Don't get your hopes up about Meghan Markle, Oprah and Tyler Perry on The Crown just yet.
On Sunday night, 17 million people watched Oprah sit down with the couple formerly known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to spill all the tea about their exit from the royal family. It was a two-hour interview filled with bombshell after bombshell that felt like it was ripped right out of the most compelling royal-related fiction, and like it might make the absolute best season of Netflix's royal-related award-winning drama—of which Prince Harry himself has watched "some."
Unfortunately, that's not happening anytime soon. Season six is set to be the final season, and it will end somewhere in the early 2000s. Show creator Peter Morgan has specifically said that Meghan and Harry's romance is simply too recent to reflect on with any clarity in the show, so if they were to be covered onscreen, they would have to wait for the show to be revived in another decade or so.
The same thing goes for the scandal surrounding Prince Andrew and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Morgan explained his stance on this in detail in an August 2020 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
"I just think you get so much more interesting [with time]," he said. "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 some happiness, but I'm much more comfortable writing about things that happened at least 20 years ago."
He explained that he has, in his head, "a 20-year rule."
"That is enough time and enough distance to really understand something, to understand its role, to understand its position, to understand its relevance," he explained. "Often things that appear absolutely wildly important today are instantly forgotten, and other things have a habit of sticking around and proving to be historically very relevant and long-lasting. I don't know where in the scheme of things Prince Andrew or indeed Meghan Markle or Harry will ever appear. We won't know, and you need time to stop something being journalistic. And so I don't want to write about them because to write about them would instantly make it journalistic, and there are plenty of journalists already writing about them."
Morgan's role, as he describes it, is as a "dramatist," which requires perspective.
"You need to also allow for the opportunity for metaphor," he continued. "Once something has a metaphorical possibility, it can then become interesting. It's quite possible, for example, to tell the story of Harry and Meghan through analogy and metaphor, if that's what you want to do. Because there've been so many examples in the past, whether it's Wallis Simpson or Edward VII, or whether it's Diana and Prince Charles. There have been plenty of opportunities in the past where there have been marital complications. There've been wives that have been married into the Royal family that have felt unwelcome and that they don't fit in. So there are plenty of stories to tell without telling the story of Harry and Meghan."
A source confirmed to E! News that nothing has changed in light of the interview, and the final two seasons of The Crown will still cover up to the early 2000s.
Season four started in 1979 and ended around 1990, so season five will deal with the 1990s and the death of Princess Diana in 1997. If the final two seasons keep with tradition, they will each span around a decade, meaning the final season could end with Prince William and Kate Middleton's marriage in 2011, or the Queen's Diamond Jubilee (celebrating her 60 years as queen) in 2012, if it even dares to go that far.
Harry didn't meet Meghan until 2016, but Harry was certainly around in the early 2000s, meaning someone will certainly be playing him.
For everything else we know about the future of the series, scroll down!
The first four seasons of The Crown are currently streaming on Netflix.