The royal drama has come to an end – but why won’t there be a seventh season?
The Crown has officially come to an end, with the second part of its sixth season, made up of six episodes, now having been released on Netflix.
The new run ends around the time of Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005, and addresses the death of Princess Margaret in 2002 and the meeting of William and Kate in 2001.
We have known for some time now that the series would end well before the present day and would finish up with its sixth season. But why is that the case, and could we expect any return for the drama in another form?
Read on for everything you need to know about why there won’t be a season 7 of The Crown.
Why won’t there be The Crown season 7?
It has always been the intention that The Crown would end before the present day, and that the number of seasons it would take to reach that point would be finite.
For a long time, creator Peter Morgan intended for this to be six seasons. Then, in 2020, it was announced that the fifth season would be the show’s last, with Morgan saying: “Now that we have begun work on the stories for season five it has become clear to me that this is the perfect time and place to stop.”
Later the same year, it was announced that Morgan had changed his mind, and that the series would in fact end with season 6.
He explained: “As we started to discuss the storylines for Series 5, it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story, we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons. To be clear, Series 6 will not bring us any closer to present-day – it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail.”
As for why the series should end approximately 20 years behind the present day, Morgan previously explained: “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.
“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.”
What has Peter Morgan said about The Crown ending?
More recently, Morgan spoke with Variety about his decision to end the series where he has, and how the final episode changed following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.
Morgan said that the cutoff in 2005 was made to “keep it historical, not journalistic”, saying that “stopping almost 20 years before the present day” is “dignified”.
Co-chief executive officer of Netflix Ted Sarandos revealed in the same piece that a discussion had taken place when they began developing the series, where it was suggested that would end the series with the Queen’s death. However, she effectively outlived the show.
As to how the Queen’s death impacted the finale, Morgan said: “We’d all been through the experience of the funeral. So because of how deeply everybody will have felt that, I had to try and find a way in which the final episode dealt with the character’s death, even though she hadn’t died yet.”
Will there be any spin-offs or prequels?
There have been rumours and reports that a spin-off or prequel series to the show could be in the works for some time now, with The Sun previously reporting that the streamer hoped to keep the show going as a “movie, or perhaps a series of specials” in the future.
At the time, RadioTimes.com understood that The Sun’s report was purely speculation and there were no concrete plans in place regarding any future spin-offs.
However, Morgan told Variety in October that he does have “an idea” for a spin-off, but that he needs to “do some other things” first.
He added that it would need “a unique set of circumstances to come together”, revealing that it would “definitely” be a prequel, predating Elizabeth II’s reign.
Ted Sarandos said in the same interview: “I have absolute faith in Peter. And if he believes there are stories to be told there, we definitely would explore it.”
In December 2023, The Sun reported that the show’s creators were planning a series featuring “raunchy royal stories”. However, when asked by Deadline whether this was possible, Peter Morgan said: “I’d sooner go write about something else for a while, and let’s see.
“I don’t know how much drama is really going on in the Royal Family or how much the newspapers want to write about the Royal Family, sometimes it’s impossible to tell. But I think some distance is the best thing now.”
So, while Morgan doesn’t appear to rule out a return to stories about the Royal Family, it seems that we would be a way off from any such continuation, and he doesn’t have any plans in the near future.
The Crown season 6 is available to stream in full on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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