Television

'The Crown' Will Run For 6 Seasons After All

The Crown season 6
By Hoai-Tran Bui

The Crown will keep its Netflix throne for one more season than anticipated. The royal drama series, which was originally slated to run for six seasons before creator Peter Morgan decided to finish with five seasons, is reversing course. Now, The Crown season 6 will be the final season of the Netflix series.

Peter Morgan has changed his mind on abdicating The Crown after five seasons. Netflix announced that The Crown will now run for six seasons, allowing the new Queen Elizabeth II, Imelda Staunton taking over from Olivia Colman in season 5, two seasons on the throne.

The change comes just six months after Netflix announced that The Crown season 5 would be its last. Morgan, who created and writes the series, said in a statement released on the Netflix Twitter account that the reversal comes because he realized that the series could not wrap up its story in just five seasons:

"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."

Cindy Holland, vice president of original content at Netflix added, "The Crown keeps raising the bar with each new season. We can't wait for audiences to see the upcoming fourth season, and we're proud to support Peter's vision and the phenomenal cast and crew for a sixth and final season."

The sixth season will take the story up to the early 2000s, which means we won't get to see Meghan Markle enter the scene, as she married Prince Harry in 2018. Which is a shame, because The Crown would be able to mine so much more drama and nuance out of that story than the Lifetime movies that chronicled the actress and the British prince's romance, or the tabloids that chronicled the pair's exit from active roles in the royal family.

Staunton will take the throne in seasons 5 and 6, alongside Phantom Thread's Lesley Manville, who has recently been confirmed as Princess Margaret. Colman and current Princess Margaret Helena Bonham Carter, are due to appear in The Crown season 4, which premieres later this year after wrapping up right before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered British TV productions.

No exact release date has yet been set for The Crown season 4.

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