I GOT CHILLS!! Netflix has released another trailer – probably the final trailer – for season 4 of The Crown. As we’ve discussed, this is where Lady Diana Spencer is introduced and we’ll get to see some of the courtship, and I guess maybe up to the wedding. Emma Corrin really, really looks like Diana in so many of these scenes, especially with that feathered Shy Di wig, my God. And the voiceover on the trailer… it’s ominous as hell, and it’s well-earned. We know how this fairytale ended. It ended in screams, a tabloid feeding frenzy, infidelity, divorce and a death in a Paris tunnel. It needs to be THIS ominous.
I think Gillian Anderson is probably going to win everything for playing Margaret Thatcher, right? The wig work is so good! Helena Bonham Carter as a blousy, boozy Margaret is really something too. My only complaint is that I feel like Josh O’Connor really doesn’t look or seem that much older than Diana? Prince Charles was old before his time, for sure, so he seemed like he was 30 going on 60. But Charles also *looked* so much older than his lovely young bride. And I’m not sure Josh O’Connor pulls that off. Hm.
Also: I’m absolutely positive that the assassination of Lord Mountbatten is going to be the hinge of this season. In retrospect, it cannot be overstated how much Dickie’s death affected Prince Charles.
IGs courtesy of Netflix.
The resemblance is spooky.
I don’t think she’s that close in looks but she definitely has Diana’s vibe and body language down. It’s close enough not to creep me out.
@Snuffles, 100% you are spot on with your comment.
I can see the resemblance, but she also reminds me of a young Jodi Foster. This is going to be GOOD!
Poor thing. She was so young and not a single member of that awful family felt protective or caring towards her. I hope they point out how scornful Charles was of his 20 year old bride liking pop music and dancing. And he never took joy in any of the things that made her special. He just saw her as someone to serve him.
I think that with Meghan, all that has happened Diana just sorta seems to come back to life. However, I think we should remember that they are two different women with two different stories though they both ended up leaving the BRF. Meghan story is pretty straight forward to my eyes. However, I feel that Diana’s story is much more complicated on many different levels. Every person with first hand knowledge of Diana in the Charles years seems to tell a different story about what really happened.
I tried to get into The Crown but couldn’t. Diana will change this though. I’ll watch.
I feel that. I’m having a hard time with “feel good” storylines about the Royal family these days.
But Diana…. nothing to feel good about there. Just the true colours of that family coming out for all to see.
I loved the first two seasons but was left completely cold by the third season – I think I only made it through two or three episodes. But I’ve always been obsessed with Princess Di so I am going to power through the rest of the season just to get to this fourth season with her.
You’re not alone. Season 3 was a real chore and the general response wasn’t great. That’s why they announced they were cutting The Crown short by a season, then backtracked when Covid hit. I’ll probably watch because I usually watch these kinds of high class British soaps but I’m not enthusiastic.
I hate to say it because I like her but I think a key problem is Olivia Colman. She just isn’t right in this role, imo.
Agreed, Olivia Colman doesn’t cut it, especially after Claire Foy’s amazing work in the first two seasons. But I think Tobias Menzies is incredible as Prince Philip.
They are going to cover a LOT of ground this season. I’m just rewatching and again, I don’t think this show is very kind about the royal family (and rightfully so in my opinion). So really, really looking forward to seeing what the creators are going to do with the Diana story.
For the most part, I think the show does a good job of showing the complexities of the royal family without trying to make excuses for them. I can’t wait to see their portrayal of Diana and Charles (and everything that went along with that).
This is going to be so good. Can’t wait.
It looks amazing. I think the problem with season 3 was that is was missing some young blood, plus the time period they covered were pretty much dormant in royal years. The introduction of Diana will absolutely kick the show up a notch, much like Diana did with the firm itself.
Plus Emma and josh do seem to have a lot of chemistry, unlike Charles and Diana who acted like strangers.
I think they could have made the third season a lot more interesting if they had focused more on Anne – I still cant believe they ignored her kidnapping.
I didn’t realize they skipped Anne getting married and her attempted kidnapping! I was looking forward to that. Maybe they will fudge with the timeline a bit and cover it in the first episode.
But I’m sure the focus will be Lord Mountbatten’s assassination, Charles and Diana and Margaret Thatcher.
I really didnt like Olivia as the queen,her demeanor was all wrong and the Queen may have a resting bitch face but she seemed to play this mean and startled look most of the time not at all like Betty. I definitly wanted to see more on Anne and her relationship with Camillas husband.
@Noki I made the terrible mistake of rewatching the first two seasons before S3 was released. It ruined it a little bit from me because Claire Foy and Matt Smith really created something special in the way their characters would stand, talk or move. And I couldn’t get behind Olivia and Tobias ‘ version of Elisabeth and Philip. Even though I think they are amazing actors.
“I definitely wanted to see more on Anne and her relationship with Camilla’s husband.”
This is definitely the book that I want to read even if I have to research and write it myself. Should I start crowd funding? LOL!
The girl who played Anne nailed it. Season 3 was the only time they could have done more with Anne before Diana’s arrival.
I am hot for Josh O’Connor, HELP
So this season is the 80s? and then we’ll have the 90s and the early 2000s, wonder if it will end with Charles and Camilla getting married? They said there would be 2 more seasons right? So my guess is that the next season ends with Diana’s death (like it ends in Paris) and then the next season will cover her funeral and go up to the wedding of C&C. Maybe?
Anyway, this definitely gave me goosebumps and I can see why the royal family may be nervous. She looks so young and innocent, its going to remind a LOT of people of how the royal family treated Diana, and all the pushback from the royal family since her death (she was mentally ill, she and Charles fought a lot, she was manipulative, etc). Her vulnerability is going to be on full display and the royals are not going to come off looking good.
Yeah this season goes up to 1990. I’m guessing the next one will go up to ’97 and the final one will go up to 2005. Peter Morgan says he doesn’t like showing things that aren’t at least 20 years old so I’m guessing C&Cs wedding is as far as they’ll get – and that way they can avoid things on the younger royals
Well, if they go up to, say, 2005 – 2010 ish, they could show Will and Harry’s teenage debauchery and Harry being his shield; and Will being a huge rage monster and a little punk. They could show Will and Kate’s courtship too. I will laugh my butt off if the first scene of Kate is if her in her bedroom with a poster of William over her bed.
ETA: Scratch that, Season 5 is the last season. It will end with Diana’s death. I think 15 years from now we will get a reboot and we will see the post Diana years. I want to see Zendaya play Meghan.
@Snuffles – no, they announced recently that there would be a 6th season. So I think the 5th season will end with Diana’s death and then we’ll have the post-Diana years, which will actually bring a lot of closure to the Queen – the death of Margaret, the golden jubilee, and the death of the queen mother.
ETA I just looked it up, I had thought that Margaret had died in 99 or 2000, I didn’t realize that she and the Queen Mother died in the same year, very close together. I think that will definitely be covered and then the golden jubilee and then we’ll be done.
@Becks1 – I think the Queen Mother died 4 months AFTER Margaret. This is also described in surprisingly entertaining detail in Lady Anne Glenconner’s book: Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown.
It is an excellent book. No Sussexes and no Cambridges: just the British aristocracy of Anne Tennnant’s generation in the 1950s thru 1970’s,
Quiet disturbing that this young and vulnerable woman was only used as some vessel to breed. Not enough blame is put on the Spencers for allowing this,we all know the royal family is something else,but her own Family.smh
@Noki – What you say is correct but I think it is very easy to over-simplifying the situation.
Almost all aristocratic marriages, certainly the titled ones, are about breeding and producing the heir and spare.
From what I’ve read, Diana’s mother was treated pretty much the same way the BRF treated Diana, with the addition of domestic violence and a divorce in which Frances’s own mother testified against her so Johnny would get custody of the children. There were also several eating disorders, not just Diana, and my Mom suspected Frances wasn’t the only person in the family who ever got hit.
I might watch this season just for all the 80s drama that i remember – I always hated Diana’s dress, I know it was the 80s but it was bad 80s.
Thay dress was a nightmare!
I didn’t watch season 3 b/c I couldn’t stomach watching a hagiography of the Royal Family at the same time that all of Andrew’s grossness was coming out in the press. But this season looks like it will portray the royals as villains (somewhat sympathetic villains, but villains nonetheless) in Diana’s story, which is a take I wholeheartedly agree with.
I agree, especially the first two seasons were incredibly sycophantic. Glamorizing.
maybe this will pull me back into it. Great trailer.
I just hope they do Diana justice. I feel like they’ve been too soft with the Queen/Philip.
Charles used Diana and when he got his heir and spare he threw her away.
Kitty watch out…..
I’ll wait for it to come out before saying how the royals are portrayed and what the repercussions (if any) will happen. The show isn’t the anti Windsor show some people think it is
I think the show’s purpose is to humanize the Windsors, and sometimes that means showing their lack of humanity and empathy (i.e. when the Queen couldn’t cry at Aberfan.) I thought the third season overall was less favorable to the Queen, I thought the first two seasons made the queen fairly sympathetic – this young woman thrust into this enormous role, with a controlling mother and a controlling husband. The third season, IMO, showed more of her flaws and her emotional deficiencies, as a queen and as a mother. So it will be interesting to see how the next few seasons shake out.
I think the third season shows and explains the part QEII played in the “mess” we have today with the BRF. This BRF mess is not 100% the fault of QEII alone IMPO but she did play a large part.
It’s going to be hard to make the Windsors look good during the Diana years though. Charles in particular is unlikely to come off well. Unless they totally go the “Diana is unstable and deserves it” route, but that will be hard to do since so many people still have strong memories of their own of Diana.
I’m loving the ominous music. Not because it suits the time period but it suits the whole institution itself.
What’s that idiom? “The scales have fallen from my eyes”? Knowing what I know now, the scales have fallen from MY eyes for sure. I think once this airs it will be the ultimate eye opener for a lot of people across the world and in the UK. They will see that all of that pomp and circumstance is just smoke and mirrors to cover up the rot within.
They will see what joining this family does to women. How it slowly subsumes and destroys them. Charles’s decades of trying to get the public back on his side and to accept Camila will be wiped away. This will definitely re-open old wounds. Especially since the BM are hard up for click bait-y Royal news. They are going to re-hash EVERYTHING and then make Diana comparisons to Kate and Meghan.
It’s gonna be brutal and DELICIOUS. 😘
Now that I have a daughter who is about the age Diana was when she married Charles, I feel a whole new level of horror at that relationship. Hope this show does justice to her naïveté and the way the RF basically threw her under the bus.
@becks Ooh! REALLY!? Then we WILL get the wild teenage years of Harry and William and William’s courtship with Kate. Are we going to get stalker/ Waity Katie Kate and stage mom Carole?
My guess is that it will end with Will and Kate’s wedding.
Lol Snuffles I don’t think we’re going to get that much dirt. Here’s the CB post about it:
https://www.celebitchy.com/671240/the_crown_got_a_sixth_season_but_will_not_bring_us_any_closer_to_present-day_/
I only hope they don’t go down the PR route that Charles and Camilla were star crossed lovers, that Mark Boland spin needs to be deconstructed and the other “friends” given their importance in Charles’ life – especially Dale “Kanga” Tyron.
I didn’t like Olivia Coleman as the Queen when I usually love her. Wish there had been more of Anne’s story explored- such an interesting time for her. Philip and especially Charles came across as very sympathetic last season. So this one introducing Diana will be interesting
Not the Crown’s historical consultant releasing a surprisingly critical (from excerpts) book on the royals right before latest season of the Crown & what is likely to feature it’s most negative portrayal of the family. Timing worked out well 😬
I can’t wait! Last season was so dull, but this one will be packed with drama. The actresses resemblance to Diana is uncanny!
Just finished season 3 and I cannot wait for 11/15. Yay!!!
It gave me goosebumps too and I can’t want to see Gillian Anderson play Thatcher even through she’s rather too gorgeous for her. I also preferred Claire Foy over Olivia Coleman but then she will probably come into her own more as the older Queen in this season I think.
This looks like it’s going to be good. Season 3 was a bit of a meh but will be looking for all the parallels. Hope they don’t gloss over the truth and pettinessd. She definitely looks like Diana. The guy who plays Charles actually looks like William in some shots. Maybe because like Kaiser said, he looks a bit young for 30s Charles. Charles definitely seemed older than a typical 19480s, 30 something guys. Could not see him as part of that yuppie, greed is good, masters of the universe culture that defined that decade. He really was an uncle back then with a petty jealous streak. Diana was definitely an 80s girl.
Nov. 15th? Ohgawd I hope the U.S. isn’t in the throws of an all out revolution by then. I just wanna kick back and binge this in a single weekend.