Fans of The Crown were caught off-guard recently when it was announced that the Netflix series would end with season 5.
There have been three to date, which are all available to watch now on the streaming platform, with the fourth instalment currently in the works.
But there will only be one more chapter beyond that, with Imelda Staunton (A Confession, Harry Potter) taking over from Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth for just the one season – Claire Foy and Colman (following season four) will have starred in two apiece.
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"I'm absolutely thrilled to confirm Imelda Staunton as Her Majesty The Queen for the fifth and final season, taking The Crown into the 21st Century," said showrunner Peter Morgan in a statement.
"Imelda is an astonishing talent and will be a fantastic successor to Claire Foy and Olivia Colman."
Shop Now The Crown series 1 and 2
Staunton also had this to say on Twitter: "I have loved watching The Crown from the very start. I am genuinely honoured to be joining such an exceptional creative team and to be taking the crown to its conclusion."
The rest of the cast has yet to be announced.
Season four will kick off around 1977 and will take viewers through to the beginning of the '90s, which means the last chapter will undoubtedly cover the following major events: the devastating fire at Windsor Castle, Prince Andrew and Sarah, Duchess of York's divorce, Prince Charles and Princess Diana's divorce and the death of Diana.
But the show wasn't always destined to end there.
"This is going to take Queen Elizabeth from age 29 to, presumably, the current day," said Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, back in 2016 (via The Hollywood Reporter). "
"The idea is to do this over six decades, in six seasons presumably, and make the whole show over eight to 10 years."
Following the most recent announcement, Morgan also echoed that: "At the outset I had imagined The Crown running for six seasons."
So, why is the show wrapping up sooner than expected? Did Netflix decide to pull the plug early, or did Morgan, as its driving force, make an executive decision?
He's certainly not short of fresh storylines, and many were hoping that it would eventually catch up with current events given the ongoing Prince Harry and Meghan Markle saga, and Andrew's relationship with now-deceased convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
In his official statement, Morgan said it was the latter: "Now that we have begun work on the stories for season five, it has become clear to me that this is the perfect time and place to stop.
"I'm grateful to Netflix and Sony for supporting me in this decision."
He also told Entertainment Weekly at the beginning of January 2020 that now wouldn't be the right moment to cover the most recent events.
"I feel uncomfortable writing about events within a certain time period," he said.
"I think there's a certain amount of time within which, if you write about it, what you do instantly becomes journalistic because it's too close to the moment.
"If you wait a certain amount of time, if you allow fifteen or twenty years, basically a generation, between you and [the events] then you can write about it somewhat freely as drama."
Tackling the allegations levelled against Andrew – a woman called Virginia Roberts Giuffre has claimed that she was forced to have sex with him when she was 17 after being trafficked by Epstein, an accusation which Andrew has repeatedly denied – would also be a challenge, taking the series into uncharted territory.
But that doesn't mean Morgan, or someone else, won't ever visit this particular chapter of the royal's history.
"Let's wait twenty years and see what there is to say about Meghan Markle," he added. "I don't know what there is to say about Meghan Markle at the moment.
"I wouldn't know and I wouldn't presume. She'll only become interesting once we've had twenty years to digest who she is and what her impact has been.
"If I were to write about Meghan Markle, I would automatically be writing journalistically. I've got nothing to say about Meghan Markle."
Roll on 2040...
It's also common knowledge that The Crown is an extremely expensive show to make.
It was reported that Netflix shelled out $130m (just under £100m) for the first season, which works out at roughly $6.5m to $13m per episode, and the dress that Claire Foy wore to film Elizabeth and Philip's wedding reportedly cost $37,000, according to The Guardian.
But Morgan was quick to dispel those rumours.
"There's no way any of us are going to plead hardship, but none of the rumours of our budget were true," he said at a BAFTA Masterclass event.
"I mean, none of them [were true] and it was sort of painful not being able to say it."
He went on to describe the budget as "perfectly healthy", but said that there are "many, many series with a larger budget", and that the sum being bandied about was a combined total for the first two seasons.
"Because we did a deal for two seasons, people thought that's what we were getting per season," he added.
Either way, that's still rather a lot of money, especially considering The Crown didn't make Netflix's top ten most-watched series of 2019 in the UK and Ireland, or in the US, which would have been a concern for Netflix.
There was also a feeling among some critics and viewers that season 3 didn't reach the heights of the first two seasons – but there was still audience interest – over 21 million households decided to watch season 3 of the show (an increase of 40% over the comparable period for season 2).
And with the penultimate batch of episodes set to introduce Diana, we'd expect plenty of interest ahead of its final chapter.
The Crown is available to stream now on Netflix.
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