The elegiac mood of the fifth season of The Crown couldn’t have been better scripted for the moment. For the first time, the audience comes to Peter Morgan’s serial treatment of the House of Windsor with the knowledge that its principal subject, Queen Elizabeth II, is no longer with us. The opening images show the young Elizabeth (Claire Foy) commissioning the Royal Yacht Britannia at the outset of her reign. The montage is conveyed in black and white, incorporating newsreel footage of the actual event, before the visuals turn color and Foy’s dovelike eyes give way to the crow s-feet of Imelda Staunton (the most recent player to portray her late majesty). It’s a monarch in autumn that she embodies, in a season suffused with loss and foreboding tragedy. Without even intending it, Morgan and his collaborators have anticipated the death of the queen.
In Season 5 of "The Crown," Prince Charles comes off as the unlikeliest of heroes, the season's MVP, a strange beacon of hope for what is coming in the show's sixth, and final, season.