'The Crown' Season 5 Won't Premiere Until 2022, Which Is When The Final Sixth Season Starts Shooting

Netflix recently announced that The Crown was getting six total seasons before bringing the series about the royal family to an end. Funnily enough, The Crown was originally intended to have six seasons from the beginning, but creator Peter Morgan decided to pull it back to five seasons, only to reverse that decision. However, even though it's great news that there are two more seasons of The Crown in the works, we'll be waiting quite awhile before they arrive on Netflix.

Deadline has learned that The Crown season 5 will not begin production until June of 2021. That means the season won't be ready to debut on Netflix until sometime in 2022. Surprisingly, this delay in the start of production on the fifth season isn't due to the coroanvirus pandemic. It's merely how the schedule is playing out.

Since the fifth season of The Crown won't start shooting until 2021, that means the sixth season won't begin production until 2022. So fans will need to be patient while the final two seasons of this series comes together. Making production more challenging than some other high profile shows, The Crown uses a mix of studio sets as well as setpiece location shoots, which can be tricky to organize.

Of course, this is something that fans of The Crown should be used to. There was an equally lengthy gap between the second and third seasons of the series when Claire Foy departed the show and Olivia Colman came in to lead the series in her place. The gap between the fourth and fifth seasons is seeing a similar scenario since Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) is coming in to play Queen Elizabeth II.

Joining Staunton in the fifth and sixth seasons of The Crown will be Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, but so far those are the only cast members who have been revealed. More announcements about the upcoming seasons will be made in the coming months.

As for the fourth season of The Crown, it was able to finish production just as the coronavirus pandemic was starting to sweep the globe and shut down TV and film productions everywhere. It's expected to drop on Netflix sometime later this year. The new season follows the royal family up until 1990 when Margaret Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson, is taken out of her position as Prime Minster. The series will also feature Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) in a pivotal role, and we'll see her marriage to Prince Charles (Josh O'Connor) as it happened in 1981.

Stay tuned for more on all the upcoming seasons of The Crown as more information becomes available.