Harry and Meghan or Edward the Caresser what to expect from The Crown spin-offs

As the final episodes of The Crown sashay regally (or disgracefully, depending on your perspective) onto Netflix, inevitable discussion has turned to what, if anything, is going to happen now that the series has arrived at its conclusion, set in April 2005. Peter Morgan, the creator and main writer of the show, has hinted that he has an idea for a spin-off series, but said in an interview with Variety in October, “It would need a unique set of circumstances to come together.” What these circumstances might be can only be guessed at, but Morgan did drop one more hint: “If I were to go back into The Crown, it would definitely be to go back in time,” he said.

This could, of course, mean virtually anything. It isn’t impossible to imagine a whole 10-series spin-off arising from The Crown, beginning with the Wars of the Roses and ending up with the Wars of the Windsors, in the form of the Harry and William contretemps. However, given that Morgan’s only previous foray into medieval times was with his script to the ill-fated 2008 picture The Other Boleyn Girl – which drew howls of disbelief from historians long before The Crown was even mooted – it is most likely that he and Netflix would be sticking to more contemporary subjects and ideas. Here are five of the most likely royal-related spin-offs that would make gripping drama – and, who knows, might be coming in some form to a streaming service near you over the coming years. 

1. The Abdication Crisis

I may have some personal bias on this front, given that I have written a book about the abdication crisis of 1936. But if The Crown was to go anywhere with a prequel, the obvious place to begin is with the seismic events that took place in the ill-fated year of Edward VIII’s brief reign. It began with the death of his father George V and ended with his reluctant brother Bertie becoming George VI after his self-centred and entirely thoughtless brother gave up the throne in order to marry his mistress, Wallis Simpson, which he would have been constitutionally unable to had he remained king. The idea of the Queen abdicating is hinted at in the final episode of the last series of The Crown, but she rejects the notion, at least in part because of what happened before; time, surely, to tell the whole saga.

It’s a story rich in drama, intrigue and black comedy, stuffed with a cast of characters that includes everyone from Winston Churchill – on Edward’s side, and the wrong side of history, in this case – and the Machiavellian newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook to the duelling royal women, Wallis and Queen Elizabeth. There are also significant walk-on parts for Hitler and his lackey, the German ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop, both of whom were desperate for Edward not to abdicate because they erroneously believed that, in the event of war breaking out, he would be able to ensure England’s neutrality, possibly even support, when it came to Germany’s territorial ambitions. 

Many of the set-piece scenes could be fantastically brought to life with a vast Netflix budget, whether it’s the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s make-or-break December speech to the House of Commons in which he had to force through the abdication bill or risk bringing down the government, or Edward and Wallis’s would-be romantic break in the summer of 1936 on board the yacht the Nahlin, which accidentally became a major diplomatic incident, even as the British papers were sworn to secrecy about the couple’s relationship. (It was, admittedly, a very different time.) And for a pulse-racing action scene, there’s the attempted July assassination of Edward by the drifter – and occasional MI5 informant – George McMahon, who, it is rumoured, was acting with the secret service’s knowledge, maybe even approval. 

The crisis was briefly dealt with in the 2010 film The King’s Speech, and even more glancingly in Madonna’s terrible 2011 picture W.E., but it is desperately in need of the full, big-budget screen treatment. If there is any spin-off that deserves to come out of The Crown, it must be this one. 

2. The Windsors during WWII

Should the abdication drama be made, this is the obvious follow-up that would neatly segue into the beginning of the first episode of the first series of The Crown, dealing with the entwined destinies of the now-separate branches of the Royal Family. In one corner was George VI, coping with the soul-crushing responsibility of being the monarch that the nation so desperately needed at a time of war, when Europe was falling to Hitler and everything seemed lost. And on the other side – both metaphorically and literally – was his brother, the former Edward VIII turned Duke of Windsor, whose Nazi sympathies, possibly even loyalties, eventually led to Wallis and he being exiled to the Bahamas, where he inevitably managed to cause trouble, even thousands of miles away. 

The obvious parallels between the feuding siblings and William and Harry make for sharp, even bracing, contemporary resonance, but far more than this, the saga of the royals alternately finding their mettle in adversity or retreating into treachery would offer magnificent actors the chance to go head-to-head in scenes that would be rich in drama, in addition to being firmly in Morgan’s wheelhouse. 

He has always excelled in true-life storylines that pit real people against one another (think of David Frost and Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon or James Hunt and Nikki Lauda in Rush) and if he could bring back Jared Harris and Alex Jennings to reprise their Crown roles as the king and former king respectively, it would guarantee some electrifying scenes in which the two would confront each other mano-a-mano. And that’s before we get onto the issues of Nazi sympathy at the highest levels at court, the surprise arrival of Rudolf Hess in Scotland attempting to seek peace terms with the king and the near-miss of Edward and Wallis being kidnapped – or willingly going along with – the Nazis in Portugal in 1940. 

3. Edward the Caresser

Queen Victoria is probably too substantial a figure to cover in one series – you would need another six-season arc, in all likelihood, and it would cost hundreds of millions of pounds to stage – but if Netflix and Morgan were interested in covering another substantial figure, in every sense, then her son Edward VII, the so-called “Edward the Caresser” would make for a fascinating drama. 

He was a monarch who has often been caricatured, metaphorically and literally, because of his inordinate appetites for women, food and cigarettes, but he was also the first modern ruler, dealing intelligently and pragmatically with the changes that were being wrought in society after the death of his mother. His relatively brief nine-year reign saw everything from the rise of socialism and the suffrage movement to the introduction of steam-powered engines and – although it took place across the Atlantic – the beginning of air travel. 

However, The Crown has never been a worthy series, and so there would have to be considerable exploration of Edward’s eventful private life, which included everything from his dalliances with actresses and showgirls to the way in which he had a custom-made “love chair” that would simultaneously accommodate his considerable girth – he had a forty-eight inch waist before his coronation, and it only expanded with good living – and allow him to bed his chosen companion. 

Yet if the show wished to contrast the bedroom antics with a more serious political theme, there would be ample scope to examine the way in which his acts of European diplomacy with its rulers – many of whom he was related to – helped at least postpone the outbreak of WWI, which took place four years after his death, in the reign of the less than glamorous George V. 

4. Fergie and Princess Anne

Should Netflix and the producers wish, either for budgetary or structural reasons, not to go back to the ten-episode series format, but instead to produce shorter, one-off films or miniseries, more akin to A Very English Scandal and the like, they are spoilt for choice with incidents that were omitted from the main body of The Crown but which could happily fill a two or three-hour long slot. 

Sarah Ferguson was all but omitted from the series, perhaps because – sorry, Fergie – she didn’t have any particular bearing on the main narrative of the Royal Family. The show’s producer Andy Harries has explicitly said that the notorious toe-sucking incident in 1992 with her financial adviser, which he called a “very tawdry event”, was left out because it was, as he put it, a “silly sideshow”, but did not rule out the idea that “one day Peter [Morgan] or maybe other producers might reveal many of the stories which we decided not to feature”. 

While the image of Sarah being given a very personal pedicure might delight or appal audiences, a storyline that many might have expected to see in the third season of The Crown was the attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne in 1974, in which a schizophrenic named Ian Ball told her that he was going to hold her for ransom for £2 million, which would then go to the NHS. Anne, who was played so brilliantly by Erin Doherty in a star-making turn, reportedly retorted “not bloody likely”, before passers-by and police alike came to her aid. It would make for the perfect combination of thrills and black comedy, as well, one would hope, as bringing back the estimable Doherty for the deserved starring role that she never quite got in the third series. 

And what of perhaps the most notorious incident involving a member of the Royal Family in recent years, Prince Andrew’s Newsnight interview? Well, stand down Peter Morgan and Netflix; you’re going to be very well catered for indeed on that front next year, with two dramas based on the infamous interview. 

5. Harry and Meghan

As far back as 2020, Morgan suggested that he would never be featuring the romance and subsequent escapades of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in the series, saying that the incidents fell foul of his so-called “20-year rule”: allowing at least two decades after an event takes place in order to understand its relevance and place in history. (He broke this rule with 2006’s The Queen, which depicts the events of August and September 1997, but never mind.) He has said of the disruptive duo that “Meghan and Harry are in the middle of their journey, and I don’t know what their journey is or how it will end. One wishes for some happiness, but I’m much more comfortable writing about things that happened at least 20 years ago.” 

This is a noble statement, and certainly, the final series of The Crown – in which Luther Ford plays a resentful and angry teenaged Prince Harry, clearly if subliminally inspired by his appearances in the media over the past few years – steered well clear of any suggestion of future romantic entanglements for the younger of the two royal brothers. 

Yet someone, at some point, is going to want to tackle the whole saga of Harry and Meghan’s life together, and the endless controversy and reputation-threatening damage that it has brought upon the Royal Family. And it seems likely that Morgan, in his self-appointed role as the chronicler of the misadventures of the House of Windsor, would be as well placed as anyone to do it, and bring out all of its tawdry, often hilarious absurdities. But just one request, if it does have to be made: please, please can Meghan not play herself? 

The Crown is on Netflix now

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