Warning: This post contains spoilers for season 3 ofThe Crown.
Episode 1: Olding
The Crownwastes no time communicating thechange in its main cast.
“But there we are.
Des Willie/Netflix
Age is rarely kind to anyone.
Nothing one can do about it.
One just has to get on with it.”
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So let’s get on with it, shall we?
Elizabeth dismisses it as idle gossip but tucks it away in the back of her mind.
She asks for some help brushing up on the Early Modern Period.
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“And what era are we in now, do you supposethe frighteningly modern?”
The queen goes for another visit, this time with a former PM.
“Where would Great Britain be without its greatest Briton?”
Sophie Mutevelian/Netflix
The familyand the countrymourns, but more bad news is on the way.
It’s a tense address, but not the last big moment for the night.
Speaking with Wilson, the queen finds that maybe he’s not so bad after all.
Sophie Mutevelian / Netdflix
He’s no art lover, it turns out.
“I’m an economist,” he tells her.
“I’m best with numbers.
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you could trust numbers.
They’re honest.”
It’s music to her ears.
Des Willie / Netflix
Less harmonious is a meeting between Prince Philip and Blunt.
Would be a shame for those to get out, wouldn’t it?
So there you have it.
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It’s a Margaret episode!
I’d love every minute."
She begs Elizabeth to tell Tommy: “Margaret Rose can do it.
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Margaret Rose wants to do it.
Margaret Rose was born to do it.”
In the present day, Margaret Rose is going to America.
Sophie Mutevelian / Netdflix
Inside the plane, Tony and Margaret discuss the sisters' complicated dynamic.
“[Elizabeth] knows it, too.”
Then there’s Elizabeth, who’s hating it.
But she’s got other problems to deal with.
Namely, the British economy is in the toilet.
Struggling with a deficit of 800 million, they need the Americans to bail them out.
A prime invitation to a weekend of shooting at Balmoral is, curiously, ignored.
The raging insecurity on this guy!
Margaret doesn’t follow her sister’s adviceand thank god.
/ They found her vagina in North Carolina / And her a–hole in Buckingham Palace."
The queen is glad, obviously, but also seething with resentment.
“All the things I could never be.
Instinctive, spontaneous, dazzling.”
Margaret comes home a hero, and Elizabeth offers her some kind of honor in recognition of her success.
Philip, however, breaks down to his wife why it could never work.
Tommy Lascelles, of all people, once drunkenly told him a theory about the family.
“But alongside that dull, dutiful, reliable, heroic strain runs another.
The dazzling, the brilliant, the individualisticand the dangerous.”
Margaret can’t take over any queenly duties.
That’s been clear since they were children.
Princess Elizabeth’s will be center stage and yours, ma’am, will be from the wings."
For a dazzler like Margaret, that’s nothing less than a death sentence.
The next morning brings unthinkable tragedy.
Meanwhile, a group of miners is alarmed to discover a spoil tip is unstable.
They run to the office to send a safety team up there, but they’re too late.
In his room that night, Wilson takes off his dusty dress shoes, visibly shaken.
Visiting Buckingham Palace the next day, he tries to convince Elizabeth to visit the scene herself.
The PM can’t agree with her, thinking she ought to offer comfort to the devastated community.
“I didn’t say put on a show,” Wilson counters.
“I said comfort people.”
Upon hearing the news, Antony races off to Aberfan.
The crown still refuses, but Prince Philip visits on behalf of the family.
“They didn’t smash things up.
They didn’t fight in the streets.
They sang,” he says.
“It’s the most astonishing thing I’ve ever heard.”
And even the macho Duke of Edinburgh admits that he may have wept.
Her team receives a tip that the story will be running.
And so she has no choice but to go.
It’s expected."
Go ahead, take a minute to dry your eyes.
(She does.)
Back at Buckingham Palace, Elizabeth is ready to give Wilson a piece of her mind.
“They deserved a display of compassion, of empathy from their queen,” she says.
“They got nothing.”
Yeah, that eye-dab was fake.
“I am an academic, a privileged Oxford don.
Not a worker.”
“We can’t be everything to everyone and still be true to ourselves,” he says.
“We do what we have to do as leaders.”
Maybe she’s got some feeling in her, after all.
He may even have to give up polo soon!
Prince Philip decides to take things into his own hands and change the public’s opinionwith a documentary.
When she arrives at the palace she immediately inquires after her son a.ka.
Bubbikins, but is informed he’s indisposed.
Yes, the reviews were brutal but the ratings were high.
They want them to be ideal.
Of course, Prince Philip has another great idea to combat the negativity!
Princess Anne will do an interview with the Manchester Guardian as the subject of an in-depth profile.
He thinks it’ll give them a positive endorsement.
Indeed, he’s so confident he even requests John Armstrong to conduct it.
They go for a walk.
She watches her husband and mother-in-law walk the grounds from the window.
Ruth Kinane
Episode 5: Coup
Oh no, chaps, the pound is in trouble!
Indeed, the British trade gap is 107 million (whatever that means, it sounds bad).
It’s the worst figure on record!
If that sounds bad it’s because it is.
And what a proposal it is!
If that sounds like a coup to you, that’s because it is!
Here’s the kicker: They want Mountbatten to be the new prime minister.
We all know how that goes.
Remember him from last season?
Philip was always a little jealous of his and Elizabeth’s easy manner.
), she’s realized her horses are just not up to scratch anymore.
In her absence, she has deputized some of her responsibilities to her mother.
Elizabeth is having a grand old time.
She asks him to be the royal racing manager.
Mountbatten pompously assumes the queen might be compelled to do it if he asks because they’re second cousins.
The queen is raging and immediately jets back to England where she gives Mountbatten a good telling-off.
That’s him told.
She thinks it’s funny he got a dressing down from the queen.
One really must intervene.
Yup, that’s right, it’s time to disrupt him!
To help achieve this, he proposes Charles make his investiture speech in Welsh.
But hecango and study there and learn how to address the country in their native tongue.
There have been some separatist stirrings in Wales, so Charles has his work cut out for him.
Millward treats Charles like any other student; there’s no special treatment here.
Honestly, it’s hard to watch.
Millward is impressed enough to invite him over to dinner when Charles lets slip he has no plans.
(He’s having trouble making friends with all the anti-Royal feelings.)
We can’t blame Charles too much, it is a rather complex language and the pronunciation is intense.
Regardless, it’s time for the investiture ceremony and speech.
But first, some improvements.
It’s important to respect that, he says, decked out in a crown and ermine fur.
Wales has an identity, will, and voice of her own.
Millward asks how the changes went down with the family.
“Nobody likes to be ignored,” she quotes to him.
He doesn’t think he’s wrong: He’s not seen or heard in the family.
The queen says they all have to live without having a voice, it’s their duty.
The less they do, speak or agree the better.
He has a voice.
Well, no one wants to hear it, his mother, the queen, responds.
Damn, so cold.
It’s hardest to sympathize with the queen when we see her detached mothering.
“I live with bread like you,” he recites on stage.
There are layers to the s—, folks.
Prince Philip is enthralled watching it all on television.
Something less appealing to him is church.
They all cheer as the rocket clears the tower.
He’s also clearly having a midlife crisis.
When his duties for the next few days are read to him they seem mundane by comparison.
Philip thinks you raise your game by action but says they can have the building regardless.
Such tact in that man.
He tells them action is what defines us and references the astronautsaka his new gods.
It’s moon landing time!
Philip is very invested and anxious while everyone else chitchats and clinks flutes.
After the rest go to bed, he stays up late watching more and even sheds a tear.
Luckily, the queen has something up her sleeve she thinks will cheer her husband up.
She’s accepted an invitation to an audience with the astronauts.
Philip takes it one step further and asks if he can have a private meeting with them.
The astronauts all have colds and keep sneezing, somewhat dispelling the God-like impression Philip had of them.
Philip’s clearly disappointed by their surface-level answers and scraps the rest of his questions.
Instead, he allows them to quiz him on the size of the palace which has them all mesmerized.
Tobias Menzies delivers the monologue with such subtle and controlled pain that the scene somewhat harrowing in its realness.
Episode 8: Dangling Man
It’s 1970 in Paris and someone has a bad cough.
His abdication is the reason Elizabeth wears the crown.
It’s good for appearances so it must go ahead.
They appear to have an on-again-off-again relationship with Camilla presently mad at Andrew for taking up with another girl.
To give him a taste of his own medicine, she declines his invitation to a ball.
Andrew goes alone but soon enough is flirting and later hooking up with Princess Anne.
Time for a spot of polo!
Later, Charles fills in Mountbatten on his recent trip to Paris to see his great-uncle.
Charles thinks the duke sees something of himself in the young prince.
He also tells Mountbatten he wants to snap Camilla up and later persuades her to have dinner with him.
She comes over to the palace (causal first date) for dinner.
Just then a servant interrupts with a note for Camilla.
When she opens it, paper birds pop out in her face.
Sure you didn’t mean all that, Charles?
He later tells his sister the evening was lovely.
Back across the English Channel, the duke’s documentary is underway.
He believes they fear the character and freedom of thought that he represents.
Hearing she’s on the way, David insists on getting up and dressed to see her.
He even stands to greet heralthough it literally almost kills him.
The duke thinks that with the right woman by his side, Charles will make a good king.
On paring, the duke asks her to forgive him for all he did to her.
But he falls asleep before he can hear the last part.
She kisses him goodbye.
The crown is not static; it’s moving.
The Duke of Windsor dies in France with his wife Wallis Simpson by his side.
and a lot of meddling relatives.
Obviously, this is some pointed advice for Charles about his own love life.
To watch out for his family.
“They mean well,” Charles assures her.
“No, they don’t,” Wallis responds.
Can we all say “foreshadowing”?
Philip is more dismissive: “You don’t love a girl like Camilla Shand.
She’s a bit of fun.”
And while Charles is totally smitten, Camilla is still torn between him and Andrew Parker Bowles.
So, the older generation takes matters into their own hands.
In the case of this Margaret-focused installment, it also means aHelena Bonham Carter FYC reel.
She’s been great all season, but this one really lets her shine.
“War is our love,” she says.
“A brutal fight to the death is our mating dance.”
And according to her, they wouldn’t want it any other way.
Except, maybe she does?
And instead of rallying around her, everyone keeps cheerfully small-talking about Tony.
Instead of following her or apologizing, everyone just keeps on eating and assumes she’ll be fine.
(Family dinners, right?)
Margaret accepts, but even on the train there she can’t escape Tony.
The country trip, and especially Roddy, brings some much-needed happiness to Margaret as her marriage is crumbling.
When they arrive at her apartment, Tony is there and refuses to leave.
Roddy offers to go and she tells him she doesn’t want him to.
They start arguing again, calling each other venomous things and going straight back to their old toxic tricks.
Roddy runs out and Margaret goes after him, but he’s gone.
Whoever comes next, she muses, will be the seventh prime minister of her reign.
“The rest of us drop like flies but she goes on and on,” Margaret dryly notes.
But Margaret’s actions have shaken the usually unflappable queen.
It would be unbearable."
So then, Margaret tells her, they must both carry on.
That’s the point of us, she says, but especially the queen.
She’s the one who holds it all together, and she’s got to do it alone.
