Will and Kate’s romance; Diana's death; a Royal wedding. Here’s what we’ll see in season 6. Photo / Netflix
Will and Kate’s romance; Diana's death; a Royal wedding. Here’s what we’ll see in season 6. Photo / Netflix
All good, and some bad, things must come to an end, and this week brings the sixth, and final, season of Netflix’s The Crown. Expectations are, as ever, high, but tempered by the knowledge that the fifth series of the royal behemoth was not its best, despite a starry cast that included everyone from Imelda Staunton (as the Queen) and Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip to Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana and – to widespread, and rather unfair, ridicule – Jonny Lee Miller, Trainspotting’s Sick Boy himself, as John Major.
It attracted criticism for rushing storylines and (even by its own standards) inventing outrageous scenes, such as a moment in which Prince Charles asks Major if he’d be willing to back him in trying to compel his mother to abdicate. Yet at its best, it was as gripping and moving as any of the earlier instalments, keeping viewers intrigued right up until the end and anxious to see how its conclusion would pan out.
Despite initial plans for six series, writer Peter Morgan announced that the fifth would be its last, presumably ending with the death of Diana in August 1997. While he was writing the script, he said, it “became clear… that this is the perfect time and place to stop.” He subsequently reconsidered again, and so The Crown aficionados can now look forward to their final fix as the first four episodes are released on Netflix this Thursday 16 November. The final six episodes will then be released on December 14.
But what else can we expect? It has been announced that the show will begin almost exactly where the fifth series ended, in the summer of 1997, and then will conclude in 2005, before the end of the Blair premiership. So here’s a guide to what (probably) will be in the sixth series of The Crown, and what (definitely) won’t.
Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana in The Crown season 6. Photo / Instagram
This is, as they say, the big one. As the trailer for season six Part 1 reveals, the pivotal focus of at least the early part of the series is going to be the events of 31 August 1997 and the fall-out from the death of Diana in Paris. Morgan is in a double bind with this storyline; not only did it form the basis of his acclaimed 2006 film The Queen, but given the show’s reputation for playing fast and loose with facts, it is feared that if there is to be one jaw-dropping piece of provocation in the final series, it will come in this strand.
The fourth season, after all, ended with Prince Philip appearing to threaten Diana, saying if she left the Royal Family “let’s just say I can’t see it ending well for you”, only for her to reply “I hope that isn’t a threat, sir.” While the hysterical claims of the late Mohamed al-Fayed that Diana’s death was orchestrated by Philip in coordination with the security services have long since been debunked, even the slightest hint of sensation or scandal is going to be watched carefully, and jumped on.
The show’s producers, knowing the risks, have denied that there will be any such tastelessness. The executive producer Suzanne Mackie spoke about the depiction of Diana’s death – which will not be shown on screen – at this summer’s Edinburgh TV festival, and said: “There was a very, very careful, long, long, long conversation about how we do it - and I hope, you know, the audience will judge it in the end, but I think it’s been delicately, thoughtfully recreated.” There was obvious unease on set during its production; one source commented to the Hollywood industry title Deadline: “We’ve been dreading getting to this point. The countdown is two weeks and while we’re calmly carrying on it’s fair to acknowledge that there’s a certain anxiety; a palpable sense of being slightly on edge. I mean, there’s bombshell sensitivity surrounding this one.”
But it seems unlikely that the series will entirely avoid accusations of insensitivity; another report in The Sun claimed we would see a French priest administering the last rites to Diana as she’s pronounced dead in an open coffin.
Dodi and Diana on the yacht
Khalid Abdalla as Dodi in The Crown season 6. Photo / Instagram
Whether or not it gets a full episode to itself, Morgan will clearly continue the story of Diana’s romance with Dodi al-Fayed, since in the trailer we see Diana open a gift box with a note inside, reading simply, ‘Paris?’. The story began in the final episode of the fifth season, which ended shortly before the media frenzy occasioned by the relationship really took off. The photographs of the two of them together on the yacht Cujo in July 1997 travelled around the world, ending up on the front page of virtually every newspaper – whether by chance or with the connivance of Dodi’s father – and turned a previously obscure Egyptian film producer and dilettante into one of the most talked-about men in the world.
BJP National General Secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Dushyant Kumar Gautam pays tribute to the martyrs on the 103rd anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh massacre on April 13, 2022. Photo / Getty Images
The Crown has always excelled at episodes which show the Royals dealing with wider social and historical issues; the third series’s Aberfan, dealing with a tragedy in a Welsh mining village, was particularly strong in this regard. It would seem obvious, then, for one episode to focus on the controversy that occurred when the late Queen and Prince Philip visited the site of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in October; the event, otherwise known as the Amritsar massacre, took place in then-British India on April 13 1919 and saw a peaceful protest being disrupted by the British army firing on unarmed civilians.
The scars left by the killing – which resulted in the deaths of as many as 1500 innocent people – ran deep and when the royal couple visited the site, furious protesters heckled the pair with cries of “Killer queen, go back”. Tensions were defrayed by the Queen laying a wreath and removing her shoes at the now-sacred site. Nonetheless, her expression of regret – which fell short of an apology – did not placate some, and so it would seem to be rich and fertile dramatic territory for exploration.
William and Kate’s courtship
In the sixth and final season of the Netflix hit, the love story between Prince William and Kate Middleton, who met in college in 2001, will be explored. Photo / Netflix
It is already known that one episode is going to focus on Prince William and Kate Middleton’s courtship at St Andrews University, where they met in 2001; the duo will be played by newcomers Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy, both of whom bear an uncanny resemblance to the royal couple, and filming took place in many of the locations where the two famously spent time, including in St Andrews itself.
But we don’t know exactly what will be included in the show. It’s likely that the infamous fashion show where Kate wore a sheer dress over her underwear – reportedly prompting Prince William in the audience to exclaim, ‘Wow, Kate’s hot’ – will be recreated, and it’s also probable that it will focus on the ups and downs of their relationship, which included William apparently shouting “I’m free!” after the couple went on a temporary break before reconciling.
Yet it’s not clear as to whether Kate’s parents Carole and Michael will be portrayed in the show, nor how far into the future the depiction of them will go. Given that William and Kate were not engaged until 2010, there is a considerable disparity between their relationship’s development and the timeframe of the final season of the show.
The deaths of Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother
Hobbs says Helena Bonham-Carter, who plays Princess Margaret, is "an amazing force of nature". Photo / Netflix
It is inevitable that the two major deaths in the Royal family in this period – of Princess Margaret on February 9 2002 and the Queen Mother on March 30 2002 – will be covered during the show, and it will be fascinating to see how Morgan approaches them. The Queen Mother has, in truth, been a marginal figure throughout the show, although Victoria Hamilton was a powerful presence in the first two seasons, and Marcia Warren’s good-natured performance in the fifth series suggests that more of the same will be on show.
Margaret has been a show-stealer ever since Vanessa Kirby’s blazing, star-making portrayal of her in the first series, and the character has allowed first Helena Bonham Carter and, now, Lesley Manville to combine louche heavy drinking with a real (and understandable) sense of grievance at being the perennial ‘spare’, unable to achieve what she wants. Her emotional reconciliation with Timothy Dalton’s Peter Townsend, the love she was forbidden to marry, was one of the fifth season’s highpoints, and you wouldn’t bet against her decline being a similarly vital part of the final series, too.
The Iraq War
Queen Elizabeth II and British Prime Minister during the Millennium New Year celebrations on December 31, 1999. Photo / Getty Images
The relationship between the Queen and Tony Blair – as played by the excellent Bertie Carvel, who was introduced in the final episode of the fifth series – is likely to be one of the centrepieces of the final season, and should feature everything from Blair’s skilful (some might say cynical) management of the fraught situation after Diana’s death to the embarrassing moment on Millennium Eve when the Queen reluctantly held hands with him at the Dome and sang Auld Lang Syne.
But it would be bizarre, given the show’s time period, if 9/11 was not to be dealt with, and no doubt much of the latter half of the series will deal with the Iraq war and how it affected the relationship between Blair and the Queen. Morgan’s 2015 play The Audience suggested that she begged him not to invade Iraq, but that he ignored her advice and went ahead anyway, so we shall see if something similar is featured here. The combative relationship between the Queen and Gillian Anderson’s Margaret Thatcher was one of the highlights of the fourth season, and it would be mystifying if something similar was not to occur between Blair and Elizabeth II in this final instalment.
Charles and Camilla
Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker-Bowles and Dominic West as Prince Charles in The Crown season five. Photo / Netflix
We already know that the series will end happily for the duo, with wedding bells and a suitably upbeat conclusion to their relationship, but it is easily forgotten how tentative the first steps were in introducing Camilla to the public as Charles’s official consort after the death of Diana; given the enormous popularity of her forerunner, she was a hard act to follow. Likewise, some of the revelations in Prince Harry’s memoir Spare suggest that both he and William found it difficult to come to terms with Camilla, who was described in the book as a “wicked stepmother”, to widespread controversy and shock.
All this makes for a rich dramatic subject, which no doubt will acquire added pathos in Olivia Williams’s portrayal of Camilla. Yet Dominic West, who plays Charles, has dismissed any idea that he has tried to portray the now-King as anything other than a sympathetic and decent figure, saying in one interview that “I love the man. He’s a force for good, he really is an extraordinary man”, even as he acknowledged that this final series was “as tumultuous as it gets.”
…And what definitely won’t
Any PMs apart from Blair
Jonny Lee Miller plays former PM John Major in The Crown. Photo / Netflix
As the series will conclude in 2005 – quite possibly with the wedding of Charles and Camilla, which took place on April 8 that year – there will be no depiction of Gordon Brown, David Cameron or any of their successors, in keeping with Morgan’s desire to keep the show a historical series, rather than a running commentary on contemporary events. The following month, Blair won a third election, albeit with a reduced majority: no doubt this would be an inappropriately bittersweet conclusion to the show.
The Queen's coffin during her state funeral on September 19, 2022. Photo / AP
Not only did these take place considerably outside of the show’s timeframe, but their depiction – in a series which is likely to be heavy on deaths, anyway – would seem unnecessarily downbeat and anticlimactic, as well as being too fresh in everyone’s minds. Plus the depiction of the pomp and ceremony of the late Queen’s funeral would be budget-stretching, even for Netflix.
Meghan and Harry
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan visit One World Observatory on 102nd floor of Freedom Tower of World Trade Center. Photo / Getty Images
Although Prince Harry is a character in the sixth season – played, at various points, by Will Powell and Luther Ford – it is almost certain that his relationship with Meghan Markle will not be featuring, given that the two did not start dating until 2016; well over a decade outside the reach of this final series. And some would say, after Netflix’s Harry & Meghan series, that the streaming giant has given us all we need in that particular department to last us a lifetime, too.
