Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: at the start of the pandemic my wife Anne and I binged the first three seasons of Netflix’s The Crown, soon caught up with the rest of fandom, and kept up ever after. One slight hitch: while Anne is a major history aficionado, that was never my forte, especially not the story of Queen Elizabeth II and her subjects, some of whom were her own trod-upon relatives:

Compared to my blissfully ignorant self, Anne is far more knowledgeable of history in general and British royalty in particular. My interest in their reigning family went dormant for decades beginning on the morning of July 29, 1981, when my family woke up at 5 a.m. — over summer vacation, mind you — to watch Prince Charles marry Princess Diana, two strangers I knew only as frequent costars of my mom’s favorite tabloids. Their wedding lasted approximately six days and was performed in slow motion with British golf commentators prattling through the lengthy silences in between the happenstances of nothingness. For the next 15-20 years I retained nothing of British history apart from their role as the Big Bad in the American Revolution. Frankly, I’ve learned more about their country’s storied past from my wife and from Oscar-nominated movies than I ever did from school. Sad, unadorned truth.

So far I’ve enjoyed “The Crown” anyway, and understood most of what’s gone on…

We watched along as new episodes were released. I tracked our viewing with listicle rankings of season 4 and season 5. Not only were we enjoying the show enough for me to want to write about it, but all three entries also generated unexpectedly massive traffic, sometimes even dwarfing our comic-con cosplay galleries. (As I’m writing this, the Season 5 entry is still one of last week’s Top 3 posts.) I grumbled when Netflix made the very AMC-esque decision to split the sixth and final season into two parts, leading off with a four-episode miniseries-within-a-series covering The Death of Di. I understood the reasons (i.e., they were a self-contained story and Everyone Loves Princess Diana), but I felt the quartet didn’t justify a minuscule listicle. So I broke from the format and stretched my thoughts into a different sort of list. No one cared.

Looks like it’s listicle time again!

The final six episodes dropped shortly before Christmas and covered the time frame after Diana’s funeral through Queen Elizabeth II’s 80th birthday. In light of the previous year’s suddenly ubiquitous complaints from famous Englishpeople about the show’s ostensible heresies and/or flagrant disrespect for the monarchical, mostly vestigial ruling class, creator/showrunner Peter Morgan backed down from the sometimes confrontational, warts-and-all tone of earlier seasons and apparently dedicated himself to steering the narrative back toward less disagreeable waters so he wouldn’t be typing his next project from a Tower of London cell. In that sense the show, whether intentionally or otherwise, found itself facing one of the inescapable edicts foisted upon its more rebellious characters back in the very first season: “The Crown always wins.”

Anyway, now we have enough episodes for a genuine list. For any new guests in the house, here’s the disclaimer I used in the first two listicles:

Speaking as a male who’s clearly having his hand held through the real-world historical aspects while independently respecting the sheer artistry on display throughout much of the proceedings, I present here my biased, sincere, unfair comparisons of the episodes to each other. No scores were kept and everything’s subjective. I didn’t applaud mere historical accuracy, nor did I deduct points whenever they elicited sympathy for real-life people who committed unlikable deeds. I hold only the vaguest notions as to whether any or all of them bear any resemblance to actual persons living or dead.

Your Mileage May Vary. And it should! Odds are tremendously high you might have read more newspapers in the 1990s, as well as far more issues of People Magazine than I ever will. You may be far more deeply invested in the real-life soap opera that is the British empire. Just a hunch on my part. Enjoy anyway, or feel free to abandon ship! I’ll understand. We sally forth nonetheless.

10. “Dis-Moi Oui” (episode 3). All of the “Death of Di” saga is in my lower half, bottoming out with Diana’s last day alive, pretty much all of which was spent being suffocated, dominated, and Stockholm-Syndromed by her final lover Dodi Fayed (Moon Knight‘s Khalid Abdalla). Granted, Tenet‘s Elizabeth Debicki’s performance is utterly amazing across her two seasons, but she’s as trapped in its tired tragic-biopic structure as the real Di was in reality. That means far more focus on Dodi and the alleged proxy-scheming on behalf of his father Mohamed al-Fayed (Salim Daw), whom Morgan turns into the closest this series has to a Lex Luthor figure. Little of their tag-team adventure shows the same capacity for surprises or heightened interest that the earlier seasons did.

Meanwhile in the B-story, Prince William gets taken deer hunting, which is…a thing that also happened? Was the irony intentional or purely cosmic above Morgan’s level? Why are we allegorically reverse-foreshadowing how one day the paparazzi will chase William around like a wounded buck, all while his mom’s about to die at their collective lenses?

9. “Persona Non Grata” (episode 1). The season and the beginning of Diana’s end kick off by solidifying her embedding with the Fayeds. We briefly meet Dodi’s fiancee Kelly Fisher (Erin Richards, also a thwarted fiancée in Fox’s Gotham) and slowly realize Diana is to Kelly what the interloper Camilla Parker Bowles was to Diana…and yet the show steers clear of holding Diana accountable for that choice because, well, Everybody Loves Princess Diana. But this episode has a saving grace “Dis-Moi Oui” didn’t: the return of Prince Charles’ eminently watchable, petulant, spoiled-rotten side. He plans his beloved Camilla’s 50th birthday party only to throw a dignified tantrum when Mummy won’t attend and all the newspapers ignore their soiree in favor of his ex-wife’s dallying shenanigans. Once again The Wire‘s Dominic West and Dollhouse‘s Olivia Williams are stellar at lovingly embodying the couple nobody loved to love at the time but have retrospectively shrugged and decided they were just-okay all along.

8. “Aftermath” (episode 4). Saddled with a title so uninspired and common that it was shared the very next day after its release with the first episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, it’s necktie-rending grief-porn time for the Royal Family as Charles suddenly turns into his ex’s grand champion memory-honorer. Mohamed al-Fayed returns to his people for a period of deep mourning without revealing if he feels any guilt for his machinations or if he’s simply plotting Luthor-style revenge. William and Harry take reluctant steps toward becoming actual, individual characters before older actors take over their roles for the season’s back half. And to cap it all off, Imelda Staunton returns to the show as its nearly-lost queen, having ceded three straight episodes to make room for Di, not unlike olde-tyme TV dramas where the lead actress would disappear for several episodes on maternity leave. Also, there are ghosts.

7. “Alma Mater” (episode 7). Prince William’s post-tragedy college-buffoonery days, before he was a Good Boy in line for the throne, naturally center on his meet-cute with future wife Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy). Morgan curiously decided viewers should care tremendously about Di’s oldest boy who’ll likely be king sometime in the next 25 years, and stretched a narrow cross-section of his life into an unnecessary trilogy. This second chapter is a bog-standard rom-com that ends on a suspenseless cliffhanger, definitely no Two Towers by any means. Maybe this episode was for the younger Crown fans out there who totally dig binge-drinking scenes and manufactured love triangles?

6. “Two Photographs” (episode 3). “Competing views of the Royal Family through the eyes of two radically different photographers” was a concept done first and better in the season-2 episode “Beryl”. Di notwithstanding, the best thing about the most watchable episode of her ending arc is one of the season’s few new memorable characters: slick paparazzo Mario Brenna (Enzo Cilenti, a big-bad in Luther season 5), the ace money-shot mercenary who captures Di and Dodi on film in flagrante delicto and catapults their tabloid coverage to whole new levels of infamy. While Charles and the boys dress up for new portraits to be taken by a milquetoast Mister Peepers to impress his target demographic (read: the elderly), Brenna’s rock-star persona and his lurid scoop dominate a world where image is everything and ergo image-catchers are the masters of everything.

Meanwhile, before jetting off to France for her date with doom, Diana enjoys one last real-life charity gig, an anti-landmine campaign that, along with its more helpful lessons, finally helped me get one of Norm MacDonald’s SNL “Weekend Update” jokes from thirty years ago. I missed the nuance at the time, and I miss him more now.

5. “Hope Street” (episode 9). Lex Luthor is back! I mean, Mohamed al-Fayed is back! As Morgan begins wrapping up dangling plot threads (to the extent that any character should’ve felt artificial closure by his chosen 2003 timeline endpoint), Dodi’s dad enacts one last revenge plot to recoup the emotional loss of his son and the imagined financial loss of what British citizenship and/or respectability might’ve netted him on the open market if either had fallen into his clutches. His charges of deep evil conspiracy in Di-and-Dodi’s demise scandalously shock the world until it’s all unraveled piece by piece through meticulous investigation (or still another BIG PALACE COVER-UP), leaving our antagonist to wallow in his own grief, guilt, and existing riches. Surely his crusade would’ve unearthed The Truth if not for those meddling blue-bloods! Alas, thanks to them, upon his death in January 2023 he was worth a paltry two billion dollars. CURSE YOU, QUEEEEEEEEEN!

Meanwhile, we bid a fond farewell to whatshername, the Queen Mother, who passes away at last. At least she gets to die onscreen, unlike some characters we could mention. Oh, and William ‘n’ Kate basically wrap up their trilogy And They Live Happily Ever After…much to the delight of her mom (Eve Best from The King’s Speech), whom Morgan writes as a devious long-term schemer, a noticeable choice that goes nowhere narratively. She has no real arc and thus no closure; she simply yearns to be royalty-adjacent, sees her daughter as a means to that end, manipulates her dream into reality, And She Also Lives Happily Ever After. I guess? Did I miss a nuance? Was I supposed to know more about her going into this?

4. “Ruritania” (episode 6). The sparring match we knew would have to happen: The Queen v. Tony Blair! After an opening dream sequence that’s one of the two most hilarious moments of the season, America’s favorite Prime Minister ever (Bertie Carvel from The Tragedy of Macbeth) is still riding high in post-9/11 polls on all sides of the Atlantic and only a few UN decrees away from being named world emperor when — in one of Morgan’s most stratospheric flights of fancy — a weirdly insecure Elizabeth asks him for performance improvement tips, along with “How would you make the Monarchy cool?” His suggestions are positively Thatcherite at times (cut palace jobs! shorter ceremonies!) and naturally get no traction against her treasured traditions (nobody axes the Warden of the Swans on her watch!), instead leading to a self-instigated comeuppance where he exposes himself as a fake feminist in front of an entire women’s conference, while Elizabeth stands back and watches his surplus karma points circle down the drain. To his regret, Blair forgot British society’s most important rule: THE CROWN ALWAYS WINS.

3. “Willsmania” (episode 5). Ed McVey assumes the role of Prince William, who’s in an immediately challenging place as he leans into full post-traumatic introversion after Mom’s death. I missed the Prince William craze that apparently swept all the first-world nations in the ’90s and was a little taken aback to see his earnest attempts to forget his troubles through intense return-to-schooling constantly interrupted by throngs of screaming women of all ages, each dying to be the princess who kisses his blues away. The most engaging bits amid the ensuing turmoil are his lashing out at Dad, who of course wants to make it all about himself and whose lifetime of meddling may in fact have contributed indirectly to the whole sordid mess (at least that’s what William sees through his grief-colored prism), and the wise words from Queen Grandma, who gently escalates their already close relationship to a more mature level, given that he seems among her favorite relatives and her job will one day be his. She recognizes many of his pains as her own, and the kingdom needs him functional. Piercing shrieks and “I LOVE YOU WILL!!!” poster boards aside, the episode excellently empathizes with William’s interior life rather than selling his face back to us as a Tiger Beat dream-date idol.

(That said, in hindsight the final scene of William visiting Mom’s clandestine gravesite reminds me of that same Norm MacDonald joke and now I’m giggling inappropriately again.)

2. “Ritz” (episode 8). Obviously the death of my favorite character Princess Margaret would have to have a full-episode spotlight or else this would’ve been a far more furiously keyboard-pounded entry. I was in no way disappointed as Lesley Manville, inheritor of the mantle from Vanessa Kirby and Helena Bonham Carter, assays an accelerated rendition of The Queen’s sister’s final days — the strokes, the rehabilitation, the limitations, the frustrations, the outright denial and the dogged, impossible insistence that she be allowed to live every last minute exactly as she sees fit with no further consequences whatsoever. If only life were like that for any of us.

As Manville wrenched my heart out in reenacting post-stroke side effects and sharing her final scenes with Staunton, Morgan grants us a late-stage gift of new flashbacks to an era not previously dramatized: fourth and final versions of Elizabeth and Margaret as their teenage selves (The Nevers‘ Viola Prettejohn and Rogue One‘s Beau Gadsdon) on the jubilant occasion of V-E Day. Always the troublemaker, Margaret coaxes Elizabeth into a night on the town (along with intrepid companions Kid Porchey and Kid Peter Townsend), where trouble might be a-brewing…such as (gasp!) Jazz! And dancing! And Black people! And Black jazz dancing! Past and present weave in and out of each other, much as their memories would’ve done conversationally as Margaret’s end approaches. I’m literally getting verklempt all over again in remembering this fond farewell to Margaret — always the outsider on the inside, always denied more heart’s desires than seemingly any other Royal, the one who came closest to becoming the family’s breakout punk star.

It’s a tribute to her significance to the series that the entirety of 9/11 is reduced to a diegetic cameo, the Queen Mother’s death is pushed to the next episode (they died less than two months apart), and still another character death is booted offscreen: Elizabeth’s BFF and racehorse manager Porchey, who (I Am Not Making This Up) died of a heart attack on 9/11, later in the day after watching World Trade Center footage on TV. His passing is given such short shrift that no one ever fits in the fun trivia that he once owned Highclere Castle, the real-life setting of the PBS sensation Downton Abbey.

And to answer the burning question that MCC is always happy to verify: Yes, There’s a Song During The Crown Season 6 Episode 8 End Credits: listen closely and you hear a reprise of Margaret’s duet with King Dad from the series’ second episode, “Hyde Park Corner” — Vanessa Kirby and Jared Harris awkwardly harmonizing on Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”. Just in case anyone made it this far into the episode with a dry eye.

1. “Sleep, Dearie Sleep” (episode 10). Director Stephen Daldry, who helmed the series’ first two episodes and a memorable pair from season 2 (the one with JFK and the rage-inducing masterpiece “Paterfamilias”), returns for the grand finale, in which he and Morgan throw every last possible tidbit onto the screen before time runs out. Staunton faces not one but two last Elizabethan quandaries: (1) given that she’s an elderly lady who’s rather uncool to The Kids These Days, should she consider abdicating? (2) While we’re rubbing her face in her mortality anyway, why not ask her thoughts on Operation London Bridge, a.k.a. her inevitable royal funeral plans? Obviously it’s forward-looking to the fate that will befall her years after the rest of her generation has passed. It’s probably the canniest way to address the true end of her story without running for another season or two.

Hers isn’t the only exit strategy implied. Recurring tensions come to a head between William and kid brother Harry (Luther Ford), The Young Man Who Will Be King versus The Redhead Sidekick Who’s Like Fifth in Line for the Throne At Best. Their friendly enmity threatens to parallel the oft-strained relationship between Elizabeth and Margaret, a tug-of-war we’ve come to know all too well, spurring The Queen to give one last piece of advice to William in her capacity as the Spirit of Sibling Rivalry Past. In hindsight we know it won’t help and eventually there’ll be a split, a memoir, and some relevant reality-TV fodder or whatever. (Superfluous sidebar: I have no dog in the Prince Harry media hunt and no opinions about Meghan Markle. I’ve never watched Suits and have no strong memory of her two episodes of Fringe, though I could always revisit those on my season-2 DVDs. End of relevance to me unless Morgan changes his mind and resumes where he left off in some other art form.)

As if Harry’s misbehavior in previous episodes weren’t rambunctious enough, Morgan goes all the way to his infamous Nazi-costume debacle…which in turn leads to Jonathan Pryce’s best scene of the season, in which Prince Philip calls the costume shop that rented it out and berates them at top volume — not to express anti-Nazi digust but to smugly nitpick its glaring anachronisms. This amusing digression comes while Philip is kibitzing his own funeral plans, eying a particular Land Rover with jealousy and wondering if he’d look great in it while dead. Much like Harry, Philip knows he’ll never be king and is just here to have fun while he still can.

And there’s so, so much more going on! Elizabeth is at long last convinced to ask the Church of England to search high and low for loopholes so Charles will stop whinging and be allowed to marry his old mistress at last. Elizabeth reminds the gathered, clucking clergymen the last time a would-be king was denied his spouse of choice, they had that whole Wallis Simpson brouhaha on their hands. So the pushy teen who boasted about his garden plans and treated Diana like a fashion accessory finally gets his way, only to endure one final humiliation before we leave him to his Happily Ever After: he and Camilla are required to repent their sins as part of their wedding vows, and at noticeable length, as if the service weren’t already going to be overlong with all the trappings they do want. Their expressions as they recite canned apologies to the Lord are priceless, like two kids having vegetables crammed into their cheeks by a schoolmarm with a bent fork.

Elizabeth’s last public speech is her funniest of the series, the season’s most hilarious moment, and its best callback to her beloved thoroughbreds. She’s afforded one last round of quality time with the royal horses, possibly her favorite animals on all the premises they own. (The corgis had their fleeting moments earlier.) Apropos of the show’s original modus operandi, we see Elizabeth demonstrating far more moments of weakness and humility than we’ve seen or been told about in reality. (“A life lived in service is not a duty. It is an honor.”)

It all leads to still more of the finale’s best moments: Staunton in conversation with her past selves, with both Claire Foy and Olivia Colman returning for the big sendoff. The powerful final scenes are shared among all four Elizabeths we’ve known throughout the series, even aforementioned rookie Viola Prettejohn. As the orchestra swells hither and yon under composer Martin Phipps (who also scored Ridley Scott’s Napoleon), Morgan resists any urge to conclude with Dragnet-style “Where Are They Now?” post-show text updates. Rather, the Parliament of Elizabeths gathers in St. George’s Chapel (her future final resting place) and the camera follows Staunton slowly through its enormous, hallowed hall and out the door into the ages. She bears upon her shoulders the series’ cumulative weight of subjective British history and the imagined humanity within those who lived it.

It’s a series finale so emotional, so comprehensive, so many things at once, it even makes bagpipes sound good. And appropriately incorporated. And deeply saddening. Yes, bagpipes.

Final fun trivia: if you count Morgan’s 2006 Best Picture nominee The Queen with Helen Mirren, technically he’s nailed the vaunted “six seasons and a movie” achievement. Cheerio.