The Crown’s Final Season Begins With Diana’s Death, But Struggles To Convey Its Impact

It’s the end of an era. (Sort of.) The final season of Netflix’s The Crown is upon us, meaning that one of the streaming era’s most ambitious and critically acclaimed series is entering its last chapter and is, predictably, doing so on its own terms. As most people are likely aware by now, the streamer has decided to split the final season of its prestige period piece into two parts, with the first four episodes premiering this weekend and the concluding installments arriving in December. This first batch of episodes deals almost exclusively with the last months of Princess Diana’s life, from the early days of her relationship with Dodi Al-Fayed to the tragic accident that took place in Paris in the summer of 1997 and the global outpouring of emotion that followed her death. And, let’s be clear, it all certainly does make for riveting television.  

But while the first half of the season may make an excellent Diana miniseries, it’s not entirely clear that it works as a concluding installment of The Crown, a show that once had a much more sweeping scope and grander ambitions than what often comes across as simple stenography. (Or propaganda, depending on how you feel about the wildly friendly edit this season gives Charles, who is, after all, now King of England.) 

Season 6 begins eight weeks before the accident that will change the monarchy forever, as Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Charles (Dominic West) do their best to co-parent young princes William (Rufus Kampa) and Harry (Fflyn Edwards), splitting weekends and shuttling the boys between locations. The Prince of Wales has begun a campaign to convince the queen—and the country they rule—to be more accepting of his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) as Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) herself continues to watch the news reports of her former daughter-in-law’s tumultuous post-royal life and wonders if “that girl” will ever be able to find peace. As for Diana, she’s throwing herself into her charity work, and spending a great deal of time with the Al-Fayed family, whose patriarch Mohammed (Salim Daw) has basically decided that his son Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) needs to woo the former Princess of Wales, despite the fact that he’s got a fiance of his own in America. Dodi, painfully desirous of his father’s approval, agrees with shockingly little pushback. 

The season’s first four episodes (all of which were available for review) take place under an almost palpable cloud of tension and doom. We all know what’s coming, after all, and the series is counting on that fact. From their opening moments, which show us a man walking his dog in Paris as the sounds of a car crash reverberate through the night, to the careful recreation of headlines and iconic images from Diana’s summer with the Al-Fayed family, every moment feels like a countdown ticking one beat closer to tragedy. The show is particularly adept at depicting the wild heights of Diana-mania, as her name dominates every news cycle and throngs of people shout her name wherever she goes. A sequence in which she’s essentially forced to run for her life while out for gelato is particularly chilling, and each time a pack of photographers follows her from one location to another feels like a dark foreshadowing of the one chase she won’t escape from. 

Debicki, once again, is outstanding as a Diana attempting to figure out who she is now that she’s no longer (as the show frequently takes pains to point out) an HRH. Her clear and abiding love for her sons and her genuine desire to use her platform for good are frequently contrasted with her selfishness and seemingly bottomless need for male affection that leads her into the Al-Fayeds’ world in the first place. If this particular part of The Crown’s story has a major flaw, it’s that Diana doesn’t get enough screen time in her own right, and her character lacks some of the interiority we saw in earlier seasons. Instead, the show devotes a perplexing amount of time—during what is ostensibly Diana’s story—to the inner workings of the Al-Fayed family, spending as much time on Mohamed and Dodi’s toxic relationship and Dodi’s refusal to break up with his girlfriend as it does on Diana herself. 

But perhaps The Crown was always destined to struggle when it reached this particular point in its story. Series creator Peter Morgan has, after all, told a big chunk of this tragedy before in the 2006 film The Queen, which won Helen Mirren an Oscar for her towering performance as Queen Elizabeth. The season’s fourth episode inexplicably attempts a misguided recreation of that (much better) movie, only with a bizarre new shift in perspective. Look, I doubt anyone involved with The Crown wanted to step on Mirren’s toes or rehash what The Queen had already done before. But the decision to sideline Elizabeth for so much of this season—I’m pretty sure Trevor the bodyguard actually gets more screen time than she does—is just the first of many baffling framing decisions that seem to indicate the show isn’t at all too sure of what it’s trying to say about Diana, her death, or what she meant to her country. 

In this version of the story, Elizabeth feels largely superfluous to proceedings, rarely given the chance to do more than react to the choices and behavior of others. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s (Bertie Carvel) story is also similarly abandoned, and the show makes little mention of his well-documented involvement in the larger push to force the queen into rethinking the palace’s response to Diana’s death. Instead, events are largely framed from Charles’s perspective, and even occasionally from Mohamed Al-Fayed’s, in ways that often feel like direct, even purposeful contradictions to the version of this story we see in Morgan’s The Queen. (It also makes Diana’s death ultimately about its effect on various men in her life rather than its larger impact on the monarchy or even on Elizabeth herself which is also… not great!)

Of course, Morgan isn’t—and shouldn’t be—locked into telling the same tale of the House of Windsor for all time or anything, but the drastic nature of the changes between the two versions are… surprising, to say the least. In this take on events, The Crown seems determined to position Charles as the forward-thinking hero the monarchy needs, who somehow magically understands Diana’s appeal in death as he never did as a woman in life, a distinction the show itself does precious little to earn. It’s unclear whether that desire stems from sheer contrariness (it’s certainly a different angle from The Queen!) or a simple desire to flatter the new king after years of bad press. 

But the thing is, despite the many compelling aspects of these episodes, which fans will almost certainly devour in a single evening, it’s not clear what, precisely, any of this is actually trying to say. The Crown has spent most of its run wrestling with issues of duty and purpose, of the ways that personal and royal identity are hopelessly entangled, and the sacrifices everyone must inevitably make for the good of the institution they all serve. Will the back half of its final season somehow manage to integrate these initial episodes into a more cohesive commentary about the role of the monarchy in British life or explore the earth-shaking shift these weeks proved to be for the House of Windsor as a whole? One can only hope. 

The Crown Season 6, Part 1 premieres Thursday, November 16th on Netflix.

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.

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