Bryce Maloney ‘26
Staff Writer
The first part of the last season of the Netflix hit series The Crown, directed by: Peter Daldry gives a fascinating portrayal of the final weeks and months of the life of the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Fascinating in the sense of the sheer amount of awfulness that it has presented to the viewing audience. When the series premiered in 2016, it was hailed all across the globe as an astoundingly accurate (albeit dramaticized) portrayal of the life and reign of her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. For those unfamiliar with the show, it runs linearly throughout the important political, social, and societal shifts that have occurred surrounding Queen Elizabeth II, beginning with her wedding to Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark in 1947. Every few seasons, a new cast is brought in to better exemplify the characters as the decades progress and aging sets in. In Season 4, we are finally introduced to the young, wealthy, and extremely naïeve Lady Diana Spencer-Churchill. Derived from one of the nations richest and most powerful aristocratic families, she was the perfect candidate to wed Charles, then Prince of Wales (now King Charles III). The season uniquely blends stories of Charles and Diana’s rocky relationship with other major events that took place around the life of Queen Elizabeth II and the political turmoils which engulfed the 1980s. It manages to showcase the perfect blend of Thatcherism and Diana-frenzie which encapsulates Britain and the world during this time- and in doing so was the highest rated season of the entire show. But the late Princess’s influence in the show was not short lived, and as the seasons went on, it seemed as though the series had become less about the complex and extraordinary life of the late Queen, and more about the messy and at-times unbearable relationship between Charles and Diana. Fast forward to season 5, and it is more of the same.
The central theme of the season seems to be about the selfish nature of both Charles and Diana– so selfish that they take up the vast majority of the season arguing, bickering, and eventually, finally, divorcing. However, Season 5 does try to keep the focus in theory on the Queen, adding in episodes about her and her husbands quest to repatriate the remains of their deceased Romanov cousins after the fall of communism, the decommissioning of the Royal Yacht, HMY Britannia, and the devastating fire at Windsor Castle in 1992. Now, Season 6 seems to be unapologetically encapsulated by Diana, with little to no room for the original plotline, nor for any semblance of historical fact or reality. The entire plotline retells the story of Diana in the last months before her tragic and untimely death in August of 1997. Following characters such as Mohamed Al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods in London, and the father of her final boyfriend- a plot line that has seemingly nothing at all to do with the Royal Family other than from the fact that his son died alongside the Princess in the now infamous car accident in Paris. Her final months saw the Princess neglect her children by jet-setting across the world with her boyfriend, his failed attempt at a proposal, and her desire to rid herself of the press whilst also doing things which would only further warrant press attention. Prince Charles spends most of his short lived part in the season pouting about the lack of press attention surrounding his now open relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles (now Queen Camilla), whilst working out a sort of homeostasis in a co-parenting agreement with his ex-wife. The end of the first part of the last season, which will be released in two parts, shows the Royal Family’s reaction to Diana’s death- which sends the show into full imaginatory chaos. For starters, it showcases the Queen as being reluctant to return from her summer vacation in the Scottish Highlands to London to mourn Diana’s loss over some inadvertent unfinished business, placing no great emphasis at all on her want to allow her grandsons (who have just lost their mother) time to mourn in private. Instead, the season takes a different direction and shows the ghost of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, as she makes visitations to the family and imparts final pieces of advice and wisdom from beyond the grave. First, she visits Prince Charles, and among other things, tells him he’s handsome and makes a final amends. Then, Ghost Diana visits the Queen, and tells her she must use her heart to heal her nation after this tragedy, and be there for them in a way she had never been before. The depiction of Ghost Diana is so obtuse that it almost seems to grant an air of disrespect, which made me personally feel a great amount of discomfort.
While I’m hoping for better things in the second part of this final season, watching it seems more like seeing a dead relative to a painful-to-watch end than celebrating the life of a (once) great dramatic series.
Photo courtesy of Google Images
Leave a Reply