‘The beginning of the end’: Netflix releases ‘The Crown’ season 5 trailer amid ongoing backlash

After what surely felt like a long wait for fans of The Crown, audiences have finally been granted a peak at the new season of the highly acclaimed Netflix drama, with the recently released season five trailer delivering a healthy dose of foreshadowing for a season filled with chaos.

Less than a month before the upcoming season is scheduled to premiere on November 9, Netflix has dropped the first trailer for The Crown season five showing “the beginning of the end” of the British Royal Family.

The trailer opens with the horrific 1992 fire at Windsor Castle, while a voiceover of Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton) can be heard saying, “In light of the events of the last 12 months, perhaps I have more to reflect on than most.”

It was a scandal-riddled year for the royal family in 1992, along with the fire, three of the Queen’s children were going through divorces with the then-Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Princess Diana’s (Elizabeth Debicki) crumbling marriage making headlines across the nation.

Later in the trailer, now disgraced BBC journalist Martin Bashir (Prasanna Puwanarajah) declares that “the royal family is in genuine crisis” before we are given a glimpse of Diana preparing for their infamous Panorama interview.

“I won’t go quietly,” she says. “I’ll battle to the end.”

The trailer also teases Charles’ relationship with then Camilla Parker-Bowles, now Queen Consort, with Queen Elizabeth II insinuating Charles’ behaviour was “threatening” the survival of the British monarchy.

“How did it come to this?” the Queen asks at the end.

The Crown season five returns amid unprecedented levels of backlash from those closest to the Royal Family, claiming Netflix “perverted the facts” and has been “consistently dishonest from day one”.

The Queen’s former press secretary Dickie Arbiter claimed Netflix has been “very distasteful”.

“Coming just weeks after the nation laid Her Majesty to rest next to Prince Philip, this is very distasteful and, quite frankly, cruel rubbish,” Arbiter said.

“The truth is that Penny was a long-time friend of the whole family.

“Netflix are not interested in people’s feelings.”

However, The Crown creator Peter Morgan has hit back at the claims, arguing that those allegations are simply untrue.

“I think we must all accept that the 1990s was a difficult time for the royal family, and King Charles will almost certainly have some painful memories of that period,” Morgan told Variety.

“But that doesn’t mean that, with the benefit of hindsight, history will be unkind to him, or the monarchy. The show certainly isn’t.

“I have enormous sympathy for a man in his position — indeed, a family in their position. People are more understanding and compassionate than we expect sometimes.”

Despite what Morgan believes, royal fans have taken to social media to remind people of the fictionalised and dramatised storyline of the show.

Dear Netflix. Can you please put a disclaimer before and after each episode that you couldn’t find a gross enough actor to play Prince Charles and so you went the opposite route and got one of the hottest actors, Dominic West, to do so? I feel like Princess Diana did; betrayed.

— House Mouse (@M1Marden) October 20, 2022

How on earth do you work that one out? Of course she was loved by her family. This series is fiction don’t get confused with what actually happened!

— Louby (@LoubyRy75) October 20, 2022

Shame on you for fabricating so much of this and refusing to put a disclaimer at the start.

— Phoebe Dinsmore (@PhoebeDinsmore_) October 20, 2022

Buckingham Palace isn’t taking any chances either, with a senior source telling The Telegraph that the Palace has started to prepare for any damage The Crown season five might do to the Monarch’s image, affirming to the publication that the show is a “drama, not a documentary”.