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- The Crown season 6 will be the show’s final season.
- The show will address Princess Diana’s death.
- The Crown season 6 will be released in the fall of 2023.
King Charles III’s coronation isn’t the only royal event to be excited about in 2023. The Crown will return for season 6, which will also be the show’s final season. The last episodes will follow the royal family in the final years of the 20th century and into the new millennium. This means the lives of Prince William and Prince Harry will start to become more of a focal point. Netflix confirmed in September 2023 that the final season would feature Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles’ 2005 wedding.
In April 2023, Netflix released the first official photos of Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy as college-age Prince William and Kate Middleton. Season 6 will explore the early days of their love story.
The show’s fifth season was originally supposed to be the final season. However, Netflix announced that The Crown would return for a sixth and final season in 2020. “As we started to discuss the storylines for Series 5, it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons,” creator Peter Morgan said in a statement.
So, who is returning for The Crown season 6? What aspects of the royal family will the show tackle in the final season? From the cast to a possible release date, HollywoodLife has all the latest updates about The Crown season 6.
The Crown Season 6 Release Date
The Crown season 6 does not have an official release date yet. On Sept. 4, Netflix revealed that season 6 would be released in the fall of 2023. Previous seasons of the show have dropped in November and December. When Netflix released new photos in April 2023, the streaming service revealed the final season would be released in 2023.
The Crown began filming the final season in September 2022. The cast and crew took a brief hiatus after Queen Elizabeth II’s death. “The Crown is a love letter to [the Queen] and I’ve nothing to add for now, just silence and respect,” Peter Morgan said in a statement to Deadline.
In 2023, The Crown was filming scenes at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Dominic West and Ed McVey were spotted filming as Prince Charles and Prince William.
The Crown Season 6 Cast
The core royals will be returning for The Crown season 6. This includes Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Dominic West as Prince Charles, Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, and Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker Bowles. Khalid Abdalla is expected to return as Dodi Fayed, as well as Salim Daw as Mohamed al Fayed.
The new gen royals have been cast for the final season. Ed McVey will play a young Prince William, while Rufus Kampa will play a young Prince Harry. Newcomer Meg Bellamy has joined the cast as Kate Middleton. Bertie Carvel will play Tony Blair.
Gillian Anderson recently blasted a report that claimed she “refused” to reprise the role of Margaret Thatcher in the final season. “Absolute bollocks,” Gillian tweeted in response to Metro posting about The Sun’s report.
What Will The Crown Season 6 Be About?
The final season of The Crown will focus on the royal family in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The show will address Princess Diana’s tragic death early on in the season. Diana died from injuries she sustained in a Paris car accident on August 31, 1997. She was only 36.
The show was seen recreating the final moments before the fatal car accident in October 2022. Out of respect for the victims and their families, The Crown will not show the accident onscreen.
“We’ve been dreading getting to this point. The countdown is two weeks and while we’re calmly carrying on it’s fair to acknowledge that there’s a certain anxiety; a palpable sense of being slightly on edge. I mean, there’s bombshell sensitivity surrounding this one,” a production source told Deadline ahead of addressing Princess Diana’s death in the series.
Executive producer Suzanne Mackie stressed that there were “long conversations” about how to cover Diana’s death. “The show might be big and noisy, but we’re not. We’re thoughtful people and we’re sensitive people. There were very careful, long conversations about how we were going to do it,” she said at the Edinburgh TV Festival in August 2023, according to Deadline.
Fellow EP Andy Harries added, “The audience will judge it in the end, but I think it’s been delicately, thoughtfully recreated. Elizabeth Debicki is an extraordinary actress, and she was so thoughtful and considerate. She loved Diana. There’s a huge amount of respect from us all, I hope that’s evident.”
The show will likely tackle the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death and how it shaped the royal family. The younger royals will have a bigger role in the final season, and fans will get to see the origins of William and Kate’s romance.
“In season 6, the arrival of William and Kate and Harry just blows the doors off,” creator Peter Morgan told The Crown: The Official Podcast in November 2022. “You want to see them. It happened in the read-through. You could just see everyone was looking up and looking at each other across the room. And every time William spoke, it was like, ‘Oh my God, this is just riveting.’”
As far as the Queen goes, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary in 1997. The Queen Mother turned 100 in 2000. Sadly, Princess Margaret died in February 2002, with the Queen Mother following less than two months later.
The Crown season 6 will be covering Charles and Camilla’s wedding, which took place in 2005. Netflix shared a photo of the couple’s wedding invitation as the streaming service teased the final season.
“[Camilla] was actually left utterly exposed to whatever mud was being slung at her,” Olivia Williams, who plays Camilla, told Tudum. “That was a challenge for us, to actually keep finding the joy between the two of them and to try and work out what the magical thing is between them that clearly makes them such a happy and successful and supportive and humorous couple now, in this very successful marriage.”
Will There Be A Season 7 Of The Crown?
Even though Netflix added another season of The Crown after the show was only going to run for 5 seasons, there are currently no plans for The Crown season 7. Netflix confirmed in September 2023 that The Crown will come “to an end” after the sixth season.
Given the recent drama within the royal family, many wondered if Netflix would continue the series to address Prince Andrew’s scandal, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepping down as senior royals, and more. “To be clear, season 6 will not bring us any closer to present day — it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail,” Peter said when he announced the sixth and final season, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
However, there was a report that a possible prequel was in the works. Daily Mail reported that the prequel would cover the death of Queen Victoria, Prince Edward VIII’s abdication, and end with Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding in 1947. Variety confirmed that there have been “discussions” about a prequel, but nothing is in development at the moment.