‘The Crown’ backpedals: There will be a Season 6, Netflix says

Netflix, which said in January that its hit series “The Crown” would run only five seasons, announced Thursday that the story of Britain’s royal family would include a Season 6 as originally planned.

Alas, the show won’t cover more royal ground in six seasons than it had planned to cover in five.

“As we started to discuss the story lines for Series 5, it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons,” writer-creator-executive producer Peter Morgan said in a statement.

“To be clear, Series 6 will not bring us any closer to present day, it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail,” he added.

In other words, they are not going to tackle Megxit.

“So to summarise – we’ll have one more season with Queen Olivia Colman, before she passes the crown to Imelda Staunton,” the streaming service said Thursday in a tweet. “We’re just half way through! Lovely.”

The decision comes less than six months after the streamer swore that Season 5 would mark the end of the series. At the time, the casting of Staunton as the final Queen Elizabeth II was made public. Lesley Manville’s casting as Princess Margaret for Season 5 was announced a week ago.

In 2016, two weeks after the series’ premiere, Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, told the Hollywood Reporter that the idea behind “The Crown” was to “do this over six decades, in six seasons presumably, and make the whole show over eight to 10 years.”

Netflix’s Thursday announcement signals a return to that plan.

“We can’t wait for audiences to see the upcoming fourth season, and we’re proud to support Peter’s vision and the phenomenal cast and crew for a sixth and final season,” said Cindy Holland, VP of original content for Netflix, in a statement Thursday.

The streamer hasn’t yet announced a drop date for Season 4, which, like Season 3, stars Colman as the queen, Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip, Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret, Erin Doherty as Princess Anne and Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles.