Blogger’s note: If you have mistakenly found this page and do not want to read a Season Four spoiler, make like a depressing number ofDownton Abbey cast members and flee (from this page). Julian Fellowes will find a way to heart-wrenchingly script your death.

Bittersweet news, Downton-ites: After watching Jessica Brown Findlay depart the series (via Sybil’s fatal childbirth) and Dan Stevens exit the show (via Matthew’s fatal convertible accident), Siobhan Finneran, who plays Lady Grantham’s scheming, soap-planting, cigarette-smoking, Bates-kicking maid, Sarah O’Brien, has announced that she too will be leaving the British drama series. Although this departure may be sad for the dwindling cast’s morale, it is good news for Bates, Thomas, and other characters who have fallen prey to O’Brien’s prison-rules tactics downstairs atDownton Abbey.

Finneran acknowledged her character’s departure (and nastiness) in a recent interview. “I’m not doing any more [episodes],” she said. “O’Brien is a thoroughly despicable human being—that was great to play.” Confirming the news, a Downton spokesperson has said that Finneran “will not feature” in the forthcoming fourth season, “but it is understood the door could be left open for a return.” This open-mindedness about her return hopefully means that viewers will be spared another cast-member death.* Creator Julian Fellowes has said that he did not originally want to kill off Sybil and Matthew but was given little choice after both actors decided to quit the show. (*Alternate theory: O’Brien slips on an ironically placed bar of soap that Bates has planted, only to haunt Downton—and Thomas in particular—for all eternity in chain-smoking ghost form.)

In other Downton Abbeycasting news, we learned earlier this week that producers are reportedly searching for new actors to fill the roles of Lady Mary’s rebound love interest (“perfect cut glass accent” required!), the show’s first black character (a musician), and a party-loving cad (hopefully not for Edith). The O’Brien-less fourth season is scheduled to begin filming this month. In the meantime, Carson, could you please barricade the estate doors already so that no other cast members can flee our beloved Downton?