WiC Watches: The Crown season 3
THE CROWN – PRODUCTION STILLS – 005. Photo credit: Sophie Mutevelian/Netflix.
Episode 301: “Olding”
The first scene of The Crown’s third season–set in 1964–is a sly cold open that addresses the cast change head on. Queen Elizabeth (now played by Academy Award winner Olivia Colman) enters a room full of advisers at Buckingham Palace to review her updated likeness for British postage stamps. The Queen looks at an image of her younger self (played by Claire Foy) next to a current image of her more mature self, who she mockingly refers to as the “old bat.” When Elizabeth is forced to look her advancing age in the face, she doesn’t flinch or complain. This is an individual with a profound sense of duty who faces getting older in the same dignified way that she handles many of other official responsibilities: “One just has to get on with it.”
That opening scene sets the perfect tone for an episode that is largely concerned with the distance between the public face we allow others to see and who we are when we think no one is watching. Queen Elizabeth has to officially onboard yet another new Prime Minister named Harold Wilson, who is a socialist with anti-monarchist leanings. We have seen this ritual in previous seasons, but never with the awkwardness or chilly nature of Elizabeth’s first meeting with Wilson. The Queen is none too impressed with her first impression of Wilson, and it deserves to be said that Olivia Colman can sell disdain on her face like nobody’s business. By the end of the episode, Queen Elizabeth will come to reassess her initial reaction to Wilson’s earthy, “what you see is what you get” presentation in a more favorable light.
Rumors that Wilson has been recruited as a spy by the KGB follow him around and color the Queen’s perception at first, but she comes to find out that the straight-laced Wilson is innocent of these charges. As Elizabeth comes to learn from MI-5 that the real spy has been right under her nose for years, she is visibly shaken. When she is forced to honor this person with remarks at a previously scheduled gala, she throws some cleverly-written shade at the true culprit’s duplicity.
This is hardly the first time Queen Elizabeth has been disappointed by a man in the series. The second season was in some ways a lengthy meditation on the very public marriage of Elizabeth and her consort, Prince Phillip. Phillip’s rumored infidelity was an understandable source of humiliation and mistrust for Elizabeth. When the two reconciled in the season 2 finale, it was a lovely moment of grace and forgiveness after months and possibly years of betrayal.
This episode rewards longtime fans by referring back to the events of the Profumo sex scandal that were depicted in season 2, and to Philip’s alleged connection to those events. Evidence of Philip’s past adultery is a wound that threatens to be reopened by the Russian spy. This episode is illustrates the constraints that the Queen and her family find themselves in as they try to show the public a dignified face despite the turmoil they find themselves in behind the scenes.
This is a brilliant opener for a season in which the Queen will likely never be able to look at a number of things quite the same way again.