How Queen Elizabeth’s Death Changed The Crown’s Ending

The upcoming sixth season of The Crown covers real-life royal events from 1997, the year Princess Diana tragically died in a Paris car accident, to 2005, which marked Prince Charles and Camilla’s wedding. And while the queen died last September, well beyond the show’s designated timeline, series creator Peter Morgan says her legacy will be acknowledged in The Crown’s final episode.

When the long-reigning monarch died at age 96, production on the Netflix series’ final season took a hiatus out of respect for the royal. “The Crown is a love letter to her and I’ve nothing to add for now, just silence and respect,” Morgan wrote in a statement to Deadline at the time. “I expect we will stop filming out of respect too.”

In a recent interview with Variety, Morgan reflected on the perspective that the brief break offered in addressing her death on the show. “We’d all been through the experience of the funeral,” he said. “So because of how deeply everybody will have felt that, I had to try and find a way in which the final episode dealt with the character’s death, even though she hadn’t died yet.”

Netflix chief Ted Sarandos added that although ending with the queen’s death was discussed, they ultimately opted to stick with the intended 2005 end point. “It was the cutoff to keep it historical, not journalistic,” he explained. “I think by stopping almost 20 years before the present day, it’s dignified.”

Despite the misgivings of Prince William, Prince Harry, and even Dame Judi Dench, Morgan told the publication he stands by his right to chronicle the royals even in the midst of real-life sensitivities. “Everyone in Britain, whether they acknowledge it or not, has that level of sensitivity and attachment to this family, which is why it is an absolute minefield for dramatists to explore,” he said. “And yet dramatists are born to write about kings and queens. That’s what we do.”

The show’s sixth season will premiere in two parts before the end of the year: part one on November 16, and part two on December 14.