an issue that will be solved at a later episode.

There's still a whole season of Downton ahead!