What great comments everyone has ... I'm going to try to save this thread!
I agree Vlad, the 1840 storyline is wonderful. It's like a dark flower that just keeps closing in on itself.
Your image is one to savor, CassandraBlair ...
Lara Parker's Angelique, who redeems herself in this storyline (well, kinda).
The redemption theme does bring a note of hopefullness at the end ...
Desmond and Flora DO showcase Karlen and Bennett at their best, and I think that James Storm is really strong as Gerard. Of course Chris Pennock is wicked good as Gabriel, and although Virginia Vestoff's Samantha Collins is a nasty piece of work, you have to admit she was amazing in the role.
James Storm really is very good and becomes even better as he becomes a more confident actor, I think. To me, his evil is portrayed far more realistically than DS' other villains, who tend to arch an eyebrow and wink at the audience. The only other thing I've seen Mr. Storm do was a short scene in a soap opera about a year ago that someone here kindly alerted us to. Though his appearance was brief, his acting showed him to be an accomplished and experienced actor. Here, he's a little less experienced.
Christopher Pennock has developed as an actor at this point, too, as Birdie says.
Maybe the very ground on which the house was built was cursed even before the first Collins ever set foot in Maine.
There is a "fan" novel (which I haven't read yet, and -- of course, now it's in storage

) that deals with this premise. Can't think of the writer's name at this time ...
And did there end up being Collinses at Rose Cottage after Barnabas and Julia changed the past?
I would imagine that it remained the Magruder place. Perhaps Flora Magruder remained unmarried, living there alone upon the death of her parents until her own childless death. Just a small note to point out a
plausibility that I detected (we know there are plenty of implausibilities ...).
At first I thought it unlikely that Flora Collins would not have known about Angelique when Gabriel mentioned her in the drawing room at Collinwood. But Flora Magruder would have been about 10 years old, perhaps, in 1795 (or 1797); the Magruder estate would seem to have been rather isolated from Collinwood; and we know how the Collins family kept a tight wrap on things ... Joshua didn't want anyone outside the family at the time to know about Barnabas' and Angelique's marriage, so Flora would not likely have heard about the serving girl from the French West Indies among the servants at nearby yet remote Collinwood ....