The Crown | A splendid finale

Élisabeth crosses the nave shrouded in light of the Saint-Georges chapel, alone, with a confident step, towards the exit. The high angle shot shows it tiny in this monumental setting. A woman, who became queen in spite of herself by a rare combination of circumstances, whose silhouette is gradually lost in the institution she directs: the Church of England, but above all, the British monarchy.

This is how the sixth and final season of The Crownin a final episode that meets expectations, written by the creator of this great Netflix series, Peter Morgan, and directed by filmmaker Stephen Daldry, the duo who launched the royal ball in 2016.

Many wonder why The Crownwhich chronicled the reign of Elizabeth II from the years before her coronation in 1953, did not make it to her death in 2022. The series evokes her metaphorically.

Elizabeth walks, in a way, towards her own death in this splendid final scene, very cinematic, to the sound of a Scottish folk song performed on bagpipes, which she has just chosen for her funeral.

The chapel at Windsor Castle that the Queen left in April 2005 has just welcomed new royal spouses, her son and successor Charles, as well as the woman he has loved for 30 years, Camilla Parker-Bowles. The episode was filmed after the death of Elizabeth II in 2022, and we clearly feel the homage to the woman and the sovereign, embodied in turn for seven years by the fabulous actresses Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton.

It is because he refocused on the character of the queen that Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) was able to raise the bar, especially with this latest episode. It was not won. The first part of this sixth season, broadcast on Netflix in November, was by far the least successful of the series, which tells more or less a decade of the royal family per season since the Second World War.

Morgan had gotten lost in the anecdotal details surrounding Lady Diana and I feared that the specter of the “princess of hearts” as well as the pouts of her unbearable suitor Dodi Al-Fayed would end my interest in this series which I I devoured the first four seasons. The fifth was already stretching the sauce.

The Crown remains of course, at its core, a family chronicle. But it has always been more interesting when it condenses – despite certain shortcuts – the geopolitical history of the last century, with its behind-the-scenes and power games, than when it descends into monarchical gossip.

The new (and also final) episodes do not spare the sentimental tribulations of young Prince William, who went to university in Scotland, where he met his future wife Kate Middleton. Their story has overtones of a classic romantic comedy: she is interested, but he is in a relationship; he is interested, but she is in a relationship; they will end up as a couple.

A british romcom, in short, with the difference that young Kate’s mother has had princess ambitions for her daughter since adolescence which turn into maniacal obsession. She encourages her daughter to take a gap year and travel to the same South American countries as William, enrolling in the same faculty and courses as William. And of course, she turns up her nose at the boyfriend who is not William. It is cringeas William would say.

In this, Carole Middleton does not seem very different from Mohamed Al-Fayed, who almost forced his son to propose to Diana in order to get closer to the royal family and who, at the end of the sixth season, accuses the Windsors of having murdered Dodi and Di. There are other mirror effects in the scenario, starting with Harry, reduced to the status of a party-loving black sheep, like his great-aunt Margaret. How difficult it seems to exist when you live in the shadow of the heir to the throne. The misery of the aristocrats…

The interpreter of Harry (Luther Ford), on the other hand, inherited a less rich and more caricatured score than that of the formidable Lesley Manville in the role of Margaret. Mike Leigh’s favorite actress and Imelda Staunton (who was Leigh’s Vera Drake) perform a particularly moving pas de deux around sorority in the eighth episode.

All the actors are good. Jonathan Pryce – the famous Sam Lowry of Brazil by Terry Gilliam – in the role of Prince Philip, Dominic West, revealed by the excellent series The Wireas Prince Charles, and Ed McVey as Prince William who, unlike his famous mother, flees the limelight and the attention of all those teenage girls dreaming of Prince Charming.

The fact remains that it is around Imelda Staunton and her character of Elizabeth II that the end of the series revolves. The Queen is approaching her 80th birthday, she is mourning the loss of her mother and her sister, and it is suggested that she take an interest in the preparations for her own funeral. This upsets her, obviously. She wonders if she would not be better off abdicating, in order to allow her son, in the prime of his life, to take over from a monarchy lacking popularity. Especially since Tony Blair, the new Prime Minister, overshadows him and advises him to reduce his most anachronistic expenditure.

She will end up – whistleblower alert – ending up staying on the throne. And Tony Blair, renamed “Tony Bliar” by his detractors, will suffer the same fate as most prime ministers: he will be shown the door. This is the case with the political pendulum, it swings from left to right as power wears away. The monarchy has for centuries obeyed other rules, which enough British people hold to for it to persist. They do not want to find with us what they already have with them, summarizes Élisabeth, who believes that we must cultivate the aura of mystery to ensure the future of the monarchy.

We finish The Crown saying that without being complacent, Peter Morgan’s view of the queen and the monarchy is rather sympathetic. He salutes Elisabeth’s commitment, insists on her devotion and her uprightness, without masking her rigidity and her lack of empathy, particularly with regard to Charles’ companions. Above all, with these last six episodes, it admirably closes the circle of a series which will have marked its era.