"The Crown's Timely Finale: Queen Elizabeth Celebrates VE Day and Fact-Checks Kate Middleton's Meeting with Princess Diana"

The series finale of "The Crown" concludes with Prince Charles's marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles, but the episode's farcical tone after the tragedy of the Diana seasons blurs the line between drama and comedy. The wedding highlights the paradoxes the Queen has faced, as she unintentionally raises and dashes Charles's hopes of her abdicating in his favor. The show's portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II becomes inconsistent in later seasons, with the final episodes depicting her as self-absorbed and uninvolved in affairs of state. While "The Crown" is a flawed but fascinating experiment in historical television, it struggles to maintain a coherent critique of the Queen and ends with a poetic commentary on its own lack of seriousness.