Is The Gilded Age a prequel to Downton Abbey? Connection between the two series, explored

The PBS masterpiece hit Downton Abbey is one of the most celebrated British series, which follows the everyday lives and inner workings of the British aristocracy through the Crawley family.

Created by Julian Fellowes on PBS in 2010, the show ran for six seasons and also premiered two sequel movies. The third movie is set to be released in UK theaters in September 2025. While the show continued to receive fans' love and appreciation, it surprisingly never received a spin-off series.

However, with Fellowes' recent American historical series The Gilded Age on HBO Max, fans are wondering if the new show is an unlicensed prequel to the PBS hit. The answer is no. Despite the same creator and some thematic similarities, The Gilded Age is not a prequel to Downton Abbey.

While it was initially envisioned as one, detailing Cora Levinson's move to England in search of a husband, the prequel idea was eventually scrapped, and The Gilded Age debuted as an individual project.

More on this in our story.

The Gilded Age was originally planned as a prequel to Downton Abbey

While The Gilded Age surely has many differences in story and characters from Fellowes' British show, it was initially dubbed the American Downton Abbey on its HBO Max debut.

Following the success of his PBS show, Fellowes was in the process of creating a prequel to the show, charting the love story between Lord Grantham and his American wife. NBC even ordered the series in 2018, but HBO swooped in and took over the project, scrapping the original idea, and thus The Gilded Age was born.

While the HBO series is not a prequel to Downton Abbey, the original idea would have followed Cora Crawley's coming-of-age tale and her move to England in search of a husband. The series introduced several of Cora's family members, who would have likely formed the main cast in the prequel.

These characters include Shirley MacLaine's Martha, Cora's mother, and Paul Giamatti's Harold, Cora's brother.

While fans never got to see her father, Isidore, in the parent series, this would have been a good opportunity to introduce the character in the universe. As the flagship series revealed, Robert initially married Cora to bail out his failing family estate, but the two eventually fell in love.

Despite the scrapped prequel series, The Gilded Age borrows heavily from Downton Abbey

While HBO Max's involvement in Fellowes' latest project led to the individual standing of The Gilded Age, it borrows a lot from its predecessor.

In addition to an American twist on Downton Abbey's 'upstairs-downstairs' story, the American show also follows the initially scrapped storyline about Cora Levinson and effectively adapts it for the Russell family. Like the Levinson family, the Russells are also set up as a family of four, with Bertha struggling to find a suitable husband for her daughter Gladys.

Martha was determined to find her daughter a suitable British husband, which even took the family to England, where they met the Crawleys. However, Bertha's search for a son-in-law will likely not see her moving countries, as Gladys has already caught Oscar van Rhijn's eye.

This is where The Gilded Age stands apart from the British series. While Martha was supportive of Robert and Cora's relationship, even giving her blessing to her daughter's move to England, Bertha is against Gladys and Oscar's union, partly because of her rivalry with the Van Rhijns.

The show has yet to reveal if Bertha will also succeed in securing the perfect match for her daughter (like Martha) and what path awaits Gladys.

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