One of the OG prestige Netflix series is about to come to an end: The Crown is filming its final season. We’ve been through three Queen Elizabeths, countless meetings with an untold number of prime ministers, and more “Nobody wants to hear what you have to say!” takedowns than we could even remember. And it’s been a wild restrained, stoic ride. Here’s everything we know about The Crown season 6.
It is officially happening and they are already filming.
For a while there, it looked like there were going to be only five seasons of the show. And there were some rumors that it had something to do with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s own Netflix deal (there’s no confirmation of that, just speculation). But then Netflix came out and announced there would be a sixth and final season.
The creator, Peter Morgan, told Deadline, “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. To be clear, series 6 will not bring us any closer to present—it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail.”
That makes total sense. And we also know that they are already filming season 6, because we know they paused filming to honor Queen Elizabeth after her passing. Netflix told Deadline: “As a mark of respect, filming on The Crown was suspended today. Filming will also be suspended on the day of Her Majesty the Queen’s funeral.” And the Queen passed in September, so season 5 wouldn’t have been filming at that point, which means they are in production on season 6.
We’ll get some returning actors.
Most actors on The Crown appear for two seasons, which means that our new Queen, Prince Philip, Princess Diana, Prince Charles, etc. will all be back. So returning cast members should be something like:
- Imelda Staunton (Queen Elizabeth)
- Jonathan Pryce (Prince Philip)
- Lesley Manville (Princess Margaret)
- Dominic West (Prince Charles)
- Elizabeth Debicki (Princess Diana)
Plus some new faces!
In the fifth season, Dominic’s son played Prince William, which is super fun. But because he’s a bit younger, they replaced him for the final season with two separate actors, and they also cast Kate Middleton. Fun!
Notably, the fifth season included way more Prince William stuff than Prince Harry stuff. Prince Harry made, like, only two appearances. So it almost seems like, based on this casting announcement above, maybe Harry will be a very, very minimal part of the sixth season, if he’s there at all.
And Netflix already dropped some looks featuring Kate and Will’s actors playing them during their college years and trust me, the casting department deserves a raise for these look-alikes!
Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy even had some fun together and hit some major Will and Kate hotspots during their downtime.
The timeframe:
Each season of The Crown covers roughly a decade, and season 5 ended with Princess Diana on vacation with Mohamed Al-Fayed, which happened in 1997. Although it’s worth noting that the show seems to be messing with the timeline a little bit, because that trip IRL took place right before Diana passed away. Narratively, it feels like the show still has to do a bit of work to get us to the point of Diana’s death (morbid, sorry), so we’ll see what they do with this.