The Crown was never meant to catch up to present day, and executive producer Suzanne Mackie says the end point was decided long before Queen Elizabeth II died.
“Peter [Morgan, showrunner] knew right at the beginning, 10 years ago, that it would be 2005,” Mackie told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on Friday, November 17.
She added, “He always said, ‘I want to end around the time when Camilla and Charles got married.’ I always see it in a rather fairytale way. Like, that’s the end of our journey: Peace is restored to the land, and they lived happily ever after.”
The Crown chronicles the life of Queen Elizabeth II from the 1940s. Since the Netflix drama debuted in 2016, writers have faced questions about just how close to the modern day royal family the show would get. Morgan eventually explained that he felt anything in the past couple of decades would remain off screen.
“I just think you get so much more interesting [with time],” Morgan told THR in August 2020. “Meghan [Markle] and [Prince] Harry are in the middle of their journey, and I don’t know what their journey is or how it will end. One wishes some happiness, but I’m much more comfortable writing about things that happened at least 20 years ago. I sort of have in my head a 20-year rule. That is enough time and enough distance to really understand something, to understand its role, to understand its position, to understand its relevance.”
He continued, “Often things that appear absolutely wildly important today are instantly forgotten, and other things have a habit of sticking around and proving to be historically very relevant and long-lasting. I don’t know where in the scheme of things Prince Andrew or indeed Meghan Markle or Harry will ever appear.”
While some thought that the September 2022 death of the monarch might change his perspective, the season was written long before her passing. Filming on the final season started days before Queen Elizabeth II died at age 96. Production briefly paused in the wake of her death but resumed later that month.
Indeed, final season of The Crown — the second part of which will debut on December 14 — will end long before either the Queen’s death or when Prince Harry met Meghan Markle. However, the last episodes will depict the beginning of another love story: when Prince William (Ed McVey) met Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy). The Prince and Princess of Wales met in 2001 at St Andrews University, which will be covered before The Crown’s series finale.
