‘The Crown’ Season 6 Episode 5 Recap: William, Keep Smiling

For The Crown‘s final season, it’s time to hear Prince William‘s story. You almost can’t help but think that Netflix is enacting an equal-airtime rule in order to give both Prince Harry and his brother a platform to air out their lifelong grievances, it’s just that The Crown is a purely speculative version of William’s. (Maybe the guy has no grievances! Who knows? From my understanding, his every thought is implanted by a Kensington Palace press team, so I can’t be sure of anything.)

Anyway, The Crown Season 6 picks up shortly after the death of Princess Diana, as William (Ed McVey) is about to return to Eton. William’s grief is manifesting in typical ’90s teen ways: listening to Swedish pop groups on his Walkman, ignoring his dad’s offer to try his breakfast muesli. But Prince Charles is concerned for his son, William is sullen and uncommunicative these days. (Note I said son, not sons: no one seems to care how Harry’s holding up.)

When Wills arrives back at Eton, his housemaster, Mr. Gailey (played by The Gilded Age‘s Blake Ritson, I’m so glad he found work since the van Rhijn family fortune was stolen!) shows him to his room, which is filled with fan mail. After Diana’s death, thousands of mourners sent William not just letters of comfort from his classmates, but letters from girls essentially throwing themselves at him. I guess that’s another way to comfort the guy. Gailey is also in a position to act as William’s protector – he fields requests for William’s time from visitors and press, and he tries to offer William some words of advice about taking time to process grief, but William won’t allow any adult in his life in.

Charles (Dominic West) is really struggling with that – the more he tries to be a nice dad, the more William pushes him away. Charles just doesn’t know how to be there for someone. (Insert Liz Lemon gif: “It okay! Don’t be cry!“). And he’s well aware of William’s role in the press now, too. With his mother dead, William has taken over as the most interesting royal and is now mobbed by fans. It’s an unnerving reminder of Diana.

The thing about being a royal is that even in your darkest moments, there’s always some kind of photo op you need to be ready for. As much as Charles, Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) and Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce) want to acknowledge William’s feelings of grief, he still has to show up for things. At a family photo, taken in honor of his grandparents’ golden anniversary, Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) chides him, “Keep smiling, William,” when he lets his face go slack for a half second. It’s ironic that this comes from Margaret: no one in the royal family’s has been forced to change her life to fit the royal mold, to keep smiling in spite of it all, like Margaret, and she’s passing her trauma on to future generations.

The one person who sees the big picture clearly in all of this is Camilla Parker-Bowles (Olivia Williams). She herself has been forced into seclusion, away from Charles, in the aftermath of Diana’s death, because how unseemly would that be if they were out smiling and holding hands after tragedy? Unable to see each other in person, Charles and Camilla talk extensively on the phone, and she advises him to reach out to his son because he probably has no idea how to handle this kind of attention. (“This whole thing has a feeling of déja vu, doesn’t it?” she astutely says, referring to Diana’s own frenzied fans.) Camilla tells Charles to be that supportive father he never had, break the cycle. “I’m afraid we don’t do fathers and sons very well in this family,” Charles says.

Charles knows he never had a warm, sensitive father figure, and you now who else knows that? HIS DAD. Prince Philip can see where Charles is failing, and perhaps to make up for it, he goes up to the attic to watch old Christmas movies… wait, sorry, no, that’s Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation!… Prince Philip goes up to the attic to watch old black and white home movies of Matt Smith and Claire Foy (I knew we’d get an old archival appearance from those two again at some point!) as young parents with Charles in tow. Philip was not a warm, coddling father to Charles, despite Charles’s desperate attempts to seek his approval and love. In watching these movies and reading old letters, he realizes now is maybe the time to make up for that.

In another of Charles’s attempts to connect with his sons, he takes them on a trip to Whistler in Canada. It’s meant to be a family ski trip, but it’s filled with obligations to do press and make nice in public, and when William learns there’s to be a photo op while they’re skiing, he snaps. “I hate the press, I hate the crowds,” he says, then adding that Charles is the one with the image problem, not him.

After the vacation, Charles confronts William about not just his grief but his anger and he tells his father what he’s been thinking this whole time: that he holds Charles responsible for Diana’s death. (“I hope you’re not insinuating what I think you are,” Charles says. He is!) He tells Charles that he drove Diana into Dodi al-Fayed’s arms even though she was still in love with Charles, and that Charles’s affair with Camilla forced Diana out of the family. Charles is devastated by all of William’s accusations (and he in turn pins blame on Diana’s death entirely on the drunk chauffeur who crashed their car), but then William twists the knife, telling his father that it’s also clear that Charles hates William for being too much like Diana. Charles is crushed.

So after Philip’s chance to reflect on his failed fathering by watching film strips, he realizes that now’s the time for some good grandfathering. He’s gonna be the one to bridge the divide between Charles and William. He visits William at Eton (and they share a hilarious moment discussing super models after Philip notices posters of Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell on the wall – hey, why wasn’t Claudia in The Supermodels?) and, despite Philip’s reputation as a crusty old crank who typically puts people in their place, he manages to get through to William by making him realize that it’s not Charles that William is angry with, but Diana. She left him to fend for himself in the public eye, to live up to her legacy. It’s certainly not fair to Diana for him to say this, since she didn’t choose to die, in my opinion, but it helps William realize his anger is misplaced and perhaps his current predicament is not all his father’s fault.

In the final, wordless moments of the episode, William takes his Grandpa’s advice to heart, and visits his father at his garden, where his offers his apologies for directing all his anger at him by hugging him. He then rows a boat out into an island on the pond, where he places a bouquet of flowers on a monument in honor of Diana. An apology to her, too.

Stray Thoughts:

• It’s nice to see that the only person William can confide in and be relaxed with in any way is Harry, at least for now. Case in point, Harry messing with William for having millions of screaming girls throwing themselves at him, and William telling him to fuck off. (And then Harry’s sad response: “In the history of humankind, no one has ever screamed for anyone with red hair.”)

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