‘The Crown’ Season 4 Episode 9: Uptown Girl

Who would’ve known that the nail in the coffin of Charles and Diana’s marriage, it appears, could be attributed to Billy Joel (Jo-EL?). In the penultimate episode of The Crown Season 4 (Episode 9, “Avalanche”), the couple stepped out to the Royal Opera, and in a performance no one saw coming, Diana took the stage to perform a dance to “Uptown Girl” in honor of her husband’s 37th birthday.

The performance garnered an 8 minute standing ovation, but the one person who would not be leaping to his feet was Charles, who tells Diana on their ride how that the entire performance was grotesque and mortifying. The situation leads to a heartbreaking conversation that’s the beginning of the end.

“If you had anything between your ears other than self-obsession you would know public displays like that horrify me,” Charles tells Diana.

“Everything I do seems to horrify you,” Diana responds.

“Increasingly, yes.”

“I’d never thought you’d manage this but you’re really succeeding now,” she says.

“And what’s that?” he asks.

“I’m really starting to properly loathe you!” she says.

“What’s taking you so long? The rest of us have been there for some time,” he spits, his cruelty working in tandem with his self-pity.

Every scene on this show is written and performed so tightly, you sometimes forget as a viewer that moments like these were not documented for the cameras, these private fights and emotional breakdowns were hidden from view and we have no record of them, no script to follow, and yet when you piece them together with the reality of what happened to the couple, it’s seamless.

Days later, during a ski trip to Switzerland, Charles is caught in an avalanche and feared dead. Eventually he is found alive, but his good friend Hugh Lindsay would not be so lucky. The Queen is informed that though Charles is safe and the news cycle may focus on that for a couple of days, the rumors of the demise of his marriage are even more out of control and can’t be contained. The Queen visits Anne to get the dirt and Anne tells her  “the Wales marriage is the rare example of something that is actually worse than the newspapers report,” regaling her mother with stories of Charles’ indiscretions with Camilla, and Diana’s “revolving door” of men who come… in and out, in and out.

To the Queen’s credit, every time she hears a gross sex detail about her kids — and there have been SO! MANY! — she’s remarkably chill.

While buried in the snow, Charles’ life passed before his eyes and he came to the realization that it’s too short to be with a woman who would dare blast Billy Joel at the Royal Opera House. He pens a letter in preparation for meeting his mother explaining how he can no longer live this terrible lie, married to a woman he dislikes while the woman he truly loves is right there at arm’s length.

Charles and Diana meet the Queen to discuss the state of their marriage and the Queen asks point blank, “Does either of you no longer want this marriage to work?”

Charles knows what his response is, but Diana, despite properly loathing Charles a few days ago, has a change of heart. Or perhaps she’s playing a longer game and her shrewdness has been overlooked up until now. Because she tells the Queen that she really and truly does want to make it work. Charles, whose letter stating the opposite is burning a hole in his pocket, watches in shock as Diana professes her love for him. This is… a setback.

“Don’t I get a chance to speak?” Charles asks after Diana finishes her declaration of dedication to him.

“To say what? What else is there to say?” Philip says. Because Charles, as always, is there, but it doesn’t really matter that he’s there.

Charles angrily tells Camilla that Diana’s 180 was an ambush, and now he’s ready to play dirty. While Diana is busy telling her staff that she’s breaking it off with all of her past suitors, Major James Hewitt especially, Charles is telling his own staff to keep an eye out for any signs of indiscretion on her part. She gave the Queen her word that she would be faithful, and if Charles gets wind that she has broken that promise, the leverage will be his.

Diana does seem committed and ready to try again, going so far as to plan an elaborate anniversary gift for Charles. Before she visits him at their Gloucestershire home, the staff readies the house, eliminating all signs of Camilla. When she arrives, she presents him with a VHS tape, another performance of hers, but this time it’s in private, she performs “All I Ask of You” from The Phantom of the Opera onstage, filmed solely for Charles’ benefit.

“It was monstrous,” he tells Anne, who laughs at his description of the performance, but gives him her honest assessment of the situation, which is that he is sabotaging his marriage for something else that may not be real. She explains that Andrew and Camilla Parker-Bowles’ marriage may be complicated, but it’s still a happy and long-lasting one, and Charles has deluded himself into thinking that he and Camilla are star-crossed lovers.

“What does one have to do to get some kindness in this family?” he yells angrily at his sister, who is the only one willing to tell him what he needs to hear.

He goes to Camilla to ask about the state of her marriage, and Camilla declares that while Andrew does love her, he doesn’t need her the way that Charles needs her. However, she’s not sure she can promise that she’ll fall into Charles’ arms if he leaves Diana. “What we both want and what we can actually do are not the same thing,” she tells him. “It’s important we remain realistic.”

After their anniversary dinner, Charles started ignoring Diana entirely, avoiding every phone call or attempt at contact. Diana becomes more and more frustrated, and as we’re already aware, frustrated Diana just gotta dance.

A time-lapse of her attempts at reaching Charles leads her to call back on Major Hewitt for one more tryst. Of course, all of this has been a trap set by Charles, who’s been baiting her and waiting for her to slip. Charles receives the news and, for the first time in a decade, he feels something other than pity and disgust. Something like freedom.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Brooklyn. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.

Watch The Crown Season 4 Episode 9 ("Avalanche") on Netflix