God save the Queen: ‘The Crown’ and Elizabeth II bring back the pomp and pageantry to say farewell

The queen is back, and now she’s leaving again. The Crown is saying goodbye, and it is also giving its queen, Elizabeth II, the farewell she deserves. Seven years have gone by since the series premiered and a lot has changed since November 4, 2016, in this series, in fictional shows generally and, of course, in the subject of the show and the reason for its success: the British royal family. After five and a half seasons (the sixth was divided into two parts), the final six episodes of the British series (available on Netflix since last Thursday) recover everything that has made the show shine over the years: the silences, the reflection, the conversations with double and triple intentions, the emotion, the looking forward with an eye to the past, the quarrels and the program’s eternal protagonist, with all her double-dealing: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

While the first four episodes of the final season were almost an obligatory price to pay to resolve Lady Di’s sad well-known fate and painted in broader brushstrokes than the usual finesse of Peter Morgan and company, now the creator has recovered his characteristic elegance to approach the next challenge: what will happen to the queen. When the series began, Elizabeth II had just turned 90 years old; she had been on the throne for six decades and was still surprisingly active. Things are different now. The queen passed away at Balmoral Castle in September 2022, 15 months before the end of the show, during the filming of this sixth and final season, and shooting was temporarily halted as a sign of mourning. Although this last season focuses on the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, the inevitable future, about which Elizabeth II was very mindful, floats throughout the season. It is resolved in the last episode in true Peter Morgan fashion (it is best to watch it not knowing anything about it beforehand); it’s all very Crown-like.

This whole final season feels like a goodbye. It’s a peek into the future. It’s hard to even focus on the present, seeing the inevitable departures of some of its main characters. These are not spoilers; after all, the show is based on real events that happened just two decades ago. Hence, the future is no longer Charles but William. The Crown’s last season gives him a role that closely resembles his real one: he’s a focused kid who isn’t hoity-toity or condescending; he’s closer to his grandmother than to his father; Diana remains in his heart, and he pursues Kate Middleton. As is always the case in The Crown and with Morgan, we will never know what is entirely true and what is created for illusion, what percentage of reality there is in fiction. But the William that we see in the show is quite consistent with what we know about the current heir to the throne. In that plot, perhaps the most surprising thing for those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the Windsors are the machinations of Carole Middleton, the mother of William’s girlfriend Kate. Such maneuvers are reminiscent of Mohamed Al Fayed’s last season and raise questions that, again, can never be resolved, namely: to what extent did the family of the current Princess of Wales angle for her to have a chance with William?

As in real life, Harry is the one who comes off worst in the show. His character hovers over the season, without having more than a small plotline at the end, but he is uncomfortable in every episode; that is, it’s very similar to what really happened to him in The Firm (as the British royal family is known in the UK). Harry reflects the title he gave his controversial memoir, Spare, published a year ago. At times he is even a parody: he is a prankster, a simpleton who is disrespectful and even rude. Elizabeth II goes so far as to ask William to be patient with his younger brother; being the second son is more difficult and has a more watered-down purpose. Even so, here, Harry is not the highly sympathetic figure that many saw in the 1990s; he is closer to an aimless blunderer. His portrayal in the show is more like the image we have of him today than the one we did back then, when he was England’s favorite orphan. William even told his brother not to dare to compare himself with Diana of Wales: “She was much worse for what she went through.” But it is another thing entirely for Harry to listen to him, his grandmother or his father.

The heir seems more liberated, less tormented, he’s lived without Diana and is less dependent on the figures of Elizabeth and Philip of Edinburgh. Along with Dominic West as Charles and Elizabeth Debicki as the Princess of Wales, in her depiction of the queen, Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth is the soul of the season. All three are nominated for Golden Globes, and the series is also up for the award in the best drama category, as well as an award in the same category at the Emmys. It is the last hurrah, the series’ final awards season.

The B-side of the well-liked monarchy is also apparent this season, from Elizabeth II on horseback or pursued by her worries and daydreams—notably the one that starts the show’s second episode, where she imagines herself dethroned by Tony Blair—to the Caribbean adventures of Princess Margaret, who also has her own exciting episode this season. As the monarch says in one episode, “People don’t want to come to a palace and get what they could have at home.” No. People want to see what goes on in the other homes that happen to be palaces. For 60 episodes, Morgan has allowed us to look into their halls and their kitchens, their toilets and their stables; now, as promised, he is bringing this work to an end. Despite calls for a seventh season to examine the most recent decades of the world’s most famous and fascinating monarchy, that does not seem likely. Not for now. The series has already been given a neat ending.

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