There are a few royal-adjacent projects coming up in the next few months, projects I’m eagerly awaiting. It’s not that I think the book or the show will be massively groundbreaking, but I do think the Windsors’ reactions will be fascinating to watch. First up: The Crown’s final season, Season 6, which will cover the Tony Blair years, from 1997-2005-ish. Then in late November, Omid Scobie’s Endgame will finally be published. November looks to be an interesting month in how the new king’s court responds to even lukewarm criticism or historical record-keeping.
Interestingly enough, Netflix is breaking up The Crown’s final season into two parts. Part 1 is, I assume, devoted to Princess Diana’s 1997 death and the subsequent fallout for the Windsors, including something close to a constitutional crisis for QEII. Part 1 will be released on November 16. Then on December 14th, Part 2 comes out – the later Tony Blair years, where we’ll see Prince William meeting then-Kate Middleton. Peter Morgan has promised to end the series on a “high note,” meaning Charles and Camilla’s 2005 wedding. Most of the actors from Season 5 are still around, although obviously they hired new, older actors for William, Harry and Kate.
Here’s the new teaser trailer. They also released two posters – the one of Diana in that turquoise swimsuit is so iconic and heartbreaking.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Netflix/The Crown.
-
- Actors Ed McVey, as Prince William and actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews, Scotland. Featuring: Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy (Playing Prince William and Kate Middleton) Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 16 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
-
- Actors Ed McVey, as Prince William and actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews, Scotland. Featuring: Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy (Playing Prince William and Kate Middleton) Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 16 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
-
- Actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, and actor Ed McVey, who plays the part of Prince William, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews in Scotland. Featuring: Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 17 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
-
- Actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, and actor Ed McVey, who plays the part of Prince William, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews in Scotland. Featuring: Meg Bellamy Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 17 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
-
- Actress Meg Bellamy, who plays Kate Middleton, and actor Ed McVey, who plays the part of Prince William, film scenes for the next season of The Crown in St Andrews in Scotland. Featuring: Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy Where: St Andrew’s, United Kingdom When: 17 Mar 2023 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
A high note ending. I dont think so. And why anothet rehash of william and Kate the university years. I hope Diana is given better writing than she got last season.
Agreed. The writer did Diana dirty last season. The scene at the hospital where she first meets the doctor she fancied was so cringe inducing.
I do wish the creators hadn’t given in to palace pressure.
This ^^
Yep and they’ve given in to the pressure for nothing because they are still going to get flooded with terrible tabloids articles.
Camilla and Charles getting married is not a high note. I wonder if they will include the fact Harry and William asked Charles not to marry Camilla.
Season 5 was a total suck up to the Palace so can’t be bothered watching.
The season left out Diana’s working on causes and charities and just had scenes of her moping around. It was so bad. And khan did not stop Diana after the Bashir interview. Diana broke up with him in 1997.
@Tessa – yes, as I recall Diana had started seeing Dodi at that point and Khan suspected she was involved with someone else. It was just days before she left for the Fayed yacht trip and it was clear Khan would not/could not handle the press intrusion into his life if they announced their relationship or married. I hope the new season doesn’t whitewash out all the charity work she was doing but last season was pretty bad, more like a silly soap opera.
I’ll probably watch, but I’m not feeling much anticipation. After the tongue bath Peter Morgan gave Chucky Boy in the last season, and after the dismissive treatment of Diana, I really don’t have much hope that this season will be any better. The “high note” will be for monarchists and royalists, not anyone who wants a more nuanced view of the Windsors.
Agree completely. The appeal of the series from the get-go was that it was a more critical view, a more nuanced view of this family that the british press currently has on a very high pedestal (until they want to tear them down again.) And it covered some insider details that the general public might not have known or remembered (the Tommy Lascelles storyline, Princess Anne having a relationship with Andrew Parker Bowles, etc.)
Ending it with the Charles-Camilla wedding as a “high note” just tells me they are taking a very royalist view of the situation, and that’s disappointing.
Same. I’ll watch it begrudgingly. Last season was so cowardly. And I thought Elizabeth Debecki was a disappointing Diana. Too waifish.
I didn’t even finish last season and I have zero desire to watch this one. To busy enjoying Suits.
@Cessily
Ditto for me.
Didnt finish watching last season altho its still listed in my “Continue Watching….” row. I dont know if I’ll ever go back to it.
As for season 6: I’ll look at it, for sure. Whether or not I’ll watch it all, depends on whether or not the perspective comes from a monarchist’s lens or the lens of a true storyteller.
If the former…..then it’ll be a ‘no’ for me.
Will the writers go there and report the queen mother did not want a c and c wedding in her lifetime.
Are they going to include kate absolutely stalking will cause I’d watch that
Nope, after the way they portrayed Diana, and the inaccuracies in the last seasons showing, I won’t be watching. It will be stomach churning sugary mulch when it comes to Billy and banal. I wonder if they will show the other people at the University who call keen “Williams mattress”, or Billy saying, what he likes about keen is she’s “always avaliable” when he WANTS her. NO? Me neither.
Maybe the Netflix boffins should do a Saville programme, then we can watch HRH the King of sleaze, cosying up to the other sleaze, and even sending a special “lord representative”, to the sleezes funeral!!
LOL! billy and banal! Where you guys get this stuff? Comedians all.
Netflix has a show about Jimmy SaVile. It’s called Jimmy Savile: a British Horror story. It’s a docu and not the easiest watch. I’m hoping one of the streamers picks up this BBC show, altho idk if I can get through it. He was so awful.
Yeah, I remember Khate and Pippa were referred to as “the wisteria sisters” back then because they were such blatant social climbers. Will they cover Khate *borrowing* other students’ notes and copying papers to barely pass exams? Will they cover Peg sending his RPO’s to pick “the mattress” up for a shag after clubbing all night? Or her constant dipping work every time he called? Or Khate climbing drunkenly out of limos and flashing her lady bits? I think it will be completely sanitized into “young love” crap.
I saw a lot of comments on Reddit that they didn’t like the last season, but couldn’t explain why. So, even the people, who didn’t follow the palace pressures, felt that there was something wrong. I think after what happened with previous seasons where people left Diana notes under Camilla’s social media posts, the palace found a way to get to the creator, so it was a total snooze fest. I don’t think I will watch this season, quit watching the last season when it turned into Charles fanfic.
I guess i was 9 or so when Diana got married. I remember news clips, etc.
So all the stuff before was new to me, more or less and i enjoyed the show.
But after watching charles and camilla gaslight and use a teen girl – i lost the will to watch it.
I know what happens next- it is disgusting on the part of the royals, and tragic for the Princess of Wales. I don’t want to rewatch it.
I remember ending a movie and popping out the vhs to find a breaking news bulletin that she had just died in a car crash, i woke up a roommate b/c i couldn’t quite believe what i was seeing was real.
The queen was frankly colonial garbage. and all of her heirs should have to get minimum wage jobs and their wealth should be sent back to the commonwealth countries it was stolen from.
I haven’t even finished Season 5 yet. I just couldn’t get through it despite it being the 90s and arguably the most “busy” time for the royals in their personal lives.
I will finish S5 and watch S6 eventually but I’m no longer super excited about the show.
My feelings exactly.
Season 5 was so tepid and royal-ass-kissy.
NOT WATCHING A SINGLE MINUTE. After last season’s handjob for Charles, I can only imagine how lovingly they will treat W&K, not to mention, Charles and his sidepiece. Nope. And I don’t even want to think about how they might treat Diana’s death.
Season 5 felt like C and W were in the writer’s room. They really tried to paint Diana out to be paranoid and childish like she was only thinking about dating the doctor when her friend was dealing with her husband’s health issues. Come on, you guys, this is part of the liberaties the writer’s take to create the narrative they want. It’s unfortunate that narrative is now in alignment with what the palaces want as opposed to a more nuanced view. That was a pure character assassination. They could have just left in the part about Diana leaning too much on William post divorce and it would have made Diana a more nuanced character. They didnt need to become tampongate apologists
The thing is Diana leaning on william too much is from Charles spin. The ones that bring it up are Charles fans including penny and Ingrid. William was at school Diana kept busy with her charities she had her friends to confide in like Elsa and Rosa. I doubt the series will go there and show how Charles used his sons to promote Camilla. Headlines like Diana’s sons accept camilla.
They lost me around season 3-4. I haven’t watched season 5 and have no desire to do so. Sad what a nosedive the show took.
Same here, season 3 was a slog to get through, and a few episodes into season 4 I was already starting to sense that they were going to pull their punches regarding Diana’s experiences in order to portray Charles and the monarchy in a better light, so I lost interest in the whole thing.
Elizabeth Debicki has done much better work. The script was not kind to her. Loved her in “The Night Manager “, she deserves better.
I couldn’t finish the last season. This bro is using Diana. Not watching new eps at all.
I WILL be reading all of Kaisers’ coverage tho lol.
Netflix has taken to split their releases into 2 parts, a month apart. Some astute people have pointed out that it keeps subscribers going another month as they are apparently hemorrhaging subscribers. That makes sense to me.
I’m rewatching the whole series now and losing interest again in season 5. I think they chose the wrong actress for Diana here and the script seems off. Also, I can’t get behind the actor playing Charles – the two characters seem like they’re acting in a bad play.
Hopefully this last season will be better…
I’m not excited. They did Diana dirty and really tried to uplift Charles and Camilla’s relationship last season to suck up to the royal family after the reaction season 4 caused the public to have toward C&C. Now they are ending on a high note being Charles and Camilla’s wedding??? The public was not super excited about this wedding in real life but OK I get it. History is being rewritten so Romeo and Juliet Windsor get their happy ending and the creator will probably get knighted or whatever for this revisionist history making it to screen. I’ll skip it.
The last season ruined the part that most people were waiting for because it was very one sided and pro Charles. It really deflates anticipation for the last season. And it is doubtful they will cover with any accuracy the William and Kate stuff. If they truly set up the stalking and cheating properly I would be shocked. As it stands this looks to be as false as the lifetime movies.
S5 was such a let-down. I’m not sure I’ll even tune in for the final season.
I think as the Queen started to decline that the direction of The Crown changed. I remember saying on this board that Jemima Goldsmith pulled out because she felt the script misrepresented Diana and then we got the mess that was series 5 which dropped like a lead balloon.
It was clear that Chuck’s huge hissy fit after series 4 tempered the writing for Season 5 and I get it. No matter who you are in the UK you really don’t want to piss off the establishment.
I can see that series 6 is going to go someway to rehabilitating Charles and Camilla’s image, and regurgitating the crap BRF line post Martin Bashir and the BBC, which is sad because there was a real opportunity here for some good story telling and to show us how the institution chewed Diana and spat her out.
I also think the casting of Dominic West was a huge mistake as he just didn’t translate well as Charles.
Season 5 ruined this show. It’s done for me.
Diana was renowned for her charity work and causes. However this fictional Diana was seen moping around her home while a tribute to Charles charity work took up a significant part of an episode. But no tribute to Diana’s charity work
Such blatant bias.
Jemima Goldsmith, who was a friend of Diana’s, left the Crown as an Adviser for the script because she said they were trashing Diana’s memory and inaccurate; so be prepared for a hacket job on Diana especially and a Royal sycophantic fantasy on the remaining ‘working’ Royals.
I not planning to watch this as Suits and Harry and Meghan docuseries and Invictus are worth a re-watch and get their numbers up again!