Hello! Welcome back to TV Tuesday, the first one of 2024! Today I’m going to be talking all about the sixth and final season of Netflix’s The Crown.

Here we are, the last season, split in two because Netflix wants to try and spread out the conversation? Anyways, the season starts right at the time of Diana’s death. I thought that was an interesting choice, but I also understand the choice. I feel like this will be a book end. We’re going to open the season on the accident, then spend the first half of the season building up to it, which I’m ok with. I don’t mind reserve chronology; I think it can be very effective when used the right way, and they did a good job with it here!

But anyways, after the accident scene, we’re led to eight weeks earlier, she’s with her boys, it’s the summer time. She finds herself flying out to be with Mou Mou… who I have to say, I liked last season… this one not so much. There is a lot of hidden agenda here, like wow.

I like Dodi and Diana, they make great friends to start, and if they want to be more, I’m there for it too… but Mr. Dodi has a fiancé… a fiancé his father doesn’t like, so he’s pushing Dodi to be with Diana. At first I thought it was because Mou Mou liked Diana… oh how naïve I was. It wasn’t until the Royal family is having a meeting about Diana (which can I just say is so annoying, like the poor girl has been through enough, can’t you let her go… I get they can’t because of her boys, but it all just sucks). So they’re having a meeting and that’s when we learn that Dodi doesn’t have a British citizenship and I think it’s his father who’s looking at Dodi to use Diana to gain it so he can continue to use Dodi for his business. My gosh, the manipulation.

I have to say, I still enjoyed watching their relationship build up because it looked so effortless and they both looked to be at peace with one another. I just wonder what is going to happen to Dodi’s fiancé, because he clearly hasn’t made a move to break up with her. He says he will, but is he really going to? Then they get caught kissing and well, that takes over everything.

Everyone in the Royal family is pissed and Charles thinks that if he does a photoshoot with the boys that’s going to make him look good and wholesome, whereas Diana will look scandalous. You can tell the boys, especially William, do not want to do this. They are complete mama’s boys, but it also looks like William is upset with his mother for what is in the papers.

I feel like they added the bit about the photographers after the Queen’s death because one of them says ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do once she’s gone’ and it felt more retrospective in the way it was shot, documentary style. After a little Googling, I found out that the one photographers they interviewed was the real paparazzi who first photographed Dodi and Diana kissing.

So now we’re seeing Diana struggle again. All these journalists are hounding her. Like she’s gone to Bosnia to eradicate landmines, like she walks through an active landmine field to bring awareness, and she’s trying to do interviews about it, but the news about her kiss is obviously more important. It feels so inhuman to hound someone like that.
The entire time I’m watching the third episode, all I can think of is how Diana and Dodi are driving around in cars without tinted windows, like how bizarre to me. We’re really seeing their relationship explode.

Dodi’s father wants him to rush it because once he’s engaged to Diana he will have surpassed his father in wealth and that’s all Mou Mou wants. See, I was kinda right about her boys. They read that their mother is going to marry Dodi in the papers but she tells them she’s not going to marry him… meanwhile Dodi is buying a ring.

Why did they get seated out in public like that in the restaurant? It was so awkward and wouldn’t the staff know better?

HA! Diana doesn’t even let Dodi propose, I love that. Oooo she KNOWS that it was Mou Mou behind it all, even better. But they do have a really good conversation afterwards about what makes them each happy.

OH MY GOD DODI HUNG UP THE PHONE! He said everything he ever wanted to say to his father… to a dead line. Now Diana thinks he actually did it, my gosh the deceit. Also, why didn’t his father call him back? That doesn’t make any sense, especially regarding the subject matter. Damn, so Dodi tells her he didn’t do it and she goes I KNOW?! What the heck!?

In episode four we’re dealing with the aftermath of both her and Dodi’s death. I was thinking about it, and of course Mou Mou is sad that he lost his son… but I think he played a big role in both their deaths. If he hadn’t pushed Dodi to be with Diana so hard for his own agenda, they could still be alive. Dodi wouldn’t have thought about proposing and they wouldn’t have made the detour to Paris. But here we are.

Seeing Dodi as a ghost make peace with his father was nice to see. Just like it was nice to see Diana and Charles make peace.

Charles is fighting for a Royal funeral for Diana. I like what he says, he failed her in life, he will not fail her in death. I find it bold that it’s Philip who is making all these decisions on whether she should be a Royal or not… seeing as he wasn’t one to begin with. Elizabeth is mulling over the idea. It’s when William takes off that she really starts to think about it.

Everyone is thinking it odd that the Royal family hasn’t said anything and remained silent. This family has too much pride.

I guess we’ll never really know what changed the Queen’s mind on speaking out. In the show they did a great job of giving Diana one last talk with the Queen, which is what ultimately convinced her. I like that they added real footage shots from the time; it felt authentic.    

We are now into the second part of the season, where we’re going to be focusing on Prince William and Harry. So my first thought was how long has it been since her death because both boys look so much older. Well, they say it’s right after the funeral, feels like it’s been longer. I mean, the actor who played Harry went from being a boy to a teen from start to finish…

I like the conversation on being a present father, that Camilla is pushing on Charles. I think she’s right that the boys need their father now more than ever and he needs them just as much. As much as Charles hates it, I’m really glad to see him making the effort. Obviously the first time isn’t going to be easy, but the more he does it, and the more conversations they have, hopefully the easier it’ll get.

I also like that Charles brings up the trouble the father and sons have in that family because it means he’s acknowledging that there is a problem. I like where this could be possibly heading.

Omg there was an old clip from CTV news with Lloyd Robertson, which felt like a complete flashback to anyone who is Canadian watching this.

Are we really getting Phillip getting sentimental, that’s rich. He’s now realizing the kind of father he was. Ooo boy, there’s a lot to unpack there; William blames Charles for Diana’s death, well he blames Charles for basically everything that went wrong in his mother’s life, which isn’t fair because William doesn’t have the whole picture – just the one he has in his head.

I had a hunch that Phillip was going to visit William to give him his version of a heart to heart. As much as I don’t want to admit it, but damn his heart to heart was good and he actually spoke from the heart. He made a lot of good points… is this supposed to be redemption for Phillip? Anyways, he asks William if maybe he’s not really mad at his father but at his mother and taking it out on his father because it’s easier to do so. They also went into how William hates the spotlight and fame and people expect him to be good at it because his mother was and he resents her for that, too. I really am happy to see he’s resolving some of that.

The way Phillip looks so sad at William and Charles reunion, he should be sad that he’ll never get that connection with his son because he broke it a long, long time ago.

I get that we have to go through history, but the episode with Tony Blair was kinda boring. I mean, there were some interesting moments, but my gosh, so much exposition. We can see that the Queen isn’t a fan of Blair. He really wants to bring change to England and well as we know, the monarchy isn’t about change. He brings up that something hadn’t been signed in 300 years and I was shocked… but not totally surprised. It had to do with the monarchy only allowing Pentecostals be a part of it. That’s crazy to me, like they were talking about how someone who was Catholic couldn’t marry into the monarchy because they are of a different religion, mind boggling

So at first the Queen wanted to learn how she could change and so she’s talking with Blair to get his thoughts. Everyone in the family thinks the Queen is nuts for even considering the idea, but they go along with it. Blair has his team write up pages on which they could change. As the family is going through it all… and hating it, it dawns on the Queen that nothing has to change because people don’t want the Royal family to be normal, they’re looking for the magic and the mystery. She says she’s not opposed to change, but only if it truly benefits them and the people    

Blair wants to change the ways of the Women’s Institute but the women in the crowd rebel by starting to clap; I have to say I kinda liked that rebellion because it was organized and loud enough that Blair couldn’t continue his speech.

Interesting, so we obviously get William and Kate’s origin story and I had no idea. They didn’t really have a meet cute, did they? They had a meet force? I don’t even know what to call it. So Kate meets William and Diana on the street just before she passes and obviously Kate is enamoured by him. Her mother notices and takes note!

Slowly over the course of the episode we see the two as they rival each other and he likes her, but it never seems to be the right time because he’s with someone, then she’s with someone and then BOOM, when Kate brings someone home for Christmas, we get this exposition scene where we find out that all the places she’s run into William has been because of her mother. She would find out William was doing or being a part of something, so she’d make Kate go and do it, too. Wow, so yeah it was not fate at all.

I also liked the brother dynamic that they showed. Even though they’ve definitely focused on William, you can see that Harry is becoming the black sheep of the family and that he’s getting comfortable in that role – he even tells William, he can’t quit uni because it’ll make him look bad. I hope we get more brother interaction.

We get one last episode with Princess Margaret before her death. I didn’t realize she died in 2002 (the same year her own mother passed). It was so heartbreaking to watch Margaret suffer these strokes. The glitz and glamour of the person we used to know, reduced to almost nothing in such a short amount of time was truly harrowing to watch.

I do like that they give us bits of memories of when she was younger, on a night she loved; the end of WWII. We get hints of a different person the Queen was that night; how she partied with Americans and danced the night away. She looked so free! It was so funny to see how upstairs the Brits were celebrating in their hoity-toity way and in the basement the Americans were living it up, so loud and lively.

I like the way they ended the episode, as them as still kids, but when Elizabeth asks her to join her it turned into adult Margaret, it was beautifully done. Plus, the whole sister bonding was really nice to watch, too.     

I don’t know why I thought that once we got through Diana’s death, it would never really be brought up again. We start the second to last episode on Dodi’s father being interviewed to say that it was the Royal family who were behind Diana and Dodi’s death and he claims that it was to hide the fact that she was pregnant… talk about crazy talk.

How can he make all these claims? He wasn’t even there? I do like that they’re able to dispute all the charges. I didn’t expect they would deport him, but I can see how that would be an outcome. He is a man really struggling with death… a death he caused.

I find it interesting that the Queen is so worried about how the crowds will react to her at her Golden Jubilee; she’s afraid that no one will show, or that people will boo. How intriguing how aware she is at how the younger generation views the royal family, as opposed to the older generation. I like how candid William and Elizabeth can have a conversation; it’s nothing like how she can speak with her children, it’s so fascinating.  

Well, people do show up, and they do cheer. I like how William feels a sense of duty to be by her side; they really have a beautiful relationship.

William starts watching the Jubilee with Kate because they’re a thing now… I’m not going to lie; they’re little romance is so boring to watch.

I wish we got more Harry. All we get from him is that we’re told he’s acting out and his rivalry with William, which the Queen makes a good point about being number two and the shadow it casts, which I think she was referring to Margaret. I think Margaret and Harry have much of the same trajectories and it’s so interesting to see. It’s too bad we won’t get to see more of Harry, like we did with Margaret.

The last episode ends on talking about the Queen’s funeral (and how morbid she thinks it is, I love that) and Charles wanting to marry Camilla.

The whole red tape around their wedding is incredible. The Queen, it looks, at first to not agree with it, but when Charles brings up that he’ll be next in line for the throne (which falls right in line with her funeral talk) and living in sin would be a huge no-no, she really starts to rethink everything.

I have to say, Camilla is really the voice of reason in all this. I really think that if they’d been able to be a family earlier, I think the boys (all of them, Charles included, not just his sons) would have had more guidance and structure and wouldn’t have hated each other so much.

So when the Queen asks both William and Harry for their blessing on the marriage, William is quick to give it… Harry doesn’t even get a say, which I thought was rude. I get Harry being angry, but I also get William giving his blessing. He sees it as a way for his father to be happy and so when he eventually becomes King, he won’t be living in sin.

You can see how William has kinda given up on Royal formalities a bit here, whereas Harry is so into rebelling it’s not even funny. Like the fact that he goes to that party wearing the Nazi armband, like you’ve got to be an idiot to know that’s not going to cause news.

The hatred between the boys is so sad to watch because it didn’t have to be this way.

I love the that we do get to see the past Queens, I was really hoping we’d see past actors, and I was getting a little sad that we hadn’t seen them yet, so I’m glad they ended on seeing them, it was emotional and very well utilized.

All this talk of her funeral and getting older, we learn she’s 80 years old, has stirred a lot of thought and emotion. First we see middle-aged Elizabeth who thinks she should step down as Queen and live her life the way she’d like in her last remaining years.

Then we see a young Elizabeth who tells her she sees nothing wrong with her and that she mustn’t forget the oath she took, that she should continue on with her job.

The speech that the Queen gives at Charles’ wedding is filled with humour and sincerity, it was short, sweet and amusing, I liked it. William thought she was going to announce her resignation, but I’m glad she didn’t, that wasn’t the time or place, if she did… which we all know she didn’t.

Is it just me, or does Camilla look alarmingly overwhelmed and not as happy as you’d think she’d be? Every time they showed her, she looked sad.

I find it fitting how they ended the series on, not the Queen’s death, obviously, but on her thinking about her death, and what it means to the future of the monarchy. If anyone were to pick this up again in years to come (please do, I’m begging!) they could start after her death… although there was a lot of drama in the last two decades before she passed (since this show is ending in the year 2005), so I don’t know how exactly they’d do it… in flashbacks maybe… but anyways! I think where they ended was kinda perfect because it’s right before the next generation comes up, as Philip mentions to Elizabeth; he says he doesn’t care because they’ll be long gone, buried under the stone.

I will miss watching this show and seeing all the drama unfold. It’s definitely a very well-produced and created series that is worth the hype, even if you aren’t a fan of the royal family. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s really interesting to see, especially all the history, too and being a country under the monarchy, is just really interesting.