A Handy Breakdown of Exactly How ‘The Crown’ Season 5 Ends

POV: You’ve found yourself trapped in a group chat with a bunch of royal enthusiasts who won’t stop talking about The Crown, and frankly, you’re too busy watching other v important things (the Love Is Blind reunion isn’t going to analyze itself). Fair! But if you do want to know how season 5 ended so you can at least pretend to engage in the ~discourse~, here’s a quick state of the union on the major players in The Crown’s season 5 finale.

The Queen

After celebrating her birthday with family, the Queen is left dealing with Britain’s growing disillusionment with the monarchy. This is represented in a pretty heavy-handed way with Her Majesty’s favorite home, the Royal Yacht Britannia, being officially decommissioned by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In fact, the episode ends with the Queen taking one last tour of the ship and reliving her memories.

But despite the Royal Yacht Britannia being “put out to pasture,” the Queen reinforces her position as the country’s monarch by reminding a power-hungry Prince Charles that (a) he’s not allowed to talk to the prime minister behind her back and (b) she’s the monarch until the day she dies. The Queen also manages to insult Charles’s relationship with Camilla while she’s at it, referring to it as an affair and setting the stage for what we know is several decades of tension (before Charles and Camilla were finally allowed to marry).

Prince Charles

Prince Charles ends the season in the same way he began it: by secretly meeting with a prime minister and planting seeds for the Queen’s abdication. Charles’s meeting with Tony Blair goes down after a trip to Hong Kong on behalf of the Queen, during Royal Yacht Britannia’s final sail. And while the Queen fully shuts Charles down, it’s worth noting that Blair seems very much on board with his modern views about the monarchy (which include accusing the Queen’s aides of being “tone-deaf”).

Princess Diana

Princess Diana isn’t a huge part of The Crown’s final episode, but the scenes she does have set the stage for her relationship with Dodi Fayed—whom she was dating at the time of her tragic death. After running into her buddy Mohamed Al-Fayed at the ballet, Diana gets invited to summer with his family on their yacht. And while the Queen makes it clear she’s not thrilled, the season ends with Diana packing for the trip.

Dodi Fayed

Last but not least, time to check in with Diana’s future boyfriend Dodi, who we see popping the question to his girlfriend Kelly Fisher—which, yes, is what actually happened. In real life, Dodi ended the brand-new engagement to date Diana, and Kelly was so upset that she sued him. Her lawyer, Gloria Allred, even claimed that “Miss Fisher learnt about Mr. Fayed’s betrayal not from Mr. Fayed but instead from the ‘kiss photo’ that was published and circulated around the world to Miss Fisher’s utter dismay, shock, and shame.”

TBD if next season covers the lawsuit, but here’s to hoping this entire plotline is handled with sensitivity….

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