The Crown Season 5

Peter Townsend (now played by Timothy Dalton) comes back into Margaret's life while a fire devastates Windsor Castle, prompting the queen to give an iconic ...

• After Anne tells her mother that she’s going to marry Tim no matter what, she makes a point of kissing him in front of the help. But when the Queen Mother critiques the draft, Philip jumps in to defend his wife, arguing she deserves to express herself and have peace of mind. The symbolism of a castle burning feels a little on the nose in this time of turbulence and crisis, but hey, She talks to the Archbishop of Canterbury about her children’s collapsing marriages and feeling like she failed them as a parent. After all, Anne and Margaret have romantic situations that are more or less identical, but Anne is the only one who gets her happy ending. She suggests that maybe the fire was started by someone who could have a bone to pick with the queen. More than a hundred rooms are destroyed in the inferno, including the Crimson Room — a place where Margaret and Peter had shared fond memories together. At the reception, Peter and Margaret steal glances at each other from a respectable distance until a trumpet version of “Stardust” plays and he insists they dance. As the night winds down, Peter says he’ll be back in London soon and he’d like to return her letters, which he’s kept all this time. The queen is being a buzzkill partly due to insecurity she feels within her own marriage, but it’s frustrating to see Margaret’s joy tampered with, especially when Elizabeth drove a wedge between those two so many years ago. So when she, as a chain-smoking radio guest, says she still values her faith and the possibility of happy endings, it’s hard not to root for her. But this episode is at its most moving when it’s resurrecting a story from the very first season, courtesy of Princess Margaret (now played by Lesley Manville, picking up where Vanessa Kirby and then