Lord Crawley meets a rude Lord Crawley in Downton Abbey 3: Multiverse of Manners

Lord Crawley steps out of his bedroom

“Bates!” he calls, in frustration. He continues to pace around his bedroom, his faithful ‘gentleman’s gentleman’ nowhere to be seen.

He steps out of his room a second time, only to come face to face with…Lord Crawley?

“Up yours, you big nobber. You smell like dog farts,” shouts this second Lord Crawley, before disappearing through some sort of portal.

There is a pause and Hugh Bonneville, who plays Lord Crawley, starts to laugh. Director Simon Curtis calls cut, and they begin preparing the next scene.

Even though Downton Abbey: A New Era hasn’t been released yet, the third film in the franchise is already shooting.

“Everyone’s mum loves Downton Abbey,” explained Curtis.

“There was no question of whether to do Downton Abbey 3, it was just what it was going to be about, and a multiverse just made sense.

“We are mindful that this isn’t a superhero film, so we didn’t want the Crawleys to encounter evil Crawleys or zombie Crawlies, plus, of course, they’d already done zombie Crawleys for the 2013 Christmas special.”

Instead, they came up with an ingenious story of the Crawleys’ worst nightmare, a version of the family who had terribly bad manners.

Lady Mary accidentally finds a portal to the multiverse under an antimacassar and enters it, believing it to be some sort of servant’s passage, she emerges in a room like her own and encounters someone who appears to be her. After a shocked pause, her double belches loudly and asks her to guess what she had for breakfast. Lady Mary flees back to her own room, but by entering the portal, she’d created a multiversal instability that caused bad mannered Crawleys to enter their reality at any time.

“It’s a disaster,” laughs Curtis.

“The multiverse Henry turns up for a meeting with the vicar and calls him a ‘spam-faced old fanny.’ Multiverse Edith just farts all the time and multiverse Lucy uses the wrong cutlery at dinner at doesn’t even care.”

Downton Abbey 3: Multiverse of Manners will be released next year and will be followed up with a fourth film which is rumoured to introduce a new Downton Abbey shared universe featuring characters from Upstairs, Downstairs and When the Boat Comes In.