‘The Crown’ Season 5 Episode 1 Recap: Cruel Britannia

Two years and a whole pandemic later, The Crown is back for a new season! So much has happened in the real world since we last watched the Netflix series that it’s hard not to watch this season with a more critical, or at least more sensitive, eye. SPOILER ALERT, the queen is actually dead in real life, which means that many people who were not amused by The Crown before are now downright angry that the show may disrespect her memory, and the fact that the series is about to dip into darker territory, covering the lead up to Diana’s death, there’s a vulnerability there – toward her legacy, toward her children – that you can’t deny. Netflix has caved and added a disclaimer to the series calling it a “fictional dramatization,” but while some of the conversations may be fictional, all of the underlying events that inform them are not. Pip pip, off we pop to Episode 1!

Claire Foy can enjoy the fact that for as long as The Crown is on, she will have the opportunity to appear at least once a season in some kind of flashback, and she opens the season for us in a fake newsreel clip of Queen Elizabeth II launching her new yacht, the HMY Britannia, back in 1953. Foy, and the ship, are shiny symbols of newness, they represent the dawn of a new era for Britain.

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The queen, now age 65 and played by Imelda Staunton, gets poked and prodded by her doctor who discusses her new normal: weight gain, foot pain, which serve as general reminder of her own mortality. This was 1991, so 65 was not yet the new 45, and besides, she hasn’t looked 45 since she was 25. Her doctor, we’ll call him Dr. Exposition, who has a degree in moving the story along, asks her which of her many homes is her favorite. “That’s a rather personal question,” she tells him, and we…

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The queen boarding her yacht, which is now nearly 40 years old, for her summer travels to Balmoral Castle. Because this ship is not just any ship, it is her primary residence as she takes leisurely two-week cruises up the western coast of Britain to get to her other other residence. While on the ship, Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce) is alarmed by just how badly it’s ailing, to tune of 14 millions pounds worth of repairs. And despite the fact that England, and the world’s economy for that matter, are in the midst of a deep recession at this time in the summer of 1991, the queen is adamant that her crumbling ship is repaired – using government funds, no less. But we’ll get to that.

Over at How Can A Prince Be So Not Charming’s house, Charles (Dominic West) watches fondly as his one true love, Camilla Parker Bowles (in a brief appearance by Olivia Williams) departs. He is informed that a poll conducted by The Sunday Times of London indicates that half the country thinks that his mother is old and out of touch and should abdicate the throne. By contrast, the public adores (??) Prince Charles and considers him a modern, worthy successor. But of course, at this point, the public also still believes Charles is at least somewhat happily married to Diana, and to reinforce that image, they’re forced to take a family trip, also on a yacht, around the coast of Italy. His lackey explains that one of the biggest advantages of Charles as king is the prospect of Diana as queen, so for the media’s sake, they plan to call this trip a “second honeymoon.” Charles and Diana will call it torture, but you’ve got to keep up appearances. Also on the honeymoon are young Prince William, Prince Harry, and Charles’s cousin Norton Knatchbull, his wife Penny (Natascha McElhone), and their children. In passing, Diana references the fact that the Knatchbull’s youngest daughter, 5 year old Leonora, has just recovered from cancer. This won’t mean much now, but it obviously sets up some plot down the line.

The press goes wild for Charles and Diana’s fake happiness, but only Charles knows that while they’re on their trip, the Times poll regarding his mother’s abdication is scheduled to run. This leads to your classic “Hide the newspapers from the queen! Quick, try to trick her into thinking it’s a different day or something!” and when the queen confronts her assistant about the fact that everyone’s being weird to her, he’s like “Wha? Who? When! No!” and she’s like, “See, you’re being weird, too!” and he’s like, “YOU ARE.” I expect this kind of thing from a Ryan Reynolds movie but not The Crown.

Over on Charles’s boat, he’s quite enjoying the fact that this poll shines a light on him, and he points out that the paper has even named the queen’s enduring reign “Queen Victoria Syndrome,” meaning a monarch who refuses to step down, despite the fact that her subjects have grown tired of her and consider her out of step with the modern world. Charles sees himself as an analog to Victoria’s own son, Edward, who also had lofty dreams to be king, but Victoria refused to step aside.

This season’s Charles is an angry man, and he practically spits out his mother’s name every time she comes up. He’s also unreasonably angry at Diana, too. He arranges for a secret meeting with Prime Minister John Major (played by Jonny Lee Miller) to gain support for his mother’s abdication, and when Diana learns that it means their holiday will be cut short, she’s livid, and her anger makes him angrier. He’s a petty and unreasonable man whose self-interests are only usurped by his Camilla-interests and the show is doing a fantastic job of displaying a pro-Diana agenda. Debicki is really great at making Diana a quiet powerhouse, every line of dialogue she has is pointed and full of conviction now, whereas last season she was still unable to hold her own and would shrink in the shadows of the castle.

As John Major, Jonny Lee Miller has provided us with a great new foil to the royals. He’s not trying to be quite as adversarial or cold as Gillian Anderson’s Margaret Thatcher, instead, he finds himself stuck between a rock (the queen) and a hard place (the prince). First when Charles pleads with his for his support in helping the queen’s abdication movement gain momentum, and later when the queen asks him for a massive sum of money to fix her damn boat. This conversation between the queen and Major is a real play for status, and Staunton really leans into her Dolores Umbridge here when she tells him, “As sovereign I have made very few requests, let alone demands, in return for my service I have given this country. Perhaps the reason I have held back is in the hope when I actually do, people don’t just take it seriously, they do as I ask… without question.” She leaves him speechless, knowing that the optics of this expense are terrible for both of them. Later, after Charles learns of the queen’s request, he snidely comments to Major, “Sometimes these old things are too costly to keep repairing.” I think we’re not talking about the a anymore!

Both of his conversations with the royals it only serve to make him wary of the entire monarchy, especially when he observes it firsthand at the Ghillies Ball, the annual party held by the queen at Balmoral each summer, where he witnesses this parade of tartan-flecked debauchery. He reflects on this obvious dysfunction, both within the royal family and the monarchy itself, telling his wife, “The senior royals seem dangerously deluded.”The junior royals are “feckless, entitled, lost… It’s a situation that cannot help but to affect the stability of the country. What makes it worse is it feels it’s all about to erupt – on my watch.”

If only he knew how bad it was going to get. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Stray Thoughts:

• Last season it was made clear that Princess Anne was unhappy in her marriage to Mark Phillips, and, thanks to some crafty binocular work, she’s got her eye on a new beau, Tim Laurence, who she spies while visiting a lighthouse. This is the most nautical meet cute outside of The Little Mermaid. But what can she possibly see in a man that she’s only seen from 200 feet away?
• Though William and Harry don’t have a lot to do on this show since they’re, you know, children, they’re a crucial extension of Debicki’s Diana. She treats them with so much love and adoration, as was always Diana’s image and priority, and her affection for them is palpable, making all the events of what’s to come even more devastating.

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.