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The Crown Season 5: Debicki & West as Princess Diana & Prince Charles

Netflix has released first look photos of Elizabeth Debicki and Dominic West as the latest regenerations of Princess Diana and Prince Charles in the upcoming Season 5 of The Crown. Debicki takes over from Emma Corrin, who played Diana in season 4 when she met and married a young Prince Charles (Josh O'Connor) and dealt with the stress of worldwide fame. Diana struggled with an eating disorder and had an affair with James Hewitt (Daniel Donskoy) after learning of Charles' extra-marital romance with Camilla Parker Bowles (Emerald Fennel, who also wrote on Killing Eve, wrote and directed Promising Young Woman and the book for Andrew Lloyd-Webber's possibly-soon-to-be-canceled new musical version of Cinderella).

This will be the 3^rd time Debicki plays a Doomed Hitchcock Blonde. She previously played one on the adaptation of John le Carré's spy thriller The Night Manager, and then pretty much the same role again in Christopher Nolan's Tenet. Now she'll be playing a real-life Doomed Hitchcock Blonde in the form of Princess Di. Consider this Debicki's own Hitchcock Blonde Trilogy.

West has become practically typecast as a love rat in many TV series starting with Showtime's The Affair. Now he will be playing Charles as the Royal Love Rat, making this the screen's most caddish Prince Charles of them all!

They will be joined in season 5 by Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II, former Bond villain Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, and Jonny Lee Miller ("Elementary") as Tory Prime Minister John Major. The latter may be the oddest casting choice of them all, from Transpotting's Sick Boy to Sherlock Holmes in Elementary to Tory Prime Minister.

The Crown first premiered on Netflix in 2016 with the premise of following the British royal family through the decades, beginning with the death of George VI and the subsequent coronation of his daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1952. Major characters are recast every two seasons to reflect their age, or they might have been targets of alien enemies and were forced to regenerate between seasons. That's right – the series reveals a secret that conspiracy theorists have ignored: the Royal Family are not alien lizards but Time Lords! And season 5 reveals their latest regenerations!

Season 5 will probably take the family through the Queen's so-called "annus horribilis" (that's Latin for "horrible year") in 1992, during which three of her four children separated from their partners, including Prince Charles and Diana, as well as the public revelation of Charles and Camilla's affair and the publication of Prince Andrew's wife Sarah Ferguson sunbathing topless with a male friend. So many storms in a Royal Porcelain teacup that year!

It is unclear whether season 5 will feature Diana's 1997 death in a car crash or whether that must wait until season 6, which is said to be The Crown's final season. The producers have also declined to say whether they will re-enact the crash in the show. They may not have to – after all, the 2006 movie The Queen, written by series creator Peter Morgan, depicted those events with Helen Mirren playing Queen Elizabeth II. You could say the entire series of The Crown has been a prequel to The Queen all along, and Helen Mirren might be the ultimate regeneration of the Queen Herself.

That's right, if you want to amuse yourself, you can think of The Crown as a secret spinoff of Doctor Who. It's not hard. The Royal Family is a secret family of Time Lords who fled the Time War and have been hiding in England in plain sight all along. Suddenly you get a new reading of both shows. You know you want to.

The Crown is now streaming on Netflix. Season 5 is forthcoming.

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