Season Analysis

The Crown

Season 4 Analysis

Season Woke Score

4.6

out of 10

Season Overview

As the 1970s are drawing to a close, Queen Elizabeth and her family find themselves preoccupied with safeguarding the line of succession by securing an appropriate bride for Prince Charles, who is still unmarried at 30.

Season Review

Season 4 presents the British Monarchy as a sterile and emotionally bankrupt institution. The plot contrasts the rigid adherence to tradition with the rising popularity of Princess Diana and the political iron will of Margaret Thatcher. The narrative consistently portrays the Royal Family as a collection of cold, resentful individuals who treat their own members as disposable assets to preserve a hollow crown. It frames the established order as a rigid, uncaring force that breaks those who do not conform to its archaic demands.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The casting remains historically accurate to the period and the British aristocracy. The narrative avoids forcing modern diversity quotas into the 1980s setting and focuses on the established social hierarchies of the time rather than race-based grievances.

Oikophobia8/10

The show depicts British tradition as a suffocating and cruel cage. The Monarchy, a foundational institution, is framed as a source of misery for those within it and an out-of-touch relic for those outside it. National heritage is portrayed as cold, elitist, and emotionally stunted.

Feminism7/10

The season frames the Royal Family as a patriarchal machine that systematically destroys the women within it. Diana is presented as the ultimate victim of a cold hierarchy, while Margaret Thatcher is depicted as a woman forced to be harsher than men to survive in a male-dominated political landscape. Motherhood is frequently shown as a Burden rather than a source of joy.

LGBTQ+2/10

The narrative focuses almost exclusively on heterosexual relationships and the necessity of producing heirs for the throne. It does not engage in gender theory or the deconstruction of the traditional family through a queer lens.

Anti-Theism4/10

Religion is treated as a dead, institutional formality with no spiritual life. Christian faith and the Church of England appear only as cold backdrops for state ceremonies, providing no moral or emotional guidance to the characters in their time of need.