"The Crown" Final Season to Split into 2 Parts

“The Crown” will bow its final season in two parts. Netflix revealed the release plan in the first trailer, featuring Imelda Staunton‘s Queen Elizabeth II wandering past Claire Foy and Olivia Colman as a nod to the series’ decades-spanning journey.

The first four episodes of Season 6 will debut on the streamer on November 16. “The Crown” will then take a hiatus of nearly one month before releasing its final six episodes on December 14.

Though Netflix has largely stuck to its binge model of releasing all episodes of a television season at once, it has bifurcated debuts before; in 2022, “Stranger Things” Season 4 released seven episodes in May, withholding the final two episodes until July.

Peter Morgan’s historical drama series will recount the late ‘90s and early 2000s, a period defined by Princess Diana’s tragic death. Regarding Diana’s death, a source told Variety that the production team wanted “to get it right and handle [it] sensitively” for Season 6. The series, too, will see the blossoming of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s romance while they were both studying at the University of St. Andrews.

The new season, which will mark the final outing for “The Crown,” will star Staunton, Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, Ed McVey as Prince William, Luther Ford as Prince Harry, Meg Bellamy as Kate Middleton, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Phillip, Dominic West as Prince Charles and Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Regarding taking on the role of Princess Diana, Debicki told Variety’s Awards Circuit Podcast that she hadn’t felt the weight of portraying the people’s princess ahead of joining the project: “I never really understood what was lost because I hadn’t experienced the impact that she had on the public… She’s taught me a lot; I think she lived her life with an enormous amount of courage and with a strong love ethic. She really loved deeply and she needed to be loved in a way that I don’t know she ever really found.”