DISCLAIMER: This review of Netflix’s The Crown Season 6 Part 1 contains spoilers.
Fans said their final bows to Queen Elizabeth and The Crown this week, drawing the story of Her Majesty to its close.
The Netflix show focuses on the harrowing losses in the Queen’s life towards the latter half of her reign and the public emergence of Prince William following his mother’s death. It highlights the emerging tensions between family members, as well as the media, that are so palpable today. And after six seasons, viewers are presented with the same issues that have plagued the royal family since its beginning: the inability — or lack of desire — to truly change.
As such, the series finale to Peter Morgan’s The Crown ends bittersweet and incomplete. Typically, stories are meant to end with a lesson learned, and as much as we adore Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) and feel sorrow over her clear regrets, it doesn’t seem that the Royal Family learned anything.
Reforms are presented to the Royal Family upon their request — this time by Prime Minister Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel)— then they are unwilling to change. They chalk it up to the need for tradition and that the public wants to see the monarchy as an ideal, not as the reality they are forced to live in. Once again, we see how terribly wrong they are.
RELATED: Check out our review for The Crown Season 6 Part 1!
The World, Post-Diana
The second part of season 6 picks up where episode four ended, soon after the death of Princess Diana. Unsurprisingly, the show focuses on the young princes William (Ed McVey) and Harry (Luther Ford), whose present-time tenseness has dominated every Google search of “royal family” for the past five years. During the run of this half of the season, they are coming out of boyhood and in mourning.
Notably, their tensions run parallel to that of Vanessa Kirby’s Princess Margaret and Claire Foy’s Queen Elizabeth in the first two seasons of The Crown. William, overcome by the burden of being the eldest and heir to the throne, is bombarded by the press and the attention he loathes because of how it affected his mother. Meanwhile, Harry is retaliating against the world because he is “the spare.” He drinks and parties because he doesn’t feel needed in the family as the second-born son other than for entertaining purposes. Despite neither being the other’s fault, there is clear discontent that foreshadows where the brothers stand today.
A notable aspect of this season is the relationship between the Queen and Prince William. Struggling with his father, William relies on his grandmother for guidance as he begins to gain public attention. Unlike Charles, she truly sympathizes with him and does everything she can to shield him from his public duties until after University.
As such, he is able to form a relationship with Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy), without too much of the ever-prying eye of the people. Their young love is likely the only pure part of the season.
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The Loss of Sisterhood
The most powerful scenes this season come from Princess Margaret as she approaches the end of her life. Since the beginning of The Crown, I have felt sympathy for Princess Margaret. She is brash, loud, and eccentric — all qualities I adore in a woman, especially considering her generation. Continually, she receives the brunt end of the stick for her sister. She lost the man she loved, her freedom, and her direction. However, she proved to be her most loyal companion and friend, a true testament to sisterhood.
Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) dies at 71, leaving the Queen without this companion for nearly 30 years. Bearing witness to her painful death is gut-wrenching, as she lost her ability to walk and some of her speech from strokes and injuries. Watching her slow death, and how she knew it was coming, was even more saddening as she relied upon one memory to give her strength: going out with her sister at The Ritz after the end of World War II.
We meet two new actors for these flashback scenes (Viola Prettejohn and Beau Gadsdon), who eerily look like the earliest iterations of the sisters. In these memories, we see the fun-loving version of Elizabeth before she is Queen, and how she had to lock that part of her away to become the regent. In showing the death of Princess Margaret, we powerfully witness how part of the Queen died decades ago too.
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What does The Crown show for the Future of the Monarchy?
The Crown ends in 2005, many years before the Queen’s death, reuniting the three actresses who played Queen Elizabeth in the series: Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton.
I always wanted to remain a careful distance from where we are now,” Morgan, the show’s creator said. This was certainly the right move. The Crown has always dabbled in fiction for the sake of storytelling, and it didn’t need more speculation for recent scandals.
It ends with Queen Elizabeth reflecting on the decisions of her past, her morality, and whether she should abdicate the throne for Charles (which we know she does not).
There have been some complaints because the series didn’t encompass the modern issues in the monarchy. However, I believe there is power in the show ending as it did. It could not end with a sense of wholeness, because the current state of the Royal Family isn’t either.
The reality is that the monarchy will never not have drama fit for an Emmy-award-winning show. It is complex, rooted in traditions predating the printing press, and leaves its people in shambles. We have seen that since the beginning of The Crown when Queen Elizabeth’s father was forced to become king. That, in my eyes, is the purpose of the show: nothing in this system changes.
What does that mean for the future of the monarchy? Only time will tell. But if The Crown has shown me one thing, it’s that this system may not have much time left before it truly implodes.
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