The Crown season 6, part 2 review: Finally free of Diana, the show bows out early
The eventual death of Queen Elizabeth hangs over the last episodes of Netflix's drama
TV Reviews Diana
The Crown has reached its end, its obvious conclusion: the death of Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton). Just kidding. That would have made sense! But no, the finale wraps up in 2005, at the wedding of Charles (Dominic West) and Camilla (Claudia Harrison). The episode’s title, “Sleep Dearie, Sleep,” is named for the song that was played at Elizabeth’s funeral in 2022, and much of this last batch of episodes (which drop December 14 on Netflix) does a lot of nodding and winking at future events that The Crown will never portray.
It’s an odd choice. Creator Peter Morgan has described the show as a love letter to the queen, and as such, it would have made sense for the show to conclude with the end of her reign. Instead, it manufactures an endpoint 17 years before her death but with the specter of mortality hanging over everything as Philip (Jonathan Pryce) and Elizabeth’s advisors pressure her to plan her funeral.
Though the finale does have a real sense of closure to it—both Claire Foy and Olivia Coleman show up for a grand sendoff—part two as a whole opens new storylines it never intends to wrap up. William (Ed McVey) meets Kate (Meg Bellamy) at university, but there is very little introspection into the nature of their relationship. Indeed, Kate essentially has no personality at all. And while The Crown does take care to reveal how Machiavellian Carole Middleton (Eve Best) was in plotting her daughter’s proximity to the future King of England—Kate calls her worse than Mrs. Bennet—it never really examines the problematic nature of her manipulations. What she did was not so different from how Mohamed Al Fayed (Salim Daw) pushed Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) together, but Carole Middleton is a nice white lady, so The Crown seems more inclined to give her a pass.
And then there’s the Harry of it all. Newcomer Luther Ford plays him from the immediate aftermath of Diana’s death in late 1997 until the wedding in 2005, when Harry was 13 to nearly 21, and let’s just say that it’s tough for a 23-year-old actor to appropriately convey that age range. Throughout the half-season, Harry is referred to as a fuck-up, a black sheep, a likable rogue, and very clear parallels are drawn between him and Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) and the difficulties associated with being No. 2—or, as the real Prince Harry might say it, the spare. The episodes get into his Nazi costume scandal, his tussles with the press, his weed usage (the horror!), and everyone is worried. Lines are drawn between him and Charles, him and William, and even one fateful conversation with Elizabeth shows how his wishes were overridden by those of his brother. It feels like setting up dominoes for a fall we’ll never get to see. The Crown ends with Harry’s arc hanging midair, depending on us, the viewers, to fill it in with our knowledge of more modern royal history.
For all of the handwringing of royal allies about what a smear job The Crown is, anyone who watches season six has to admit that it’s basically 10 hours of rehabilitation PR for everyone currently still within the system. Camilla is described as “heroic.” Charles gets painted with a broad empathy brush, as does Philip as he leans in to help his son and grandson mend bonds. William is staunchly dutiful. Only Harry is written as a little shit. You almost wonder if Buckingham Palace had a hand in this thing.
And yet when compared to the first part of season six, the back end is mercifully freed from the presence of Diana (both alive and in ghost form). Certainly, she shows up in comparison to her boys—the worldwide obsession with William, the relentless coverage of Harry’s misdeeds—but without the character dominating every scene and conversation, The Crown is able to dive back into areas where it excels. Episode six, “Ruritania,” in particular plays quite the clever trick of having Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel) pick apart all of the out-of-touch elements of the royal establishment, only to make the case for such things with careful writing and scene construction. Sure, it doesn’t seem rational to walk away thinking it makes sense for the monarchy to have a position entirely devoted to swan care, and yet The Crown showcases what Elizabeth calls an “extraordinary array of precious expertise.” There’s an argument for the preservation of history and tradition that feels both tender and pointed. A love letter, indeed.
But the ending—which makes a grand sweeping statement about Elizabeth’s singularity, about how she alone was built for such a role and was called to see it through until her death—ultimately undercuts itself by deciding to turn the lights off before her death. That’s not to say that The Crown still had interesting things to say; it most likely did not. But as Elizabeth decides against passing the crown to Charles, it feels like a betrayal of The Crown’s thesis to determine that the final two decades of Elizabeth’s life were not relevant to her story.
The Crown season 6, part 2 premieres December 14 on Netflix
38 Comments
So…did you just completely miss that whole thing where Peter Morgan told us years ago that this is where the show would end, because he’s not comfortable with fictionalizing events with less than this much historical hindsight? He also said it’s very much a possibility that after that time has passed, he’ll do one more season about what happened afterward.
I guess I misremembered, I thought his implication was that he’d never fictionalize any events with Harry/William in the first place.
His lawyers aren’t comfortable with it, he means. Bringing it uptodate means potentially treading on the toes of people who are still alive and have their own lawyers. You couldn’t touch the whole Paul Burrell scandal, for a start. Which is a shame, because the guy is slimy as fuck and clearly had his own hand in manipulating Diana as well as stealing from the Royals.
I know that guy. He’s the one that gave Diana the FFFFFU Dress, right?
To be totally fair, if I had lawyers saying “If you write anything involving the British monarchy post-2005 you will be sued to fucking Andromeda and back by everyone and their mum,” I’d be a bit uncomfortable as well.
British libel laws are no joke.
uk laws have no standing in the us.
You do not know how libel laws work, do you?
“And while The Crown does take care to reveal how Machiavellian Carole Middleton (Eve Best) was in plotting her daughter’s proximity to the future King of England—Kate calls her worse than Mrs. Bennet—it never really examines the problematic nature of her manipulations.”Obligatory pointing out that there’s no such thing as the “King/Queen of England” and hasn’t been since 1707. That out of the way…2005 seems as good a stopping point as any. Sure, there’s a lot of juicy stuff to cover between then and now, but it’s also all stuff everyone is well aware of–and thoroughly sick of–so I don’t see much point in a mildly-to-moderately dramatized take on, say, Brexit. The show was at its most compelling by far when it covered Elizabeth’s early reign in the 1950s and 1960s. I’d have been happy if they ended it sometime during the Thatcher era. (And honestly it’s not as if the Queen did much of anything between 2005 and 2022, aside from attending the odd Jubilee and waiting for Philip and herself to die.)
TREASON!
On that last bit, her address to the nation as Covid was ramping up could have been an interesting note to hit, in the vein of her father’s famous speech. And there certainly would have been interesting material to explore regarding Harry and Megan, although I’m fine with not attempting to dramatize such very recent history.(edit: shit, seeing a comment below – I forgot about Andrew’s disgrace. That could have been interesting as well.)
Andrew still smarting from the sick burn of Charles calling him a fringe member of the royal family.
Kate essentially has no personality at allThis isn’t really all that far off from her very cultivated public image, so you can’t argue too much with it. I’ll never forget the Australian trip where the long distance shots by the pap photographers of her picking George up out of the stroller and playing with him as any new mother would unintentionally showed more life to her than anything else she’d ever done. what a smear job The Crown isI’ve said this before a number of times, but The Crown did its most compelling work when it stayed relatively close to events that actually transpired, like with Aberfan and Paterfamilias. For some strange reason, despite having demonstrated a pretty good understanding of Diana in The Queen, Morgan decided to take a very different approach in the series. Smear? No. Mediocre and boring adaptation, especially with focusing the better part of two seasons on a two dimensional version of both her and her foils? Yep. That’s not to say that The Crown still had interesting things to say; it most likely did not.I mean, this is the other real issue. Post Diana’s death, there just isn’t all that much compelling material to adapt besides the Princes and potentially Andrew destroying himself. I don’t think most viewers would care about the public workload of Anne (she really is a bit nuts with it), Sophie, and the Queen, nor the routine coordinated PR planning sessions that apparently began shortly after Diana in response for being so out of touch. I guess you could do something on Scottish independence and the very carefully phrased intervention, but there wasn’t much there to work with besides what it sounds like they did.
The closer you get to the present, the more people who are still alive and can sue you if you misrepresent them there are. Twenty years is about as close as they could go. Even then we had to skip over a lot of juicy stuff, Burrell for example, to avoid the lawyers.
I’ve said this before a number of times, but The Crown did its most compelling work when it stayed relatively close to events that actually transpired, like with Aberfan and Paterfamilias. Kinda why I stopped watching it, because the distance of history between now and the events of the Foy/Colman seasons meant they focused on the role of the monarchy in the context of a wider world. Once Diana turned up it really sucked the air out of the room, a goddess and a martyr who can neither be sidelined for other issues nor spoken ill of in any way or viewed with anything approaching a critical eye, and started devolving into soap opera. On the other hand, Americans and Poms did get blessed with with seeing the legendary Richard Roxburgh reprise his role as Bob Hawke. On the other, other hand, they did not show the most important and impactful moment of Chuckles and Di’s Down Under tour, which was a ride in the Big Pineapple’s Nutmobile:
Everyone wanted to see Diana, but it would have been much more dramatically interesting to have Diana never appear in the show and only depict everyone else’s reactions to her life and activities.That said, it would have deprived us of several hours of Elizabeth Debicki, so on balance I’ll allow it.
This says something probably not great about me, but when the news about Harry just up and leaving for America broke, my first thought was “this is where The Crown should end”.It’s such a perfect capstone — how much time has the show spent, over the seasons, banging the twin drums of “none of these relationships can survive because none of them are remotely normal” and “for God’s sake, someone break the cycle”? And then, at the very end, you’ve got William and Harry who both get into at least semi-normal romances, and when the whole deadly cycle of internal crushing conservatism and tradition and external suffocating press coverage starts to spin up once again, he’s finally the one to go “no, I’ve seen the ending to this story too many times, we’re not doing this” and leave.It’d be an ending that’s highly critical of the monarchy, which has never been The Crown’s style, but still. After all those impassioned speeches from Phillip and Margaret and Diana, someone finally takes action. That’s the ending.
As if they still aren’t part of the same tedious drama for decades to come
I watched the Netflix doc about Harry & Meghan and while it wasn’t that revolutionary, his happy ending in California made me both patriotic and exhilarated. What was he going to do? Be Margaret? Be Andrew? No, he ran and I think his mother would be proud. It is so bizarre that anyone judges him for not wanting to be his brother’s second/punching bag.
It’s funny because at the same time I kind of rooted for Harry to get away from the obviously toxic monarchy (insofar as I care what any of them do, which is not much), he’s also obscenely wealthy and privileged and I can only really feel > < this bad for someone with his resources and power. Like, in the context of his family? Sure. In the context of “all your wealth was stolen from other nations in the colonial era”? Fuck off, Harry.
I always thought the best thing you could say about this series is, whether you love or hate the monarchy, it doesn’t necessarily try to change your mind. Or it didn’t until these last few episodes. Any interesting conflicts are now brushed away Principal Skinner-style (“No… It’s the peasants who are wrong”), any criticism of the Royals dismissed ASAP, making for extremely tedious television.
I noticed that as early as season 4 where Ireland appears, the uncle gets blown up, and that’s it. Not a single mention of the Troubles or anything that paints Britain in a poor light like Bloody Sunday.
Yeah, honestly, that was just fucking weird. Like, I’m not expecting The Crown of all things to fully commit itself to an intensive in-depth searing analysis of all the nuts and bolts and nuances and controversies of post-war British policy towards Northern Ireland, you’d need an entire series just for that and this is basically just royal froth. But… nothing whatsoever? It was kind of a big deal for a few decades when Elizabeth was around, there.
Yeah I wasn’t expecting The Wind that Shakes the Barley, but the fact its never mentioned before or after is rather jarring as its very clearly expecting the watcher to have prior knowledge. Which is both A not good for non British viewes, and if you do know stuff, your gonna be rather unhappy.
Remember when the first two seasons crafted such a dynamic relationship between the sisters? Remember when Margaret had storylines? I haven’t watched yet, does Margaret’s death in 2001 even get a mention?
Margaret actually gets a lovely, if slightly sanitized and repetitive, sendoff that didn’t make it into this review. But the show certainly did not forget her importance to Elizabeth in the final episodes.
Margaret’s death even get a mention?How about the Queen Mother? They died a few months apart.
she’s mentionned; pretty briefly
There was an entire episode devoted to Margaret’s illness and death and a flashback to VE Day, with Claire Foy, showing a maybe 16 year old Elizabeth out with Margaret, showing how close they were. It was lovely and I was tearing up quite a bit.The stuff about Will and Kate was boring AF. I don’t know where they found the actor to play Harry, but I’m pretty sure he would have been a great Weasley in the HP films. Also, why did pre Diana death Harry look like a 12 year old, and post death, like a month later, he was as tall as William. I loved the last episode with Claire and Olivia Colman showing up to scold Elizabeth for even thinking about stepping down. It was a lovely book end to the series. If that was the actual speech Elizabeth gave at Charles and Camilla’s wedding, the old girl was hilarious. Even if it wasn’t, it showed off her sense of humor.
it’s not Claire Foy it’s the actress playing the teenager elisabeth (not sure if she appeared before)
She got a whole episode! JFC. Watch then comment.
The drop in quality from Abberfan to Ghost Diana sure was massive.
1) In the caption with Charles and Camilla, it says it’s Dominic West and…Claudia Harrison? No, that’s Olivia Williams. Claudia Harrison plays Princess Anne.2) Meg Bellamy is quite attractive, but I think this is the only time in the entire show where the actor playing the real person is actually LESS attractive than the actual person… (tossup between Diana and Elizabeth Debicki; you could also make the case that Matt Smith is less attractive than the young Philip, who was a legit looker)
Matt Smith looks like a caveman, so that’s no contest.
They really said “you could make the case” like Matt Smith doesn’t look like Frankenstein’s fucking monster.
It’s finally over? Now we can stop simping for inbred white people who earn a fuckton of money for doing nothing?
Just kidding.
That will never happen.
I get the criticism, I really do… I just disagree that it needed to end with her death. I feel they went with it ending – all through the last episode – with her contemplating her death, and conversations with younger versions of herself was a nice way to do it. Through the show, and I think from my reading of her actual life, there was a differentiation in her mind between her being “The Queen” and her being Elizabeth… and in the end, it was her role that pulled her. Charles’ second marriage, and her allowing it, was a part of being a supportive mother, but over it all, it was colored by what “The Queen” SHOULD do.
Everyone dies eventually, but I feel none of us have to consider the format, and the planning, quite like she did. So, leaving it with her and her past selves looking at what would eventually happen, but not depicting it, I think was a nice way to finish.
I always found this show best when it focused on Elizabeth. I didn’t have a high opinion of S5 for exactly that reason. I wanted to like Staunton in her turn as the queen, but we didn’t get to see her finally shine until the back half of the final season (as compared to Foy and Coleman, who didn’t have to deal with focus being stolen from them so severely as all the Diana drama did). I would have preferred S6 actually start with Diana’s death so we could have had more time with Staunton’s Elizabeth, but I guess I’ll be glad for what we did get at the end here.Speaking of Coleman and Foy, I really enjoyed their cameos at the end. Those moments with Staunton really did work so well. I haven’t been as riveted by this show since “Fagan” in S4.