‘The Crown’ Creator Says He Changed Series Ending Because of Queen Elizabeth II’s Death

Dan Clarendon October 28, 2023, 12:33 pm

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'The Crown' Season 5 stars Elizabeth Debicki, Imelda Staunton, and Dominic West — Netflix

In a wide-ranging interview about The Crown ahead of the Netflix drama’s sixth and final season, creator Peter Morgan said the death of Queen Elizabeth II changed his vision for the series’ ending.

Morgan was mostly done scripting The Crown’s final episodes when Elizabeth died at age 96 in September 2022, he tells Variety. And even though Season 6 will end with the fictional Elizabeth still alive, the series finale will address the real-life death of Britain’s longest-serving monarch.

“We’d all been through the experience of the funeral,” Morgan says. “So because of how deeply everybody will have felt that, I had to try and find a way in which the final episode dealt with the character’s death, even though she hadn’t died yet.”

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Morgan also says Season 6’s storyline will conclude in 2005. “It was the cutoff to keep it historical, not journalistic,” he explains. “I think by stopping almost 20 years before the present day, it’s dignified.”

Bela Bajaria, chief content officer at Netflix, tells Variety that fans of the Emmy-winning series won’t be disappointed by the final installments. “Peter did such an amazing job at weaving all of these stories together and really leaving us with such a powerful, emotional ending,” Bajaria raves. “It really does give you the feeling of honoring the queen’s entire reign.”

'The Crown' Races Toward Princess Diana's Tragic End in Season 6 Trailer (VIDEO)

The first half of Season 6 starts streaming on November 16, with those four episodes “depict[ing] a relationship blossoming between Princess Diana [Elizabeth Debicki] and Dodi Fayed [Khalid Abdalla] before a fateful car journey has devastating consequences,” Netflix says.

The Season 6 cast also includes Imelda Staunton as Elizabeth, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, Dominic West as Prince Charles, Claudia Harrison as Princess Anne, Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker Bowles, Bertie Carvel as Tony Blair, and Salim Daw as Mohamed Al Fayed.