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After a royal audience with King George V and Queen Mary of England, and guest appearances by Shirley MacLaine and Paul Giamatti, the fourth season of “Downton Abbey” came to a conclusion on PBS’s “Masterpiece” on Sunday night. No major characters met their demises, but this year, which dealt with the rape of the servant Anna and the introduction of a jazz singer who pursues a perilous romance with Lady Rose, among other story lines, was hardly free of conflict or controversy.

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Julian Fellowes, the creator and writer of “Downton Abbey,” spoke to The New York Times for an article about the season finale. In these edited excerpts from that conversation, he discusses these turbulent episodes and his plans for the series.

Q.

This season of “Downton Abbey” ended with Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes holding hands as they walk into the water. Did you want a final scene that was not as severe as last season’s?

'Downton Abbey' The PBS costume drama set in England.

A.

Happily, we didn’t have any cast members jumping ship, so that allowed us a kind of warmth. Last year, I wanted to finish the Christmas special with the baby and everything lovely and then kill Matthew the following year. But [Dan Stevens, who played Matthew] just wanted to go. He wanted to have a new chapter.

Q.

This year’s conclusion seemed more uplifting, if ambiguous.

A.

“Downton” is, God knows, a slow burn of a show. [Laughs] I think we will be very nonspecific about Carson and Mrs. Hughes. But we have one or two incidents in a season that everyone rings each other up about and gets cross. We have these fairly lilac-covered, gentle narratives, interweaving. And then every now and then, poof, something huge happens.

Q.

That could certainly be said of this season’s story line about Anna’s rape. What made you want to pursue that?

A.

So many women have had to conceal things that have happened to them, because if they reveal them, they went down, too. It was very important that it should be completely clear that it is not the victim’s fault at all. This was a chance to make the argument for the innocent rape victim who has done nothing to deserve it. And Anna, as either the most sympathetic character or certainly one of them, the audience could immediately grasp, she had done nothing to deserve to this. There is no sharing of guilt, no blurring of the edges of responsibility. Also, it created this mammoth thing that she and Bates had to get through, and Bates’s response is that he doesn’t love her less. He says himself, if anything he loves her more. What it has of course awakened is the kraken of rage in his belly.

Q.

I assume you have decided for yourself whether or not Mr. Bates killed Mr. Green, but you aren’t going to tell the audience.

A.

[Laughs] I never answer story questions.

Q.

Do you think by taking on a story as serious as this one, it overwhelmed the other subplots?

A.

The style of the show has always been to have some serious story lines, some less serious and some funny ones. Anna being raped, I don’t think it’s more serious than Sybil dying in childbirth. Matthew being killed in a car crash. At the next level down, you have Robert losing all his money. And then you keep going down, and finally you end up with Mrs. Patmore not being able to work the mixer. And those are all the different colors of the show.

My favorite show, which I’m eating at the moment in huge, boxlike helpings is “Mad Men.” And there, in Don Draper, you have this completely ambivalent character. You cannot decide, is he a good man? Is he a fraud? Is he nothing? That is the kind of writing I aspire to. I think they have a very similar range. One minute, some secretary’s driving a lawnmower over an executive’s foot. And the next, Don Draper’s brother is hanging himself.

Q.

This season, you also introduced the show’s first recurring black character, the jazz singer Jack Ross. Was that to placate people who criticized the show for its lack of diversity?

A.

We wanted a character who really belonged to the ’20s, who wouldn’t have been functioning in the same way 10 years earlier. He’s based on Leslie Hutchinson, who was known as Hutch. He was a tremendous cabaret star, a friend of Cole Porter’s, and he had affairs with lots of people including Tallulah Bankhead. With this guy, yes, he’s unlucky in love. But he’s not at all a negative character. In fact he’s a very positive character, and I think there isn’t enough of that.

Q.

Isn’t it more likely that a black man in 1920s Britain would have been shut out of white society?

A.

Well, for performers, that’s not really true, because there were a hell of a lot of them in London at that time. The issue is when they left the stage and came into the drawing room. Mary knows it’s quite impossible [for him to marry Lady Rose] and has to be brought to an end immediately. She is a nice woman, or nice-ish, and she tries to do it as politely as she can. I think that was pretty true to period. However much people were perfectly happy to have all sorts of people at their parties, there was a rule governing who you settled down with. I don’t think we tried to whitewash that.

Q.

Aren’t you really imposing your own contemporary worldviews on characters who wouldn’t have been so tolerant?

A.

I think we present the Granthams as a liberal family, socially. Not particularly liberal, politically. On the whole, it has been a feature that liberalism was more to be found at the upper end of the aristocracy, socially, than it was in the middle classes. Because they were more traveled, they were more sophisticated, they were more educated. It was a much broader-looking culture. Lord and Lady Mountbatten were among Hutch’s best friends. And he would have been seen at their dinner parties. If he had tried to marry their daughter, that would have been a different story.

Q.

This season also focused more on the misfortunes, as well as the bravery, of Lady Edith. Were you ready to show she could be more than just a punching bag for Mary?

A.

I think we felt it was her turn. Also, I think [Laura Carmichael] has developed Edith. The actors run with these characters, and she has made her almost gallant in her attempts to overcome her own bad luck.

Also, one of the themes of the show is that these people have to find a way of adapting to the world as it was changing. Edith, she’s not a rebel. She is an illustration of how the world was changing, even for women who were fairly conventional in their aspirations. If she had been born 30 years earlier, she would just have married a baronet and stayed in Yorkshire and taken an interest in hunting. She is sort of based on my great-aunts. My eldest great-aunt insisted on going to university, and she was allowed to, as long as she fulfilled two conditions: one was, she never took an exam. And the other was, she had a maid with her at all times. My great-aunts were very conventional, but even within that, they were doing interesting things. And that’s what Edith gave me the chance to show.

Q.

You’re working on Season 5 of “Downton Abbey.” Is it time to start thinking about your own end game?

A.

Well, you have to, in a way. ITV [which broadcasts “Downton Abbey” in Britain] never commissions more than the next season. And they never commission that until you’re in this season. But I think it seems like the right sort of rhythm. It’s not like a soap opera that can go on for 27 years.

Q.

Don’t you want to be able to end the show on your terms?

A.

[Laughs] It would be unlikely that I would suddenly find, “What? We’re not doing it anymore?” I don’t think it would work like that. I think we’d know before. We’ll know in time.