The Crown Season 5 Recap What to Remember Before the Final Season

The Big Picture

• The fifth season of The Crown delves into the deteriorating marriage between Charles and Diana, highlighting their unhappiness and the strict policies that prevent them from legally separating.
• The press plays a major role in escalating the tensions within Charles and Diana's marriage, with intimate phone calls and Diana's controversial interview causing public humiliation and drawing more sympathy towards Diana.
• The fifth season also explores Charles' growing discontent with his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and his belief that she may no longer be fit to lead the country, leading him to conspire with the new Prime Minister to sow the seeds for her abdication.

While Netflix has rarely allowed its drama shows to reach their natural conclusion without a premature ending, the historical drama series The Crown has been given the time to achieve a fitting ending. The ambitious biographical show has chronicled the trials and tribulations of the British royal family throughout the majority of the 20th century; ironically, the Royal Family’s current activities have proven to be just as fascinating as the events that The Crown has been covering.

The Crown’s sixth and final season certainly has a lot of juicy material to work with, as the show’s fifth series brought the royal family into events that some viewers may have remembered from their own lifetime. Season 5 of The Crown forced the family to answer a question that they had never been faced with before; in a world that seems to keep setting tradition aside, are they even relevant anymore?

The Crown

Follows the political rivalries and romance of Queen Elizabeth II's reign and the events that shaped the second half of the 20th century.

A Divorce Rocks the Royal Family in 'The Crown' Season 5

While there have been films, shows, and documentaries about the royal family in the past, The Crown was able to encapsulate a more well-rounded (and much longer) history of their reign due to its ambitious story structure. The show’s first two seasons were set between 1947 and 1964, with Claire Foy and Matt Smith in the roles of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, respectively; the central pair was recast with Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies for the third and fourth seasons, which covered events from 1964 to 1990. These seasons introduced a young Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor), who set aside his proposed marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles (Emerald Fennell) in order to marry the much younger Princess Diana (Emma Corrin).

The fifth season picks up with an older Charles (Dominic West), whose marriage to Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) has completely deteriorated. The couple is at odds with each other constantly, as they both feel unfulfilled by the nature of their service. Diana feels that life under the spotlight of the media gives her no proper way to raise her children, and does not feel like she fits in with the traditions laid out by Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton) and Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce). Charles feels that he should be helping to shape the country as a modern nation so that he can succeed as King; he’s also still madly in love with Camilla (Olivia Williams), and feels that he is being denied the happy marriage that he truly desires. Both Charles and Diana are unhappy, but the royal family’s strict policies on marriage have prevented them from being legally separated.

Charles and Diana’s marriage frequently becomes targeted by the press, who exaggerate every detail of their relationship, making it even more difficult for the couple to reason with each other. Things escalate in 1993 when the press uncovers an embarrassing series of intimate phone calls that reveal details about Charles and Camilla’s relationship; Charles is publicly humiliated, and the public is drawn even further to Diana’s side. Diana also gives a very controversial live, televised interview to the journalist Martin Bashir (Prasanna Puwanarajah) in 1995. Diana discusses her grievances with the royal family, which inspires Charles to finally push for an official divorce the following year.

There’s also a new potential love in Diana’s life, Season 5 chronicles how Mohamed al-Fayed (Salim Dau) and his son, Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) came from poverty in Egypt to become powerful businessmen in England. Diana is first introduced to Mohammed at the Royal Windsor Horse Show and begins to strike up a friendship with Dodi. The season ends with Mohammed inviting Diana to spend a summer vacation with them in Saint-Tropez. This foreshadows the romantic relationship that Diana will develop with Dodi, whom she was dating at the time of her death in 1997.

'The Crown' Season 5 Questions Whether the Royal Family Is Relevant Anymore

While the faults in his marriage are Charles’ primary reason for arguing with his mother, he begins to believe that she may no longer be fit to lead the country. Queen Elizabeth II’s affinity for tradition has fallen out of favor with the public; it doesn’t seem like average civilians find the same value in the crown itself anymore. Charles begins conspiring with the new Prime Minister, John Major (Jonny Lee Miller) to sow the seeds for the Queen’s abdication. Although Majors loses the 1997 election to Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel), Charles visits the nation’s new leader in China to give a speech regarding the handover of Hong Kong. Among the major events in his meeting is the official decommissioning of the family’s private yacht, Britannia.

Decommissioning the Britannia is yet another sign to the Queen that she is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Earlier in the season, a fire in Windsor Castle destroyed 115 rooms and burned countless priceless artifacts and works of art that had been in the family for generations. Elizabeth notes that she feels like she herself is being decommissioned as she spends a final moment alone on the yacht. However, the Queen is not willing to give up entirely, especially as Charles begins to conspire against her. Elizabeth is enraged that Charles met with Blair before she did, and reminds him that he has not yet succeeded her. They continue to bicker about Charles’ relationship with Camilla, who he plans to wed. While the Prime Minister and the British public appear to support Charles’ happiness, the Queen refuses to give her consent.

The sixth season of The Crown will pick up after Charles’ meeting with Blair in 1997 and continue up until 2005 (when Charles and Camilla were officially married). Although the real-life passing of Queen Elizabeth II certainly casts a shadow over the events of the upcoming season, it doesn’t appear that The Crown will cover any of the royal family’s activities within the last few years. The Crown is a unique series that has done a great job of humanizing historical figures who often feel impersonal. While The Crown doesn’t always cast the royal family in a positive light, it does seek to understand what motivated them.

All seasons of The Crown are available to stream on Netflix in the U.S. Part 1 of the sixth and final season is set to premiere on November 16, with Part 2 premiering on December 14.

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