‘The Crown’ Season 6 Episode 9 Recap: Golden Jubilee

Just when you thought you’d seen the last of Mohamed Al Fayed (Salim Daw), The Crown is here to remind you that the man did not retreat quietly into private life after the death of his son Dodi. Instead, the grieving father publicly peddled conspiracy theories that much of the public also believed, but which he had a platform to promote in the media, and in the process, he dragged Princess Diana’s sons, especially William (Ed McVey), back to a time that they would really have preferred not to relive.

This is where Season 2 Episode 9 (“Hope Street”) begins, with Mohamed Al Fayed appearing on a news program to declare that, four years after the deaths of Dodi and Diana, he still believes that their car accident was the result of foul play, a murder orchestrated by the British royals. He even adds that they killed Diana because, he says, she was pregnant with Dodi’s child. He refers to the royals as terrorists, and says that with the help of British intelligence agencies, they put a hit on Diana. It’s a shocking claim, but one that the man maintained for most of his life (despite what what the evidence ultimately concludes, but we’ll get to that – this is a dense episode with a lot of other ground to cover).

This leads the British police to open a new inquiry into the car crash, which would be called Operation Paget. The timing of all of this, dredging back up Diana’s death, stinks for the Queen (Imelda Staunton), who is planning her Golden Jubilee, the 50th anniversary celebration of her coronation. Elizabeth also just buried her sister Margaret and now, just seven weeks later, her mother is also on her deathbed. William will point out later in the episode that these two women were the only two people who could actually read what was going on with the Queen beneath the surface; with them (and Porchey) gone, the Queen is left without her closest allies who knew her best. I’ve thought often about how Imelda Staunton feels like the one actress to portray the Queen who has gotten the short end of the royal sceptre, so overshadowed by the Charles and Di of it all during her seasons, but in these final two episodes especially, she’s finally been given her moment to shine. Staunton’s eyes are so full of sadness and duty throughout that the show has come full circle and belongs to Elizabeth once again.

The Queen is certain that public opinion has swung so far away from her that no one will even want to celebrate her Golden Jubilee. She confides this in William, with whom she’s warm and tender: wherever she failed as a mother, she’s made up for it as Granny. But William is also a bit distracted by a newly-single Kate Middleton.

At St. Andrews, Kate is participating in a “risqué” fashion show, so William heads there with his mates to check out her hot bod (a bod that her own mother, Carole, insists she show off – to this, Kate compares her mother or Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennet, a woman similarly obsessed with her daughters’ chances of marrying up). Kate struts her stuff in a sheer dress that wows the audience, and after the show, William reveals his feelings for her. The moment that they kiss is unfortunately the moment that William’s protection officer receives the news that the Queen Mother has died, so their make-out sesh is cut short, but it cements them as a couple.

At the Queen Mother’s funeral, a bit of friction between Harry and William is developing. (Netflix is caught between a rock and a hard place with these two – The Crown is overly sympathetic to William, but they’re also still in the middle of a 5-year contract with Harry and Meghan Markle. I’m desperate to know how Harry feels about his portrayal here, obviously in the midst of the worst period of his life, image-wise, and being dragged for it.) William has to participate in the inquiry into Diana’s death, as he was the last person to speak with her on the phone, and in that conversation, Harry compares himself to their mother, as he feels he’s facing the same scorn in the press that she often did. “Don’t ever do that,” William warns his brother. “Do what?” Harry asks. “Compare yourself to her,” William responds. It’s impossible not to put that comment into the context of today – Harry has often compared himself to his mother, an outsider of sorts, a black sheep, and he has essentially declared that in removing himself from his family, he’s doing what she herself had every intention of doing before she died.

On top of all this, the U.S. and the U.K. have launched their war against Iraq, having accused Saddam Hussein of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, and the once popular Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel) has fallen out of favor with the public. Of course this was happening all at the same time in the early aughts, but it’s one too many plot points to cram into a jam-packed episode that’s trying to wrap up a lot of arcs quickly.

The Queen has feared that her Golden Jubilee would be a Golden Failure – that the public might even boo her while she steps out onto the balcony to greet them. She initially wanted to ask William to be by her side for the occasion, but instead, she insists that he watch the Jubilee on TV with Kate’s family. “Stay well clear,” she tells him, not just so he can spend time with his new girlfriend, but so he can escape the microscope that has so debilitated so many other members of the family, herself included. She then tells him about the first home she shared with Philip as a newlywed in Malta, a house called Villa Guardamangia. In flashbacks, we see Claire Foy and Matt Smith there, as happy as they ever were: remember, this was the era before Elizabeth was coronated, before life got complicated. She could be normal, and she was blissful. She’s signaling to William, even if he doesn’t know it yet, how much he should take advantage of this time in his life, before he too ascends the throne.

Soon enough, the results of the inquiry into Diana and Dodi’s death are revealed, and it has been concluded that there was no grand conspiracy, by the royals or anyone else, to kill them. We watch flashbacks, in the form of CCTV footage mostly, of all the moments leading up to the decision to abscond out the back door of the Ritz with a drunk Henri Paul as chauffeur, and Paul’s reckless driving directly resulting in the crash. Not, as Mohamed has claimed, the result of blinding flashes of light or a mystery Fiat that ran the car off the road. There’s also no evidence of Diana and Dodi being engaged or expecting a child together – the police destroy all of Al-Fayed’s accusations in one clean press conference, leading him to leave the country and call the monarchy the “Dracula royal family,” a term he seemingly coined because they presumably sucked the life out of two people he loved. (Though Al-Fayed did take up residence in Switzerland, in reality he did not wash his hands of the British empire: he continued to run Harrods and own the Fulham football club for years, among other English investments he had made.)

Though Al Fayed would definitely be booing the Queen at her Jubilee if he could, no one else does. She is properly celebrated, even without William there – he awkwardly sits through the event with the Middletons – eating on their couch! So middle class! – while Carole Middleton (Eve Best) hangs on his every word. But he starts to feel a pang of guilt that he’s not with Granny after all, so he bails on dessert to go wave with her on the balcony, arriving just in time.

In the final moments of the show, William asks Kate to be one of his roommates in a house by St. Andrews for the next semester. It’s the start of their happy ever after (this will be where the series leaves them, as we won’t hear much from Kate in the finale), we’re left to fill in the blanks with them from here on out. But in a poignant moment, William receives a gift from Elizabeth to commemorate his new apartment: a photo of her with Philip with a note saying “Something for your new home. I hope it can be your Villa Guardamangia.” It is such a classic, grandmotherly thing to do, to send a vintage photo like that that correlates her own beginnings to William’s own new beginning, but that’s the significance, isn’t it? Elizabeth never excelled at being a mother, but in William, she has found someone she can finally shower with real, maternal love, and it turns out, she’s pretty good at it after all.

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.