Royal family obsessives may still be parsing through the fourth season of "The Crown" (opens in new tab), comparing rumors about Princess Diana's wardrobe (opens in new tab) and Prince Philip (opens in new tab) to actual royal history. This will be the third and final casting change for the series, which will feature a modern-day royal family reminiscent of the glory of the 1990s.

Watching through Season 4, we've seen the doomed marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, the aftermath of the appointment of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Queen Elizabeth's reaction to the more bizarre trends of the 90s (could a Tamagotchi have lived in Buckingham Palace?). Here's everything we know, from the release date of the new season to the new cast.

Filming for the next set of episodes began in June 2021, Deadline reported (opens in new tab) . The final season of the series will then appear on Netflix in 2022, most likely in November or early December, based on the release dates of the previous seasons. The break between seasons 4 and 5 is double the time between seasons 3 and 4. This shooting schedule reportedly has nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has delayed or aborted countless other film and television production schedules, and instead reflects the long break between seasons 2 and 3, when "The Crown" last featured a new cast.

By the way, showrunner Peter Morgan recently confirmed (open in new tab) that he will reverse his previous announcement (open in new tab) that the fifth season would be the show's last and instead stick to his original plan to release a sixth season, so that extra year of waiting It will be worth it. In other words, we won't see new episodes of "The Crown" for another two years, but our patience will be rewarded with two consecutive seasons depicting the royal family in the 90s and early 80s.

Netflix began announcing the third and final installment of the royal lookalikes long before season four premiered. Imelda Staunton (opens in new tab), of "Downton Abbey" and "Harry Potter" fame, takes over for Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth, and Jonathan Pryce from "Game of Thrones" takes over for Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip, Jonny Lee Miller as John Major, and Lesley Manville from "Phantom Thread" will fill Princess Margaret's (very fancy) shoes, following Helena Bonham Carter's sassy portrayal of the Queen's sister (opens in new tab).

On being cast as Margaret, Manville said in a press release, "It is nothing short of a complete pleasure to play brother and sister with my dear friend Imelda Staunton."

Netflix also announced in August that Elizabeth Debicki (opens in new tab), who appeared in Christopher Nolan's Tenet, will replace Emma Colin as Princess Diana in the final two seasons of The Crown. In addition, Dominic West of "The Affair" has been cast as Josh O'Connor's understudy to play the aging Prince Charles. Then in August, Streamer released the first photos of the two royalty roles.

In the spring of 2022, "Emilie in Paris" star Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu confirmed that she would be playing a small role in "The Crown" season 5. It was "very small, but it was a lot of fun and I was very, very happy to be on the show," she told You (opens in new tab). 'Every episode is like a little movie. It's crazy well-written. "

Leroy-Beaulieu plays Monique Ritz, a widower of Charles Ritz who inherited the Ritz Hotel in Paris from her late husband and later sold it to Mohamed Al Fayed. The Ritz Hotel in Paris is where Princess Diana stayed with Al Fayed's son Dodi Fayed before her death, and the tragedy will be featured in the current season of The Crown.

The series' new cast will cover a lot of historical ground when the next season begins in 1990, when the final episode of season 4 ended. Past seasons have run from eight to 23 years, and when Morgan announced that a sixth season would be added, he said of the additional episodes, "We won't be anywhere near the present day. However, we do know that it will end well before Prince Harry's wedding to Meghan Markle in 2019 and then the couple's so-called "megsit" from the royal family at their request (opens in new tab).

Morgan's initial pitch to Netflix (opens in new tab) proposed a 60-year timeline in just three seasons, and his recent statement (opens in new tab) that the final season would only run through John Major and Tony Blair's time as prime minister This means that "The Crown" could cover Elizabeth's reign through 2007. If the remaining years are divided into two seasons, the fifth might cover the years from 1990 to about 1998.

Based on that assumption, the fifth season could cover the Queen's relationship with Prime Minister John Major, the Queen's self-proclaimed "annus horribilis" of 1992 (including the termination of the marriages of her three children and the introduction of a government order requiring the royal family to pay income tax), her sister Margaret's rapidly The Queen's reaction to the rapid deterioration of her sister Margaret's health would be addressed. This period also includes the last precarious years of Charles and Diana's marriage, including their separation in 1992 and divorce in 1996, and Diana's tragic death in a car accident in 1997. If we are lucky, we may even see Prince Charles introduce the Spice Girls in 1997.