Back in January, Netflix announced that hit royal drama The Crown was to end after its fifth season as per the wishes of creator Peter Morgan. Half a year later, however, and Morgan has done a 180 degree turn on his decision and has elected to make one more season of the show, meaning that it will now conclude after its sixth run instead.
As per a statement released by Deadline, Morgan explained that his change of mind came about as the writers room was mapping out season 5 and they realized there was too much to cover in just 10 episodes. This caused him to revert to his plan for six seasons, which was what he originally conceived when he created the series.
“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-day — it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail.”
As Morgan clarifies, season 6 won’t progress the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the Windsor family further than season 5 would’ve done, but will simply go deeper into the period that was already set to be covered. The two seasons will reach up to the early 2000s. So, The Crown will not tackle recent events such as the marriage of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle in 2018.
Imelda Staunton stars in seasons 5 and 6 as the third actress to play the Queen. It was just announced that Leslie Manville will co-star as Princess Margaret and we expect more casting news to come.
Of course, Olivia Colman will return to lead The Crown season 4, which is expected to hit Netflix later this year, based on the show’s regular release pattern. Thankfully, it’s believed to have avoided any delay due to production wrapping up just prior to the pandemic taking affect back in March. An exact premiere date has yet to be revealed, but we’ll let you know as soon as that changes.
