For this episode, the biggest challenge for writer/creator Peter Morgan was always going to be avoiding a direct rehash of The Queen. Like “Aftermath,” the acclaimed 2006 movie, which Morgan also wrote, focused on the week immediately following Princess Diana’s death. Since Queen Elizabeth’s behavior was well-covered territory in the film, Morgan turns his attention this time around to the other major Crown characters.
Of course, some overlap is inevitable: It’s impossible to dramatize the royal family in the aftermath of Diana’s death and not include the public’s negative reaction to the Queen’s decision to remain ensconced at Balmoral Castle. “Aftermath” also includes Imelda Staunton flawlessly re-creating the Queen’s eventual televised tribute to Diana, just as Helen Mirren did in The Queen 17 years ago.
The toughest pill to swallow in “Aftermath,” however, is Prince Charles. In his attempts to provide Diana with a positive final sendoff, Morgan winds up turning her estranged ex into an idealistic hero. While there is truth to Charles being one of the most vocal advocates for a public funeral, all of a sudden he’s Diana’s biggest champion? At the same time, this series is called The Crown, so it does make sense for Morgan to transfer much of the pro-Diana influence from Prime Minister Tony Blair, who primarily handled them in The Queen, to Charles here.
“Aftermath” doesn’t waste any time silently delivering the bad news to the audience, the royal family, or Mohamed Al Fayed. In fact, one of the many things that sets The Crown apart from The Queen is the acknowledgment of Dodi Fayed’s death and its impact on Mohamed. There’s also a lot of sobbing in this episode. I mean, we’re talking visceral groans, whether it’s Mohamed bawling over his son’s corpse in a Paris morgue, or Charles loudly wailing among the Scottish Highlands. I appreciate the realism here.
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip remain completely on-brand though: At best they just look pained. Remember, as we already know, Elizabeth’s tear ducts tend to remain on the dry side, regardless of tragedy.
Many of the family scenes are all too familiar for royal watchers: There are fights over whether Diana’s body should be brought back on a royal flight; the Queen insists on keeping things “normal” for William and Harry’s sake (read: barely acknowledge that THEIR MOTHER JUST DIED). But the scenes involving a grieving Mohamed are just pitiful: He remains delusional about Dodi and Diana’s relationship, insisting to his secretary that they had a “love for the ages” and that their deaths will unite him with the royals and the Spencers. “I am their brother in sorrow.” Ooof.
As he did in real life, Charles goes to Paris to claim his ex-wife’s body, and it’s on this trip that he’s convinced Diana deserves a public state funeral over the small, private one the royals and Spencers would prefer. As the hearse winds down the Parisian streets, he notices people are watching from their windows, holding flowers, and lightly applauding. People stop what they’re doing and stand to pay respect while children run alongside the procession. The world isn’t ignoring her, so why is his own family? (Um, because you all treated her like dirt?)
On the flight back to Britain, The Crown makes a bizarre creative decision that clearly reflects the concerted effort to not do a Queen reboot: Charles has a final conversation with an ethereal Diana, who suddenly appears (she literally says, “Ta-da!”), looking gorgeous, relaxed, and happy in a black sleeveless turtleneck. Look, I get that the show wanted to keep Elizabeth Debicki around as much as it could, and she does a fantastic job as Ghost Diana, but her reappearances are just plain weird. Diana’s role here is to remind Charles not to let his grief cloud the truth: She thanks him for being “raw” and “broken” in the morgue (Dominic West is excellent during that scene, where Charles breaks down in tears yet again), but while he may be despondent over her death right now, he never really loved her. So it will “be easier for everyone with me gone.” In many ways, she’s right. But there is one thing Charles gets right during this brief exchange: Diana was “always the most beloved of all of us.”
Now that Charles is unequivocally on Team Diana, he returns to Balmoral and immediately criticizes his mother for shutting out the rest of the world and not accepting the powerful effect Diana had on the nation. He pretty much turns into the personification of the “Show us you care” headlines, only to be repudiated by both his parents, who call him out on his hypocrisy: The last person who should be lecturing them on how to grieve or show emotion for Diana is “the person who caused her the most pain.” Ouch, but fair.
Charles admits that he let Diana down in life, “but I will not let her down in death.” Good for you, Chuck! Even if The Crown version of you is far more likable than the real-life version.
It’s not just Diana who has unfinished business in the mortal world, though. Following his son’s funeral, Mohamed is visited by Ghost Dodi, and from the way The Crown portrays it, death has been good for him. Ghost Dodi is calmer and more confident than he ever was when he was alive; Khalid Abdalla does a tremendous job here, presenting this Dodi as an entirely different character. I don’t love this plot device, but at least the audience gets the satisfaction of Dodi finally telling his father that, yeah, his exalted expectations of him were enormously unfair. The saddest part of their conversation, though, is Dodi imploring Mohamed to be honest with himself, and with the world. In reality, this didn’t happen: Mohamed Al Fayed was notorious for relentlessly spewing conspiracy theories about Dodi and Diana long after their deaths.
Just when it looks like things have settled down back in Scotland — the Queen has agreed to a public funeral for Diana — The Crown decides it needs one more dramatic beat. Oh, no! Prince William, who overhead his father bickering with Granny and Grandpa, has gone missing! (I’m pretty sure this is dramatic license.) Suddenly, all the royals, dressed in their Barbour coats, tweeds, Wellington boots, newsboy caps, and walking crooks, are out searching for the future king.
The “William goes missing” subplot is anticlimactic though: He’s a teenage boy who just lost his mother, and his family is expecting him to behave like a monarch-in-training. Who could blame him for running off? But The Crown uses this invented incident to help convince the Queen that she needs to help the nation heal. Like William, she observes, the whole country is starting to behave out of character. Maybe Charles was right after all?
Charles continues to plead his case to an increasingly annoyed Princess Anne, comparing his mother’s attitude toward the nation as no different than her treatment of him when he was a boy. The United Kingdom is the “sick, uncomforted child,” and the Queen remains “cold and aloof.” Charles sees her as “unable to mother the nation in precisely the same way that she was unable to mother us.” He’s not wrong …
Charles implores his mother to toss out the royal script for once in her life and consider giving the country, well, everything he’s ever wanted from her: Attention, love, understanding, support, care, and empathy. Here’s my issue with these demands: I read Spare — it doesn’t seem like Charles ever learned to take a page out of the Diana affectionate parenting playbook. Yet here he is, defending Diana for giving the people everything the Queen never did.
But it’s going to take more than just a missing grandson and an emotionally damaged son to push Her Majesty into doing something completely out of character. As in, a supernatural visit. Ghost Diana has one last earthbound appointment, and it’s with the Queen. Elizabeth is still irritated with her, but in death, Diana’s grown a backbone. She pushes back on the Queen’s criticism that she started a royal “revolution,” pointing out that there was no need for Elizabeth to “make an enemy of [her].” (And sorry, Lillibet, but how much of a “revolution” did Diana really succeed in creating? If she had, maybe her son wouldn’t have needed to escape from his own family.)
A much wiser Diana directs her former mother-in-law to the images of mourners on the TV screen, reminding her that she, the Queen, is the one who taught so many people “what it means to be British.” So maybe it’s time for Elizabeth to demonstrate that she can learn what that means too. Mic. Drop.
Suddenly, the Queen has decided to go to London to be with her subjects and to give a televised speech to the nation. And now we know the truth: It wasn’t Prince Charles or Tony Blair who changed her mind. It was Ghost Diana!
Once the royals arrive in London, The Crown subtly starts turning its attention onto the next generation, passing the torch from these Diana-centric episodes to the ones coming up in Part Two, where Prince William will feature more prominently. During the reenactment of Diana’s funeral procession, William, always his mother’s son, wants to acknowledge the person in the crowd who yelled out, “God bless you, boys!” Philip, walking alongside his grandson, advises him against it. Given the situation, it’s good, grandfatherly advice, because he knows William is about to crumble. Then William asks why these people are “crying for someone they never knew.” Philip: “They’re not crying for her. They’re crying for you.” It’s another brutal reminder that William will be king one day, and duty will come before everything else.
But since this series is still about the Queen, the episode’s final scene is devoted to her. In private, away from the world’s prying eyes, The Crown suggests that she was affected by Diana’s death. As she kneels by her bedside during her nightly prayers, she looks to her side. Is she hoping Ghost Diana will reappear? It sure seems that way.
The question is, did Diana cause a sea change in the royal family? Somewhat. As we’ll see in Part Two, Charles and Camilla — once deemed “inappropriate” for not being a virgin and for being a divorcée — will be allowed to marry, with Camilla becoming Queen. Plus, William and Harry, unlike their father, will receive the Queen’s blessing to marry non-virginal commoners. But if you ask Harry and Meghan, they’d probably say the song remains the same.
Crown Jewels
• I know the “William is missing!” scenes were supposed to add to the drama, but they came off more like a “Visit Scotland” advertisement.
• Mohamed Al Fayed’s creepy shrine to Diana and Dodi at Harrod’s was a very real thing.
