When Queen Elizabeth II died in September of 2022, it put the final season of The Crown in a strange position. Sure, we now had a decisive “end” in sight, but depicting that end would require the show to navigate the cloud of real and raw grief still hanging over some of its audience. So instead of following the monarch’s life all the way to her grave, the Netflix darling concludes with five episodes that commence with the fallout from Princess Diana’s death in 1997 and end with Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. This is undoubtedly an interesting period for the British royal family, when their popularity steeply declined. Tony Blair’s Labour Party seemed to be an existential threat, and Elizabeth lost the Queen Mother at 101 and her sister, Princess Margaret, at just 71.
Thanks to solid performances and elegant imagery, these episodes amount to a solid half-season of The Crown. But they don't quite satisfy as a final chapter. Wouldn’t it have been better to depict more, to push further forward in time? It seems a shame not to see the Diamond Jubilee, the fallout from Meghan Markle’s treatment, the opening of the Elizabeth tube line (personally speaking, a real lifesaver when you need to get from Paddington to Liverpool Street with only 15 minutes to spare), and that brilliant Olympic sketch with James Bond. But The Crown seems committed to keeping this fictionalised re-telling of events firmly in the past, focused only on the annals of history.
The penultimate episode, where Princess Margaret faces her mortality, is far and away the strongest of the bunch, and rivals the very best of the entire series. Even though The Crown depicted a myriad of complicated relationships, the one between dutiful Elizabeth and wild-child Margaret was always its heart. From Claire Foy and Vanessa Kirby to Olivia Colman and Helena Bonham Carter to Imelda Staunton and Lesley Manville, every incarnation of their bond had a true intimacy that surpassed all others. Margaret claims that she alone knows who the queen really is, recollecting a wild night they had dancing in the basement of the Ritz as the last time Elizabeth was able to break free of who people needed her to be. Staunton and Manville are gut-wrenching in their inevitable farewell as a piece of the queen dies with her sister.
Less moving but similarly fascinating is the episode devoted to her tense relationship with Prime Minister Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel, in this final stretch), whose popularity in the wake of New Labour’s landslide election and Diana’s passing far outstrips her own. It’s played for laughs, with the queen waking up in a cold sweat after having nightmares of Tony and Cherie being coronated, and the national anthem being replaced by his campaign’s signature song, D:Ream’s electro-pop anthem “Things Can Only Get Better.”
(Spoiler alert: For the past three decades, things did not, in fact, only get better).
But the staggering amount of time afforded to the Kate and William origin story makes this final stretch an often ignominious farewell. We see them briefly meet as young teens on the street, planting the seeds of young Middleton’s future ascent in both her and her ambitious mother’s heads. Episode after episode returns to their time at Saint Andrew’s University, with William (Ed McVey) enjoying a brief spell in the arms of the hard-partying aristo Lola (played with scenery-chewing aplomb by Honor Swinton Byrne) before becoming obsessed with painfully bland young Catherine (Meg Bellamy).
Only with the benefit of hindsight does their relationship seem the stuff of fairytales. And the only narrative obstacle the show can throw their way is a slightly rude outburst in a library. (We do get shots of William going for emotionally wrought jogs with his security detail.) Harry (Luther Ford) barely gets any screentime, and the notoriously strained relationship between the brothers gets short shrift; Harry’s only moment of frustration comes when he snaps at William that “to be a loveable rogue, you have actually to be loveable.” Puzzlingly, even Dominic West’s Charles is sidelined in the later episodes in favor of Kate and Will’s weak romance.
The royal family is a haphazard bunch; all have made well-documented eyebrow-raising choices. But narratively speaking, Will and Kate simply aren’t that inspiring a prospect as either protagonists or monarchs. Their real-world popularity comes from an admiration of being blandly appropriate and reliably pleasant when performing their roles, and that is not a deep well of inspiration for compelling television. As heads of state go, Queen Elizabeth was complex but dutiful, and her long reign was fascinating and filled with conflict and compromise. With King Charles at the top and William and his shiny-haired spouse set to follow, things may not get better, but they will get a hell of a lot duller.
