'The Crown' Season 5 Will Debut In November

With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, and the crowning of a new King, interest in Netflix's The Crown has shot through the roof. According to Nielsen's streaming ratings, the series shot to the top of everyone's queues, to the point that it outranked the real-life funeral in the United States. But while everyone else is catching up on Claire Foy and Matt Smith's turns as the young royal couple and the middle-aged versions they grow into, played by Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies, Netflix is preparing for the show's final two seasons, with Imelda Staunton and Jonathan Pryce as the now-elderly couple.

The series was working on the final season when the Queen passed, and production was suspended during the mourning period. But Season 5 has been in the can and planned for release in the final months of 2022 for a while. Some speculated if Netflix might push the release date back to late November (or even early December) to put some space between the actual history underway and its thinly fictionalized version of the royal family. But at the streamer service's TUDUM presentation, which debuted a Season 5 teaser (it was not officially released, but you can watch it here), the release date was much sooner than people anticipated.

The series will return with its penultimate season, covering the first half of the 1990s, on Nov. 9, 2022, almost two months to the day after the passing of HRH and Charles' ascension to the Crown. This is perhaps a bit of unfortunate timing for the new monarch, as the series just reached the nadir of the royal family's popularity in the 20th century -- when Charles and Diana divorced, part of a slew of breakups that also saw Princess Anne and Prince Andrew separate from their spouses as well. Season 5 will reportedly end with Diana's passing, and the fallout as the focus of Season 6, due out in 2023. Rehashing these events will not help Charles' favorability ratings any more than Season 4 did in 2020.