The Crown (Season 5), On Netflix: Release Date, Trailer, Cast, Plot, Controversies

Everything We Know About The Crown (Season 5), On Netflix: Eagerly waited by fans, the fifth season of the award-winning historical drama (fictional dramatization) The Crown is soon to be released on Netflix in early November. The critically acclaimed series covers the personal life and Britain’s history during the life and times of Britain’s longest reigning monarch Queen Elizabeth II.

Where Season 4 of  The Crown Left Us

The fourth season left us at the beginning of the 1990s and covered the span of years between 1979 and 1990 when the Queen had the formidable Margaret Thatcher as a prime minister for eleven years. This season finally introduced the people’s Princess, Lady Diana Spencer, who later married Prince Charles. The season covered the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana and the couple’s tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983. We also saw the slow disintegration of their marriage as Charles renews his romance with Camilla Parker Bowles and the timid Diana blossoms to finding her own personality. The season also covered the Falklands War, Lord Mountbatten, Uncle Dickie’s death and funeral as well as a break-in at the break-in at Buckingham Palace by Michael Fagan.  

What is The Crown (Season 5) About?

Season 5 will focus on the fifth decade of Queen Elizabeth II reign and shall cover the turbulent decade of the 1990s.  It was a decade that was especially tough for the queen personally, in 1992 three of her four children got divorced and the explosive end of Prince Charles’s marriage exposed the royal family in the public eye like never before, and a massive fire destroyed close to a hundred rooms in the Windsor Castle; the year was called ‘annus horribilis’, that is a horrible year by the Queen herself. The Season will possibly detail the scandalous divorce of Charles and Diana, with the infamous tell-all BBC Interview and quite possibly the paparazzi-fuelled aftermath of the marriage. The show will also delve into Diana’s death and the public outrage and media critique of the royal family as the big existential question looms of the need for monarchy in the rapidly approaching new millennium.

Who is in The Crown: Season 5 Cast?

This Season will see a cast overhaul much like in Season 3 where all major characters are recast, so the audiences can expect a lot of fresh faces embodying old characters as the Queen enters the fifth decade of her reign and faces major upheavals and challenges in her personal life. Imelda Staunton picks up the mantle or might we say the crown from Olivia Colman who reprised the role following the portrayal by Claire Foy. Staunton is popularly recognized as the pink-wearing reviled headmistress of Hogwarts Dolores Umbridge or more recently by her role as Lady Bagshaw in the Downton Abbey films.

Jonathan Pryce is recast as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Elizabeth’s husband. Audiences might remember him as the High Sparrow from the Game of Thrones and more recently from his Oscar-nominated role as the Cardinal Bergoglio in the film The Two Popes (2019).

Pryce succeeds in the role of Tobias Menzies and Matt Smith. Dominic West is recast as Prince Charles (now King Charles), the eldest issue of the Queen and the heir apparent to the crown. He reprises the role previously played by Josh O’Connor. A fellow The Downton Abbey film co-star of Staunton, West is known to the audiences through his roles in the television show The Affair and The Wire.

Elizabeth Debicki is recast as Princess Diana, the estranged and later divorced wife of Prince Charles. Debicki known for her work in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020) and the television series The Night Manager succeeds in the role previously played by Emma Corrin. Olivia Williams plays Camilla Parker Bowles (now Camilla, Queen Consort), and she picks up the role from Emerald Fennel.

This season has Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, she inherits the role from Helena Bonham-Carter and Vanessa Kirby who previously played Queen Elizabeth’s sister. Claudia Harrison is cast as Princess Anne who was previously played by Erin Doherty. Johnny Lee Miller is cast as John Major, former Prime Minister of Britain from 1990-1997. The characters of Prince Andrew and Prince Edward have been recast as well James Murray and Sam Woolf play the characters respectively.

When is The Crown (Season 5) Releasing on Netflix?

The critically acclaimed and award-winning show returns to television screens after a long wait of two years. Season 5 of The Crown will release on the streaming site Netflix on 9th November 2022. There is good news for those who love to binge watch, unlike the new trend of releasing episodes weekly on streaming sites, all episodes of The Crown Season 5 will release simultaneously.

What are the Controversies Surrounding The Crown (Season 5)?

While the show has been much loved by audiences and appreciated by critics in its previous seasons it has not been without its fair share of controversies. It has been called out by histories for playing fast and loose with the facts and being manipulative blurring historical accuracy for compelling drama.

More recently the calls for a disclaimer and sensitivity escalated following the Queen’s demise. The show was called out by actress Judi Dench who in an open letter published in The Times, a popular British newspaper, accused the series of misleading the audiences calling the show “an inaccurate and hurtful account of history” and that it cheats its audiences by not explicitly warning them that it is “wholly true”.

Her call for a disclaimer was accepted by Netflix which for the first time in the show’s four-season run and the soon-arriving fifth season has added a disclaimer “Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatization tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign.” The trailer details of the trailer on YouTube also begin by the sentence “Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatization tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign.”

Watch the Trailer for The Crown (Season 5)

Netflix released the first trailer for the much-awaited season on 20th October 2022. The trailer gives a peek into the events that the show will cover in the current season, the crisis in the royal family, the disintegrating marriage of Prince Charles and Diana, and the media war that follows, we also get to see Elizabeth Debicki in Princess Diana’s infamous revenge dress. If the trailer is anything to go by this season will be phenomenal as Diana won’t go quietly and would battle till the end. See the trailer for yourself here: