‘The Crown’ Season 6 Episode 8 Recap: That’s A Series Wrap For Princess Margaret

The Crown paid tribute one last time to Princess Margaret in the Season 6, Episode 8 episode “Ritz” and it was a truly moving episode that honored the vivacious royal who was so often overshadowed by her older sister by showing just how much Margaret actually meant to the Queen.

The episode opens on V-E Day, May 8, 1945. Young Elizabeth and Margaret, the teenage daughters of King George VI, are as keen to celebrate the end of the war as anyone, so they sneak out of Buckingham Palace with Margaret’s future lover Peter Townsend and Elizabeth’s longtime confidante Porchey for a night of celebration. I can’t be the only one who spent most of the episode focused on the faces of Viola Prettejohn and Beau Gadson, the actresses who portrayed young Elizabeth and Margaret in the flashback scenes, because how can two people actually look so very much like computer de-aged versions of Claire Foy and Vanessa Kirby?

Elizabeth is overly cautious: sneaking out, trying not to be recognized, having fun?? It’s not in her nature. Margaret on the other hand, tells her, “Can’t you be irresponsible just once?” They slip into the Ritz, Margaret’s hotspot of choice because it’s glamourous and it’s mentioned in Jeeves and Wooster, and as Margaret and Peter dance upstairs, Elizabeth is approached by an American GI who invites her downstairs to the club called The Pink Sink to dance. (A kinda racist British soldier adds that they’re dancing the jitterbug down there, an illicit dance that’s banned in England and hails from Harlem, “a ghetto in New York.”)

The episode cuts back and forth between these scenes from 1945 and the early 2000s, as Margaret (Lesley Manville) approaches her 70th birthday. The V-E Day celebration was special to her, a secret night where something extraordinary happened, some kind of wild side of Elizabeth came out (“the real you, the you that you gave up in order to be the other you,” Margaret says) to play, and Margaret has been dying to share it with the world. What could she have possibly gotten up to in the basement at the Ritz that’s so scandalous? The anniversary of that day is coming up, and when Margaret brings it up to her sister, Elizabeth reminds her that the events of that night are to remain a secret, so Margaret drops it, and off she pops to her vacation villa in Mustique instead.

In Mustique, Margaret’s happy place, she can live it up, partying with friends, but in the midst of a cocktail party where she’s regaling guests with a naughty poem, she suffers a stroke. She’s sent to a hospital in Barbados, and from there she’s brought back to England – flying commercial! Unable to walk, she has to be carried from her wheelchair to her seat on the plane, which renders her weak and small, an indignity for such a vivacious character, really.

The stroke merits a major lifestyle change for Margaret, no more smoking, no more booze, no more sweets. As much as she hates exercise, she puts the work at physical therapy to get back on her feet, but in one of the more horrific scenes on TV this year, we watch as those feet get scalded in a bathtub. I genuinely squirmed in my seat watching her suffer yet another stroke while she was showering and, unable to get out of the bath, the hot water caused burns so severe, she’s now unable to stand up.

Margaret’s years of hard living have caught up to her, and the strokes concern everyone around her, but in a lot of ways, the show mines the humor from her decline: her servants worry she might actually be dead while she’s asleep on the couch, and she orgasmically enjoys a puff of cigarette when she finds one that hasn’t been thrown away. She’s inching toward death’s door, but she’s not going to allow that to take away her fun.

That’s why she’s decided to hold a 70th birthday party for herself: might as well go out with a bang, she says. At the party, held at The Ritz, Margaret delivers a speech and reflects on some of her memories there, and she threatens to tell the story about V-E Day. Elizabeth exchanges glances with Porchey, the only other living soul who knows what happened that night (Towsend died in 1995), and quickly cuts off her sister’s story, seamlessly working in a toast that honors her “constant companion” and acknowledges Margaret’s dutiful side. The sisters could not be more opposite in a lot of ways, but Elizabeth’s toast is an ode to their symbiotic relationship, neither of them would be what they are without the other.

After the party, Margaret suffers a third, more serious stroke. When Elizabeth greets her sister in her hospital bed, saying, “Hello, you,” Margaret, through slurred speech, quips, “Goodbye, you.” The gallows humor is perfectly Margaret, and the only way she knows how to cope with the death that’s coming for her. As much as Elizabeth tries to cheer her sister up with some jammy tarts and a new walking stick, both women know that the end is near.

But first, another tragedy: On 9/11, of course everyone is shocked and saddened, but poor Porchey has a heart attack and dies after he hears the news. As Elizabeth’s longtime horse-loving companion, she’s obviously sad, but Margaret points out to her sister that with her own illness and Porchey’s death, “all those closest to you are now abandoning you.”

Margaret laments, “I’m not ready to leave this particular party,” and she gives Elizabeth a list of funeral demands for when the time comes, including the most important one, “Make sure I will actually be dead when they close the coffin.” Her body may be failing her, but she’s still the same old Margaret. As she lies in bed, with her sister reading Jeeves and Wooster to her, Margaret tells Elizabeth why she wants the world to know what happened to them on V-E Day. “If people don’t know about that night, they’ll never fully understand the scale of the sacrifice you made. How much of your true self you’ve locked up, hidden away,” Margaret says.

So what did actually happen? After being tempted by the jitterbug, Elizabeth descended the stairs into The Pink Sink, where she found a nightclub filled with soldiers and dancers and drinks and debauchery. And she joined in, jitterbugging her way onto the dance floor without a care in the world: that’s the real luxury of one who is not yet a Queen. When Margaret, Peter, and Porchey discover Elizabeth there, the two sisters cling to each other on the dance floor having the night of their lives. They walk home to Buckingham Palace, slipping into the gates at dawn, but when young Elizabeth asks her sister if she’s coming, it cuts back to Lesley Manville as Margaret, and she tells her sister, “I’m afraid not, but I will always be by your side no matter what.”

In real life, Princess Margaret died on February 9, 2002 – and though it’s been confirmed that the sisters did go out celebrating the end of the war, Elizabeth never did reveal the details of what actually happened that night in 1945.

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.