The Crown has returned for its sixth and final season, and for the first time since the show began, this season does not open on an event where Queen Elizabeth is the focal point, it opens instead on the car crash that killed Princess Diana.
That feels like an important and deliberate distinction, because as the show moves into the summer of 1997, there was no royal story more important that Diana, her presence had essentially commandeered the news cycle, as this first episode of the season illustrates, a reality that was both frustrating for the rest of the royal family, and tragic, since you can either directly or indirectly blame the media for her death. (Look, I’ve certainly watched enough conspiracy theory documentaries about her final night to go either way.)
The episode begins with a man walking his dog in the middle of the night. As soon as the audience sees the Eiffel Tower and hears this man telling his dog to pee in French, we 100% know the moment we (and he) are about to witness: It’s August 31, 1997, we’re in Paris and a black Mercedes zooms into the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. A second later we hear the crash.
We flash back eight weeks, it’s early summer in 1997 now, and Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) is blasting Chumbawumba in her convertible with the top down, she and Prince William (Rufus Kampa) are headed to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s (Bertie Carvel) house. Blair later reveals the purpose of Diana’s visit to Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton): Diana wants to “harness her gifts” with a job in the government; if she’s no longer of any use to the royal family then at least maybe she can do some good as some sort of public servant. The Queen is not receptive to the idea.
“It’s hard to be half in anything. You’re either in or you’re out,” she tells Blair, adding that though Diana will always be a member of their family as the mother of the future King, “As a divorced woman, and no longer an HRH, Diana is now learning the difference being officially in the royal family, and out.”
The Queen’s coldness is not a new trait, as she often allows her sense of duty and that chilly formality to override any actual human emotions she may have, and it’s the same reason she tells her son, Prince Charles (Dominic West) that she will not be attending the 50th birthday party that he’s throwing for Camilla Parker-Bowles (Olivia Williams). At this point, Charles and Diana have been divorced for a whole year and it’s clear to everyone that Charles is finally, truly happy thanks to Camilla. Yet despite the fact that he is nearly pleading with his mother to come to Camilla’s party, she asks, “Is it really so important that I attend?” and he responds, “It is to me.” Elizabeth, your son is literally begging for you approval, open your eyes, woman. The Queen remains unmoved.
This party is also the reason that Diana has left England to head to St. Tropez with William and Harry (Fflyn Edwards); if you recall from the season 5 finale, Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw) invited her to his villa in the south of France, and she’s taken him up on the offer.
Unbeknownst to both Diana and Mohamed’s son Dodi (Khalid Abdalla), the trip is Mohamed’s way of setting the two up. Dodi lives in L.A. with his fianceé, Kelly Fisher, but none of that matters to Mohamed, he sees Diana as not only a friend, but a way for him to get close to the royal family, with whom he’s been obsessed since his childhood in Egypt.
Mohamed forces Dodi to come to St. Tropez and leave his “gold digger” fianceé behind, and Dodi, being the dutiful son, does so despite his own misgivings. When he arrives, Mohamed proudly declares that he as put Diana “on a plate” for his son, serving her up like some piece of meat. Mohamed might be sweet “Mou-Mou” to Diana’s face, here he’s depicted as cunning, using her for his own personal gain. “This is your chance to finally make me proud of you,” Mohamed tells his son. Yoinks, maybe Charles and Dodi should be friends, they both definitely have some parent stuff to work out.
If there’s one thing that can spoil any celebrity’s vacation (and specifically a British celebrity’s vacation, on account of how relentless the British tabloids are), it’s paparazzi. Diana and the kids attempt to have fun on Mohamed’s yacht, but not even 25 feet away are a dozen boats filled with photographers screaming to them for a good shot. It’s enough to force William inside to play video games in the dark, so Diana takes it on herself to make a deal with the photographers. She takes a speedboat out on the water and tells them to back off. “You leave me and my boys alone please, and you’re all gonna get a big surprise with the next thing I do,” she tells them, As she says this, she’s wearing a tasteful but still sexy bathing suit, and she allows them to get a few shots of her. This is the way the disgusting, creepy game is played, and she’s a master of it.
On the one hand, it does the trick: they back off of her for the rest of her vacation. On the other hand, the photos of her in her bathing suit are front-page news, which enrages Charles: Camilla’s party was supposed to be the front-page headline. (The implication the show makes is that Diana timed this out deliberately – sure, she was looking out for her children’s privacy, but she’s also not above some petty competition with Charles and the woman who wrecked her marriage.)
Charles is furious that he and Camilla can’t beat Diana in the papers (“This is war! I need total victory!” he yells at his press team, who respond that Diana “may win the battle for attention,” but not “the battle for sympathy.”) But in fact, the party for Camilla was a huge success. She did receive some positive coverage (despite the fact that it was buried in the papers), and his aunt, Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) attended and witnessed the way Charles fawned over Camilla. She called Queen Elizabeth to tell her just how at-ease and happy Charles was acting. “I think, starting to show support for your son in this matter would be no bad thing,” Margaret tells the Queen. “Because he will be King one day, and we want our Kings and Queens to be happy.”
This prompts Elizabeth to have a think about the way she’s publicly responded to Charles and Camilla’s relationship, and while Prince Philip thinks she should remain stoic and unmoved, Elizabeth slowly starts to come around to the idea that perhaps Charles deserves to be happy and perhaps Camilla really is the love of his life. The closest Charles ever gets to a warm hug from his mother is when she finally makes a phone call to him to tell him, “I just wanted to say I’m happy that you’re so manifestly happy.”
It ain’t much, for for this block of ice he calls Mummy, it’ll do.
Back on Dodi’s yacht, Diana and Dodi become increasingly comfortable with one another. They’re playful, and he appears to have brought William out of his shell. They all watch Jumanji together. (Meanwhile, on a smaller boat nearby, Kelly Fisher sits alone, probably with a telescope trying to make out what Robin Williams is even saying.)
In the show’s final scenes, Dodi comes clean to Diana about the fact that he’s been shuttling back and forth between the boat that Kelly’s on, and the bigger boat that Diana is on, trying to spend time with both women. Once Mohamed found out that Kelly was close by, he apparently went ballistic, and once Kelly found out that Dodi was spending time with Diana, she also went ballistic, as depicted by an argument montage, and he truly seems broken by the predicament. Diana is a solid listener, and she tells him he’s lucky that at least he has a father who cares, who is present in his life; hers neglected her for her whole life. As she tells him this, she plays piano, a skill she learned specifically to impress her dad, to no avail. “To think our fathers are such good friends, they could have rubbed off on each other a little bit, I could’ve used some of your father’s care and concern.”
“Obsessive control,” Dodi pouts.
“Well, your father could’ve used a bit of my father’s –”
“Traditional parenting?” Dodi interjects.
“Complete and utter neglect,” Diana corrects him.
Man, between Charles, Diana, and Dodi, some family therapy really would have benefited everyone, but it’s the daddy issues that bond Di and Dodi even closer together and turn their friendship into something more over the course of this conversation. He tells her that he’s conflicted about his wedding, something she knows all too well, telling him she knew her own wedding would be a disaster.
“But you still went ahead,” he says.
“My face was on the tea towels, I didn’t have a choice,” she laughs. Last season, Diana’s self-deprecating conversation with Mohamed on the day they met was as easy and comfortable a conversation as we’ve seen her have. Now, with Dodi, it’s just as easy. Father and son may not be very much alike, but in Diana, they both find common ground.
The day that Diana leaves St. Tropez, Dodi tells her she’s welcome to come back any time. She explains that her boys will be with Charles for the next few weeks, which leaves her free to do what she wants, and when she arrives back to her apartment in Kensington Palace, she opens the door to a room filled with roses and an invitation from Dodi written on a card: “Paris next week?”
It’s an invitation she will, regrettably, accept.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
