The Crown (season 2)

The second season of the British-American web television series The Crown, which follows the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II, consists of 10 episodes and was released on Netflix on December 8, 2017.

Claire Foy stars as Elizabeth, along with main cast members Matt Smith, Vanessa Kirby, Jeremy Northam, Anton Lesser, Greg Wise, Victoria Hamilton, Matthew Goode, Alex Jennings, and Lia Williams. Original main cast members Jared Harris, John Lithgow, and Ben Miles also return as featured players.

Premise
The Crown traces the life of Queen Elizabeth II from her wedding in 1947 through to the present day. The second season, in which Claire Foy continues to portray the Queen in the earlier part of her reign, covers the Suez Crisis in 1956, the retirement of the Queen's third Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, in 1963 following the Profumo affair political scandal, and the birth of Prince Edward in 1964.

Main

 * Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II
 * Matt Smith as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Elizabeth's husband
 * Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret, Elizabeth's younger sister
 * Jeremy Northam as Anthony Eden, Churchill's successor as Prime Minister
 * Anton Lesser as Harold Macmillan, who follows Anthony Eden as Prime Minister
 * Greg Wise as Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Philip's ambitious uncle and great-grandson of Queen Victoria
 * Victoria Hamilton as Queen Elizabeth, George VI's wife and Elizabeth's mother, known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother during her daughter's reign
 * Matthew Goode as Antony Armstrong-Jones, known as Tony, a society photographer who marries Princess Margaret
 * Alex Jennings as the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, who abdicated in favour of his younger brother Bertie to marry Wallis Simpson; known to his family as David
 * Lia Williams as Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, Edward's American wife

Featured
The below actors are credited in the opening titles of single episodes in which they play a significant role.
 * Gemma Whelan as Patricia Campbell, a secretary who works with Altrincham and types up his editorial
 * John Heffernan as Lord Altrincham, a writer who pens a scathing criticism of the Queen
 * Paul Sparks as Billy Graham, a prominent American preacher with whom Elizabeth consults
 * Jared Harris as King George VI, Elizabeth's father, known to his family as Bertie
 * John Lithgow as Winston Churchill, the Queen's first Prime Minister
 * Ben Miles as Group Captain Peter Townsend, George VI's former equerry and Princess Margaret's ex-fiancé
 * Michael C. Hall as John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States who visits the Queen
 * Jodi Balfour as Jacqueline Kennedy, the First Lady of the United States
 * Danny Sapani as Kwame Nkrumah, the President of Ghana
 * Burghart Klaußner as Dr. Kurt Hahn, the founder of Gordonstoun
 * Finn Elliot as school-aged Prince Philip
 * Julian Baring as school-aged Prince Charles

Recurring

 * Billy Jenkins as young Prince Charles
 * Grace and Amelia Gilmour as young Princess Anne (uncredited)
 * Clive Francis as Lord Salisbury
 * Pip Torrens as Tommy Lascelles
 * Harry Hadden-Paton as Martin Charteris
 * Daniel Ings as Mike Parker
 * Lizzy McInnerny as Margaret "Bobo" MacDonald
 * Michael Bertenshaw as Piers Legh, Master of the Household
 * Will Keen as Michael Adeane
 * Chloe Pirrie as Eileen Parker
 * Nicholas Burns as Anthony Nutting
 * Lucy Russell as Lady Mountbatten
 * Richard Elfyn as Selwyn Lloyd
 * Adrian Lukis as Vice-Admiral Sir Conolly Abel Smith
 * Sophie Leigh Stone as Princess Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark
 * Guy Williams as Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark
 * Leonie Benesch as Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark
 * Simon Paisley Day as Meryn Lewis
 * James Laurenson as Doctor Weir
 * Mark Tandy as Cecil Beaton
 * Michael Culkin as Rab Butler
 * George Asprey as Walter Monckton
 * James Hillier as Equerry
 * Joseph Kloska as Porchey
 * Sylvestra Le Touzel as Dorothy Macmillan
 * Catherine Bailey as Elizabeth Cavendish
 * Paul Clayton as Bob Boothby
 * Yolanda Kettle as Camilla Fry
 * Ed Cooper Clarke as Jeremy Fry
 * Ryan Sampson as Dudley Moore
 * Tim Steed as John Profumo
 * Lyla Barrett-Rye as school-aged Princess Anne
 * Robert Irons as Freddie Bishop
 * Patrick Warner as Peter Cook
 * Oliver Maltman as Jim Orr
 * David Annen as Alec Douglas-Home
 * Richard Lintern as Stephen Ward

Guest

 * Amir Boutrous as Gamal Abdel Nasser
 * Julius D'Silva as Baron Nahum
 * Patrick Ryecart as the Duke of Norfolk
 * Anna Madeley as Clarissa Eden
 * Tom Durant-Pritchard as Billy Wallace
 * Josh Taylor as Johnny Dalkeith
 * Pip Carter as Colin Tennant
 * Abigail Parmenter as Judy Montagu
 * Jo Herbert as Mary Charteris
 * Richard Clifford as Norman Hartnell
 * Sam Crane as Patrick Plunket

Release
The second season was released on Netflix worldwide in its entirety on December 8, 2017. Season 2 was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on October 22, 2018 and worldwide on November 13, 2018.

Reception
Rotten Tomatoes reported a 91% approval rating for the second season based on 70 reviews, with an average rating of 8.45/10. The website's critical consensus read "The Crown continues its reign with a self-assured sophomore season that indulges in high drama and sumptuous costumes." On Metacritic, the second season holds a score of 87 out of 100, based on 27 critics, retaining the first season's indication of "universal acclaim".

Foy and Smith both earned significant praise from critics. Chancellor Agard of Entertainment Weekly wrote "As always, Claire Foy turns in an amazingly restrained performance." Reviewing the first episode, Gabriel Tate of The Daily Telegraph wrote that Foy and Smith have "seldom been better". Hugo Rifkind of The Times said "While ardent monarchists might bristle at the way this is going, for the rest of us it's getting better and better."

Alison Keene of Collider said "each new episode makes its mark and tells its own complete story... It's another exceptionally strong season of television, full of compelling drama and sweeping grandeur." Krutika Malikarjuna of TV Guide argued that the public is attracted to the royals' celebrity and star power, and said: "The brilliance of this framing becomes clear as the show evolves into The Real Housewives of Buckingham." Sophie Gilbert wrote for The Atlantic that the portrayal of a monarch who "would rather be living any other life" is "riveting", and that it is "gorgeously shot, with flawless re-creations of everything from the Throne Room in Buckingham Palace to a 1950s hospital ward. And it's surprisingly funny."

The Wall Street Journal critic John Anderson said "The Crown attains genuine sexiness without sex. Margaret, à la Ms. Kirby's interpretation, smolders, as does Elizabeth, at least on occasion." Meghan O'Keefe of Decider wrote that the season "continues to romanticize the British royal family, but the romance comes from how they're normal, not divine".

Less complimentary reviews saw the season criticised for what some regarded as failing to meet the emotional intensity of the first. John Doyle wrote for Globe and Mail that despite being "lavishly made" and "breathtaking", it "now leans toward a three-hanky weeper about marriage. It is less than it was, like the monarchy itself, and of interest to monarchy fans only." Alan Sepinwall of Uproxx added "Many of the season's wounds are self-inflicted" and that Prince Philip "still comes across as a whiny man-child". Phil Owen of The Wrap described the season as "trashy" and saw dry comedy in Northam's portrayal of Prime Minister Anthony Eden: "I'm assuming that creator Peter Morgan meant for it to be comedy. There's really no other explanation for why Jeremy Northam played Prime Minister Anthony Eden like he's having a nervous breakdown in every scene."