In the fifth season of The Crownone of the great classics of Netflix, Queen Elizabeth II makes mistakes. She demands a budget to repair one of her yachts in the midst of a global recession. She tries to hide the disorderly and often embarrassing behavior of the eldest son from her. She privately complains of feeling politically marginalized without understanding the political changes around her.
The new installment in the series makes it immediately clear that the queen is fallible. Played by Imelda Staunton, the monarch is closer to an earthly figure than to the incorruptible and symbolic figure she was until now. The queen’s new face is more human. At least, closer to tiredness, discouragement and exhaustion.
Also to rage. With the feeling that, despite his efforts, his decades-long work in front of the royal house may be threatened. Perhaps for this reason, one of the first sentences of the fifth season of The Crown it is a symbol of the weight of duty on his shoulders. From the demand of history and the perception of his emblematic place on the power map of his country. “I don’t want to break any rules,” he confesses despondently.
You are about to tour what the real and recently deceased Elizabeth II called her Annus horribilis. Of facing a considerable personal and constitutional crisis. For the Isabel of fiction, the future is not promising. But, like so many other situations, she will face it with the conviction that she is, before anything else, the moral support of England.
The Crown
The fifth season of The Crown is facing, in one way or another, the same pressures as its central character. Criticized for taking the recent history of the monarchy into tabloid territory, the series caused controversy before its premiere. But the delivery is more interested in the politics behind the power than in the morbidity of the uncomfortable details. The new chapters are especially focused on scrutinizing the life of Elizabeth II of Stauton. The head of the English monarchy is in the midst of a painful transition. Not only between the power that she represents and her fissures. Also as the face of an institution attacked, vilified and belittled by the currents of the new decades. Of course, the queen will make mistakes. She will make all kinds of mistakes trying to deal with the balance between public and privileged life. A point that the argument of The Crown will explore with kindness and a certain sarcasm.
New faces for a new story in the fifth season of The Crown
The fifth season of The Crown he faces, in one way or another, the same pressures as his central character. Criticized for taking the recent history of the monarchy into tabloid territory, the series caused controversy before its premiere. But the delivery is more interested in the politics behind the power than in the morbidity of the uncomfortable details.
Especially, in the way that the crown had to understand the convulsive decade of the nineties. With the fairy tale of Diana and Carlos turned into a media nightmare and an unprecedented scandal, The Royal House must deal with shame. At the same time, with public scrutiny haunted by every element of pain that the fissure in the pristine image of the Windsors could show.
However, the new episodes of the fifth season of The Crown they are especially focused on scrutinizing the life of Elizabeth II of Stauton. The head of the English monarchy is in the midst of a painful transition. Not only between the power it represents and the cracks in it. Also as the face of an institution attacked, vilified and belittled by the currents of the new decades. Of course, the queen will make mistakes. She will make all kinds of mistakes trying to deal with the balance between public and privileged life. A point that the argument The Crown will explore with gentleness and a certain sarcasm.
A family in the midst of a historical upheaval
The Crown he has always played with the advantage of historical distance. Which makes his portrayal of the monarchy tendentious and, at times, almost tricky. The effect is more evident than ever in the fifth series, in which the erosion of the crown as an English emblem begins to be visible.
Especially, in small uncomfortable points that are currently being debated. Elizabeth II must face that the Crown is a dead weight on England’s finances. At the same time, that the behavior of its members is no longer a secret or enjoys the protection of public opinion. what it does to The Crown harder by the very notion of responding to future concerns through historical review.
A notorious circumstance in the vision about Prime Minister John Mayor, played by Johnny Lee Miller. The argument shows the political head of England worried, in an attempt to deal with a queen Elizabeth II increasingly distant from the future of history.
He advises her, tries to make her understand her now reduced role in big decisions. There is something of a worried son in this slow-talking politician who seems to have an almost prophetic vision of the future. A trick that sustains the rest of the plot twist that meditates on the time that passes relentlessly.
The fall of domestic and political peace
Everything has changed at Buckingham Palace. Not only the faces of the protagonists – the cast of the production was completely renewed for the fifth season – but also the sense of power. The script knows this and builds a point of view of this journey towards irrelevance, one of the toughest issues that the fifth season will touch on. Screenwriter Peter Morgan once again explores the humanity behind the power, but this time from a certain shadow of decadence.
“Seeing the world you knew fall is an experience that no one teaches you,” laments the exhausted queen. Beside her, Philip of Edinburgh (Jonathan Pryce) is a comforting but icy presence. The couple goes through old age from the confusion of a new world. “Did you expect this to happen?” the prince asks more than once, surprised. The queen, hands folded in her lap, seems increasingly overwhelmed, dwarfed, hurt.
Morgan, who previously built a vision on the solidity of the British crown, this time works from disenchantment and cynicism. The story, which The Crown started in 1940, reaches the last decade of the century from despair in its fifth season.
A new country under old customs
The England of the late 1990s is a land of disillusionment and a succession of harsh pragmatic setbacks. He goes through an economic recession, political battles and the queen the astonishment of seeing her family in the middle of an embarrassing public conflict. During the first three episodes of the fifth season, The Crown advances towards the erosion of the symbols of power.
It also achieves this by bringing to the present what seems like a series of nearby historical events that solidly contextualize the story. The script elegantly moves away from sensationalism thanks to its cohesion. But it shows the British royal family falling apart. From Carlos’ (Dominic West) apparent obsession with power, to Diana’s (Elizabeth Debicki) erratic behavior.
Even the way the queen lost her ability to understand foreign policy. The fifth season of The Crown uses symbols of its slow decline, such as showing an awkward conversation with Boris Yeltsin (Anatoly Kotenev). The series is aware that the story it analyzes is current and, at the same time, is part of the collective memory of a generation. Which allows you to play with the sensation of memory reconstructed from a sophisticated fiction.
The fifth season of The Crown shows the quintessential historical scandal
But, without a doubt, the center of the fifth season is the progressive destruction of the marriage between Carlos and Diana. The Crown avoid judgments and, also, analyze from the moral the stormy moments between the royal couple. But not for that reason does it stop showing the separation in a series of painful symbols.
Diana’s character, lost the ideal version of love, is a specter of herself. However, her heartbreak drives her in new directions about her importance as a mass figure. Something that the series analyzes through historical distance. Carlos, obsessed with fulfilling the role assigned to him by history, clings to his investiture and his love for Camila Parker Bowles.
Between the two, the characters walk away in a silent battle, watched with merciless attention by the press and growing public reproach. Morgan provides a version of this broken story through the emblematic power struggle between the princes.
A fragile woman in the middle of a hostile environment
Diana becomes more radiant, important and relevant in the public arena, while Carlos loudly complains that his mother will never abdicate in his favor. The fifth season of The Crown she is deeply interested in contrasts and through them defines the princes of Wales. The series advances in the perception of the bittersweet of the moral defeat of the British crown in the face of the passage of time.
At the same time, it contextualizes the historical weight of the breakdown of the royal marriage in small announcements of the tragedy. Diana looks at the camera and sighs defeated but, at the same time, complacent.
Carlos is terrified when a private conversation comes to light.. More and more distant, destroyed and wounded, The Crown manages to tell, through the crack between the two, the loss of England’s innocence. How the country discovered that its most respected figures were really just deeply unhappy human beings.
The reality of the Crown shows its face
For the last episode of the fifth season, the queen looks at herself in the mirror. The one she hangs on the wall and reminds her of the years that have passed. The one about her story, which makes her aware that a good part of her town considers her unnecessary and anachronistic. But also that of her long public journey as a symbolic figure. “I’m just tired,” Stauton’s Elizabeth II says several times. “As if the journey was too long.”
the of The Crown it certainly is and is nearing completion. The fifth season ends with the feeling that the argument reached a turning point where it needs a conclusion. What is the British crown in a contemporary world more aware of the symbolic character of the monarchy? For better or worse, the fifth season of the series raises that what lies ahead is a great question.
A fifth season that precedes an ending
Will the monarchy survive several more decades? The almost casual conversation The Crown includes between the president of the BBC and the director general is more than evident in their intentions. “Whether we like it or not, the monarchy is part of the British character,” says the first with some resignation. Have you ever wondered who we would be without her?”, replies the second. “Surely a new Britain, a different Britain,” he adds.
What is the sixth and final season of The Crown? Nothing is very clear, but something is evident. The series understands the historical weight of its end. Also the context that will probably surround it. If this time he charged with the death of the queen as added weight to the controversy, the next time he will do so with a new king. Will that modulate the grand conclusion to this saga about an essential piece of British history? Only time will tell.