Netflix will run a sixth and final season of its hit show, The Crown, announcing the news on Thursday after the show’s creator, Peter Morgan, changed his mind about ending it with a fifth season.
The popular Netflix show has followed the reign of Queen Elizabeth II for three seasons now, with a fourth season due later this year. It was previously announced in January of this year that the show would end with its fifth season.
“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,” Morgan said in a statement.
“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.”
Each season of The Crown has so far represented roughly ten years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, with the third season bringing the storyline to the late 1970s and covering events including The Queen’s Silver Jubilee, the divorce of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jone, and Prince Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles. A sixth season would therefore bring the series into the early 2000s, when The Queen celebrated her Golden Jubilee in the same year that she lost her mother and her sister.
The Crown famously replaces its cast every two seasons to age the characters up. In the first two seasons, Queen Elizabeth was portrayed by Claire Foy. In the third and fourth seasons, she has been portrayed by Olivia Colman. For the final two seasons, Imelda Staunton will play The Queen.
Lesley Manville was recently announced to be taking over the role of Princess Margaret from Helena Bonham-Carter (Vanessa Kirby portrayed the royal in its first two seasons). New casting for Prince Philip, The Queen Mother, Prince Charles, and Princess Anne has not been announced yet nor have new characters that would likely be introduced as the storyline heads into the 1980s and 1990s, including The Duke and then-Duchess of York, The Earl and Countess of Wessex, and an older Diana, Princess of Wales (who will be portrayed in the fourth season by Emma Corrin).
“The Crown keeps raising the bar with each new season,” said Cindy Holland, Netflix’s Vice President of Original Content, in a statement. “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.”
