TV Review: "The Crown" Finally Gives Its Senior Cast the Chance to Shine
After having sidelined them for most of its sixth season, the Netflix series finally turns its attention back to those who deserve it most.
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I want to say at the outset that I have been a fan of Netflix’s The Crown since way back at the beginning, in the halcyon days when Claire Foy was in the role and the series was a richly-produced period piece about the sacrifices entailed in becoming the monarch. I’ve stayed loyal to the show and, while it’s had its ups and downs storytelling wise, for the most part I have remained a devotee, just as I was to the late Queen Elizabeth II. Now, at last, it has all come to an end and, for the most part, I’m satisfied with the last six episodes. Though they never hit quite the same highs as the first two seasons–or even the third and fourth, for that matter–they do succeed at least in bringing
In part, this stems from the absence of Diana who, as we all recall, tragically died in a car crash in Paris in the preceding four episodes, leaving her children devastated and her ex-husband Prince Charles grappling with the meaning of her death. Now, the focus shifts to both her eldest son, William, and the other members of the Royal Family, who have to find some way of moving ahead in an environment in which the public has become increasingly disenchanted with their monarchy.
I must admit that the episodes focusing on William and his courtship with Kate Middleton at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland are some of the weakest The Crown has ever produced. Ed McVey is fine as a tortured and brooding and handsome Prince William, but there’s just not that much drama inherent in this story to make it interesting. As a result these episodes end up feeling like soggy, insipid teenage drama, and while this genre certainly has its place and its pleasures, I would argue that this isn’t what fans of this series have been led to expect. If there is one bright spot in this whole affair, it’s Prince Philip’s reprimand of Wiliam’s antagonism to his father, Charles, who he blames for his mother’s death. Pryce is unsurprisingly good in these moments, capturing Philip’s own regrets about his failures as a father, and I’ll admit that I was more than a little moved when William at last reconciles with his father as his grandfather looks on.
Unsurprisingly, the show is on surer footing when it comes to the senior members of the cast, and we finally get the chance to see Jonathan Pryce, Lesley Manville, and Imelda Staunton truly shine. Pryce has long been excellent at portraying Philip, giving him the sort of rakish old guard charm that, by all accounts, the real Duke of Edinburgh possessed. He is also a devout institutionalist, someone who believes in the monarchy and the Crown because he, like his wife, has had to give up a great deal for it. Any time that Elizabeth feels herself wavering, he is there to support her, and theirs is a bond forged not only of duty, but of love.
Everyone knows, however, that the most important relationship has always been with her wild-child sister Margaret, and one of the most egregious failings of these final seasons of The Crown has been their unwillingness to give Lesley Manville a chance to shine and strut her stuff. That is fortunately corrected in the episode “Ritz,” in which her health begins to rapidly fail due to a series of strokes. Margaret isn’t one to go peacefully, however, and she remains a bit of a hellion right up to the end. Manville allows us to see the many shades of Margaret in this one episode, and it’s an episode filled with tenderness and beauty, as we watch these two sisters reckon with mortality. Staunton and Manville blend perfectly together, capturing the fraught-but-loving dynamic that has been key to their characters’ previous iterations in the hands of Claire Foy/Vanessa Kirby and Olivia Colman/Helena Bonham Carter. When, at one point, Elizabeth reads stories to her ailing sister and then departs, shutting the light off behind her, it’s sweet, touching, and utterly heartbreaking, as we know that it’s the end of an era. The episode features a flashback to a (fictional) night when the two princesses went out on the town to celebrate the end of the war, and it ends with a young Lilibet returning to the Palace while Manville’s Margaret bids her farewell. It’s remarkable acting from Manville, and one can’t help but wish that the final two seasons had given her more to do.
After largely hovering in the background of her own series, Imelda Staunton is at last allowed to give a richer, more textured performance as Elizabeth. It’s really quite glorious to watch her defend the various professions that comprise the Crown against the cost-cutting measures proposed by Bertie Carvel’s grinning and manic Tony Blair, and Staunton’s crisp, no-nonsense delivery works very effectively here. The Crown has always been at its best when it lets Elizabeth square off against her Prime Ministers, and it’s good to see the series return to form in that regard. One’s mileage may vary in terms of how much one believes or is convinced by Elizabeth’s defense of the Crown and its various institutions, but Staunton renders the queen into a figure of iron, someone who truly believes in the unchanging nature of monarchical history and tradition and the stability they provide.
By the time we get to the finale, however, Elizabeth has started to feel her commitment flagging and, as Charles finally attains his happiness with Camilla, she even entertains the possibility of stepping down. As so often, The Crown here plays fast and loose with the facts of the case, as there’s no indication that Elizabeth ever seriously considered stepping down, but it works dramatically, not least because she is visited by the shades of her former self, played of course by Olivia Colman and Claire Foy. While the former encourages her to abdicate like other European monarchs have done, the latter reminds her that should she do so she will be giving up the one thing that has given her life meaning. There is, she asserts, no Elizabeth Windsor to return to. Coming from Foy, who played Elizabeth when she was young and first set out on this treacherous and sacrificial path, the words have even more portentous weight, and they seem to stiffen her spine. It’s truly fantastic to see Staunton engaging with the other formidable talents who have brought Elizabeth to life.
For me, the most emotionally impactful scene in the finale occurs when Elizabeth watches old home movies. After struggling to get the film strip loaded properly, she then tearfully watches her younger self cavorting with Magaret, when they were both young and carefree, and at one point she even goes up and touches the film screen, as if by doing so she can erase the boundary between the past and the present. For a split second, her old and younger selves seem to blend into a seamless whole through the medium of film and its projector which, for a series which has been so consistently concerned with the mediatization of the monarchy, seems entirely appropriate.
If anything, Philip’s speech to her in St. George’s Chapel is a bit of a thesis statement for the series. He reminds her that the younger generation is simply not capable of taking on the burden of being monarch, that this is the role he was born to play. Elizabeth seems to agree and, after seeing a glimpse of her future funeral, she at last exits the Chapel, seeming to walk into a white light. It’s a soft and tender ending, I think, and if a bit anticlimactic, it still manages to resonate. Elizabeth may not yet be able to rest–we know that she will continue on the throne for another decade and a half–but the foundations for her to rest are laid.
While the finale of The Crown might not have hit the operatic heights of earlier seasons, it still left me satisfied. The season as a whole continued to meaningfully engage with the weighty issues that have always been the series’ bread and butter, most notably the thorny and vexingly symbiotic relationship between the media and the Crown. At the same time, it also allows us to see how Elizabeth truly was the last of an old breed. As has become more and more abundantly clear with each passing season, her death is the passing of an old way of life. When, at the end of the finale, she walks away from us, it’s as if the show is finally giving us permission to let go of our old vision of the monarchy and the woman who sat on the throne for most of the latter part of the 20th century and well into the 21st. Elizabeth has passed but the Crown must go on. It remains to be seen whether those who inherit it are up to the task.