‘The Crown’ Season 6, Part 2 review: A slow, sullen march to the end
After six seasons covering decades of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign from the 1940s to early 2000s, The Crown has finally abdicated its throne.
While the first part of Season 2 was dedicated to the final days of Princess Diana, the second focuses on the young Prince William, the future British monarch, deaths within the Royal Family, planning for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, Charles and Camilla’s marriage, and Tony Blair’s run as prime minister. In other words, it’s relatively dry compared to the rest of The Crown.
The final episodes of Peter Morgan’s Netflix series, directed by May el-Toukhy, Erik Richter Strand, Alex Gabassi, and Stephen Daldry, benefit from superb performances from Imelda Staunton and Lesley Manville as the Queen and Princess Margaret. However, the close of The Crown feels rather slow-going, with the monarchy still languishing in its struggle with popular opinion and the series hanging its buzzy hopes on the university love story between Prince William (Ed McVey) and Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) during William’s height of teen fandom in the early 2000s.
The closer The Crown gets to the present, the less interesting it feels, its signature style as a lavish period piece fading within the palace walls — and bolstered with creative Decisions (read: ghosts). It’s no wonder Season 6, Part 2’s standout episode is one that flits between golden memories of the past and the cold reality of the present, giving us some of that gorgeous period opulence that defines the show’s earlier seasons.
Of course, the series finale is worth your time for a few surprises which I won’t spoil here, but suffice to say you could very well watch the one standout episode “Ritz” and the finale and call it a day.
The Crown is at its best when history-adjacent
It’s become one of The Crown‘s signature marketing draws: How will the series cover that moment? Will they even address it? Though by absolutely no means a historical account, The Crown has moved through decades of history over its six seasons, from the Great Smog of London in 1952 in Season 1, to the Aberfan disaster of 1966 in Season 3, through to the rise and fall of Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War in the ’80s in Season 4, and of course, the death of Princess Diana in the ’90s in Season 6.
Unfortunately, the final part of The Crown does very little with history beyond the drama within Buckingham Palace and the love story bubbling in Scotland’s University of St Andrew’s. The major world history moments of Season 6, Part 2 are largely channeled through Blair (Bertie Carvel, who survives an extremely gaudy use of surrealism in episode 2). The season travels through the wars in Kosovo and Iraq, the September 11 attacks, and the investigation into Diana’s death (“Will this subject never rest?” asks the Queen Mother (Marcia Warren) on her deathbed, as the news heralds the inquiry).
To answer the “will they do it?” question for this season, yes, The Crown includes scenes of Prince Harry wearing the Nazi costume and the fallout — and instead of the Duke of Sussex’s own version of the story from Spare (in which both William and Kate allegedly encouraged him to wear it), The Crown has William egging Harry on but has Kate showing concern. It’s an uncomfortable series of events.
But it’s no coincidence the best episode of Part 2 splits its time between the past and the present.
The standout episode of Season 6, Part 2
After a line of episodes centred around a grieving William at college, and Blair lecturing the Queen about the monarchy’s anachronistic financial excess, there’s one standout episode in Part 2, revolving around the relationship between the Queen and Princess Margaret.
In episode 8, “Ritz”, Manville and Staunton give deeply compelling and moving performances, as they both navigate Margaret’s declining health. Their scenes together imbue the pair with the same complicated relationship as Claire Foy and Vanessa Kirby in Seasons 1 and 2, and Olivia Colman and Helena Bonham Carter in Seasons 3 and 4, and their frank practicality gives us some of the only moments of comedy in The Crown. But here, The Crown does what it does best: jumping into a little history, moving between the present and a fateful night on May 8, 1945: V-E Day, when two teen princesses hit the dancefloor at the Ritz. (Viola Prettejohn, who plays a teen Elizabeth, is an absolute dead ringer for Claire Foy.)
There’s a nice touch in this episode in the credits, with the sound of the original Crown Margaret, Kirby, singing “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”, which appeared as a duet with King George VI (Jared Harris) the night he died in Season 1, episode 2. And it’s moments like these that make the longevity worth it for fans of The Crown.
When William met Kate in The Cro…sorry I dozed off
The most anticipated element of the season is undoubtedly the burgeoning romance between Prince William and Kate Middleton in the early 2000s, nobly acted by newcomers McVey and Bellamy. But amid the on-campus, soapy awkwardness, their story feels both stagnant and saccharine, while taking some strong liberties with how the pair first met (The Crown adds a scene that could divide viewers in this respect, and it has to do with Diana).
It certainly holds no candle to other romance narratives on The Crown — nothing can really beat the doomed love story of Margaret and Peter Townsend, or the early “Wildest Dreams” romance of Elizabeth and Philip in Season 1. Granted, The Crown does include the requisite fashion show scene, which is as gloriously over-the-top Y2K style as you’d expect. It’s this season’s “The Dress” moment.
But ultimately, the final moments of The Crown are reserved for Queen Elizabeth II herself. In the final episode, The Crown hints toward the Queen’s death with the poignant, consistent sound of “Sleep, Dearie Sleep”, the piper’s lament that would play at her actual funeral in Sept. 2022. With an impeccable Staunton at the slow-going helm, the final episodes of The Crown grapple with the ongoing role of the Royal Family and the Queen herself, in a time when the institution continues to be publicly scrutinised and exposed. But more than that, the Queen asks these questions of herself, in a conversation entirely fabricated but intriguing to watch.
It’s been a long road, but we’re finally at the end of The Crown, a series that attempted to cover a enormous amount of ground, took many a historical liberty, imagined private conversations that plagued the paparazzi, and handed many an actor a role of a lifetime. But like the overt metaphor of the royal yacht, Britannia, in Season 5, it’s time for the series — and all of us — to let The Crown go.
How to watch: The Crown Season 6, Parts 1 and 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
