Everything That Happened in “The Gilded Age” Season 1

Our protagonist Marian goes through quite the drama in the first season. After her father’s death leaves her in dire financial straits, she heads to New York and moves in with his estranged sisters, Agnes and Ada. Marian struggles with some of the strict rules, especially about the divide between the “new” elite and the established families, and winds up befriending an eclectic group of women.

Among her unconventional choices is her choice of suitor, Tom, her family’s former lawyer who follows her to New York and winds up climbing the social ladder himself. By the end of the season, Marian is determined to elope with him, only to find out he’s decided to marry a rich heiress instead. Marian is left heartbroken and must figure out what comes next.

After helping Marian at a train station after her purse is stolen, Peggy finds her life entwined with Marian and her aunts’. She spends much of the season working as Agnes’s private secretary while also pursuing her career as a journalist. When she visits her well-to-do family in Brooklyn, it’s clear that there is a fraught past, especially between her and her father.

As the season goes on, the truth is revealed: Peggy was once married, and when she nearly died (and her child did die) in childbirth, her father forced her husband to annul the marriage. In the finale, she learns an even more terrible truth: her son survived, and her father deliberately hid it from her. Peggy and her mother set out to find what has become of her son.

If we’re comparing “The Gilded Age” to “Downton Abbey,” then Aunt Agnes is the Dowager Countess, full of lemony one-liners and stuffy, but accurate, observations. She spends much of the season trying (and usually failing) to impress upon Marian the importance of the social hierarchy, while making an endless array of cutting remarks about the new-money Russell family across the street. It’s also heavily implied that Agnes’s marriage to the late Mr. van Rijn was not a happy one and was only entered into so she could ensure her and her sister’s futures.

As the season comes to a close, Agnes finds herself stuck attending the Russell ball, along with Ada and Marian, and she doesn’t spontaneously combust, so chalk this one up in the win column?

Ada, Agnes’s sweet younger sister, spends much of the season acting as a buffer between Agnes and Marian. Early in the season, she briefly reconnects with an old flame from her youth, only for Agnes to send him packing after correctly pegging him as a gold digger. Ada also does her best to counsel Marian to be wise, especially in her relationship with Tom.

In the end, Ada is the one who figures out that Marian plans to elope with Tom, and she tries to point out the flaws in the plan. When Marian winds up heartbroken, Ada does her best to support her niece and help her move forward.

Bertha’s entire arc through Season 1 is all about joining the most exclusive social circles of New York City. It takes her a while to get there, with her earliest attempts failing miserably due to society’s disdain for her and her husband’s industrial fortune. Fortunately for Bertha, she has the unwavering support of her railroad baron husband, George, and together, there’s nothing they can’t do.

After leveraging the Faynes to help her get a foot in the door, Bertha slowly works her way into more and more acceptance among the old money elites. By the finale, she’s even managed to strong-arm the formidable Mrs. Astor into attending her grand ball, and she seems well on her way up in the world.

The real-life Gilded Age was defined by “robber barons” – industrialists like George Russell, whose railroad fortune is mind-boggling, but not socially “old” enough to get him and his family accepted by high society. While supporting his wife Bertha’s social ambitions, he also is ruthless in pursuit of his business interests.

When the city elite try to cut him out of a business deal, he crushes them with the might of his own fortune, leaving many dangling by a thread financially (and ruining Mr. Morris to the point that he takes his own life). George also faces down an investigation over a derailment of one of his trains, but that too ends in his favour when a rogue employee is found at fault. George, like his wife, is more successful than ever by the end of the season.

The Russells’ son starts out the season mostly in the background of his family’s life. He supports his sister Gladys as she tries to gain some independence from their parents, and he casually befriends Marian. In time, he finally gets up the courage to reveal the truth to his father. He has no interest in taking over the family industrial business, but instead wants the chance to forge his own path as an architect.

In the season finale, Larry serves as a confidant to Marian, agreeing to deliver letters to her aunts when necessary and listening to her in the aftermath of her broken engagement. Is it friendship, or is that a spark of something more between them? Only season two will tell.

Gladys Russell spends most of the season pushing back against her mother’s strict rules. All she wants is to enter society and be treated as a young woman, not a child, but her mother insists that she can’t have her coming-out ball until Bertha can fill the ballroom with New York’s elite. Her one attempt at a romance is cut short by her parents, while Oscar van Rijn tries to woo her for her money. The set-piece of the season finale is her coming-out ball, where she finally decides that she’s had enough of everyone else making choices for her.

Agnes van Rijn’s son is a charming but complicated figure. He’s keeping two major secrets: his fortune isn’t nearly what it needs to be to support his chosen lifestyle, and he’s gay. To solve both problems, he sets his sights on marrying a very wealthy and very naive young woman, and chooses Gladys Russell. With the secret help of the Russells’ vengeful maid Turner, he tries to ingratiate himself, but it doesn’t go as planned. At her coming-out ball, he tries to convince Gladys to dance with him, but she seems to finally be wising up that his intentions aren’t entirely what they seem.

Tom starts out as the sweet, if overly-persistent, lawyer who impulsively decides to follow Marian to New York to court her. As he and Marian grow closer, he also proves adept at charming his way up the social ladder. Eventually, he convinces Marian to marry him and to elope to avoid the censure of her disapproving aunts. When Marian shows up to run away together, however, he reveals that he has instead chosen to marry a wealthy heiress.