ABC News
After 60 episodes and several different versions of Queen Elizabeth II, historical fiction drama The Crown has come to an end.
Beginning before the Queen's reign, the series rehashed some of the biggest events in the past 100 years and created a reputation of being a prestige drama.
However, after winning over the critics in the beginning, The Crown seemed to have lost its shine by the end.
But is the show badly done or is there something else at play?
We spoke to two pop culture experts and a psychologist to find out.
What happens in the final season of The Crown?
To recap, the first four episodes followed the lead-up to Princess Diana's death and her funeral.
Those episodes came out as something like a four-chapter mini-series.
Part two of the final season covered Prince William meeting a young Kate Middleton at university, Princess Margaret's death, Prince Charles and Camilla's wedding and The Queen planning her own funeral.
The Crown is not a documentary — in fact, it makes a point of saying so in its description, which reads:
"Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatisation tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign."
However, for people who weren't around when these events happened, there might have been a sense of authenticity that built creditability.
Lisa Hackett and Jo Coghlan are part of the University of New England's Popular Culture Research Network (PopCRN) and have an academic interest in the royals.
They unpacked why the credibility of the earlier seasons appears to be missing from some newer episodes.
"When I watched The Crown originally, I sat there Googling the whole time 'was that true? Was that happening?'," Dr Coglan says.
"I'm not doing that anymore … it's all embellished, it's just narrative.
"Ergo, it's just a soap opera."
When is the final season of The Crown set?
The final season covers from 1997 to 2005.
The first four episodes span across just a few weeks in 1997, while the second part stretches over a few years until Prince Charles and Camilla's wedding in 2005.
And this might have been why it felt a bit off to you.
It might have felt 'too soon'
A baby born in 2005 is now legally considered an adult, but is 18 years enough time between then and now for the series to not feel too soon?
That may depend on how old you are.
"It is very much generational, how we respond," Dr Coghlan says.
Both pop culture experts think the series should have stopped earlier — specifically, Dr Hackett reckons they should have ended it with the divorce of Charles and Diana.
"I don't know if that's a good time to stop or if that's reflective of my age," she says.
"It was far back enough as where I don't remember as much.
"There's that debate — when does history start and when is it now?
"So maybe that 30 years ago feels like history to me, whereas the rest feels contemporary
"It kind of feels like I know too much."
So it might have something to do with how much you know about a period of time.
And the more you know about that period of time, the more pressure there is on the show makers to get it right.
"Those earlier episodes, as long as he's got the essence, it's [got] authenticity," Dr Hackett says.
"But once you actually get closer to what we actually have first-hand experience of rather than remote history, I think we don't just want authenticity, we want accuracy.
"Whereas before I think we would have forgone that."
You may be taken back to a dark time
The death of Diana was major moment in history, with a global outpouring of grief.
But it's not just Diana's death — the series also touched on the September 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center and the invasion of Iraq.
So if you remember that time, your memories of that might have impacted the way you experienced the show.
Australian Psychological Society president Catriona Davis-McCabe says people commonly react differently when re-exposed to "shared past events".
"Our emotions at the time of experiencing an event influence how memories of the experience are formed and shape how we remember and experience these memories in the future," Dr Davis-McCabe says.
"For example, when people rewatch their favourite childhood movies, they can be taken back to the feelings they felt when they first watched it, and this is similar for fiction or non-fiction.
"With mass media now common, it is a lot easier for people to form emotional connections to events that they had no direct experience of, and if these events are rebroadcast years later, it's not surprising that people may feel similar emotions to when they experienced the initial event.
"If particularly strong emotional connections were formed during the consolidation of these initial memories, then people may have a visceral reaction when re-exposed to this content if not enough time has passed from the initial event or the event has not been processed.
"This is especially true if feelings of trauma are associated with the initial event."
It may have felt too commercial
Dr Coghlan says the fact that they didn't stop earlier reflects the commercial pressures at play — suggesting show makers kept the series running to capitalise on its popularity.
That's something she says made the newer episodes feel "quite laboured".
"I thought they were … milking it," she says.
"I get they want to make a few bucks out of it but I think it's just become a commercial product and without anything new to say, it becomes very soap opera-y."
Not only that, it might have been erring too close to wish fulfilment — something that can make us feel good, but we know life doesn't often pan out that way.
And, previously, the show didn't either.
In the earlier seasons, many viewers might have wanted Princess Margaret to marry the man of her choice but that didn't happen — and show didn't shy away from that character's heartbreak.
While the later seasons still depict horrible, tragic events, they appear to cushion the blow with minor concessions.
We see Charles and Diana patch things up before she goes to Paris, we see Diana and Dodi being honest with each other right before the crash and we see Harry and William making amends after bickering.
"I think they've made decisions on what the audience would like," Dr Hackett says.
"So they're making decisions guessing what the audience would want to see and maybe they've got it a bit wrong now because there's too many conflicting stories, there's too many ideas out there."
It may have felt pro-royal
"I think that, for the most part, The Crown is a very pro-British, pro-monarch program," Dr Coghlan says.
"People were probably expecting it to be a bit more critical.
"And there are moments where they're critical of a character but they're rather fleeting or it's implied criticism.
"They show their flaws, but that said it's a very pro-monarchy, pro-Windsor piece of television."
There were times when the show could have been harsher in its depictions of the royals.
For example, one episode teases out an apparent scandal from a fictionalised retelling of a young Elizabeth and Margaret partying after the end of World War II.
But the reveal is quite charming and, by today's standards, quite tame and wholesome.
We have more sympathy for the boys
In the years since their mother's death, both Prince William and Prince Harry have been open about how difficult that time was for them.
And there's a much deeper cultural understanding of the importance of mental health in today's society than there was 20 years ago.
"Cultural sensitivities and whether people feel re-enactments trivialise past events also shapes how we respond," Dr Davis-McCabe says.
So people may have been more likely to consider Diana's sons as complex, multi-faceted people rather than one-dimensional characters on a screen.
That's something the series showed in earlier seasons, but perhaps the fact that many of us have had so much more exposure to the princes, it feels more personal.
Dr Coghlan says that, even though it's clearly fictionalised, filmmakers do inform people's opinions by retelling these stories.
"You do have some sort of responsibility to … in this case, a living family and the boys," she says.
"I found myself wondering if William and Harry had watched it and how they would react.
"As a mother I found that quite confronting … the idea that it's their mother's death that they're seeing portrayed."
It was more about relationships
Both Dr Hackett and Coghlan say the newer seasons were less of a political drama and more about personal relationships.
The scenes depicting the Queen having meetings with the prime minister seem to be less pivotal in the context of influencing historical events.
"We're not seeing the statesperson anymore," Dr Hackett says.
"That's a huge shift from the first four seasons to the last two — it's really just about what the tabloids are saying.
"That sense of ... 'the Queen is the head of state and she's involved in these big events' has fallen away it's become a very different show I think."
Dr Coghlan compares The Crown's early seasons to the first few seasons of Game of Thrones — which was known for its complex power dynamics and political plotting.
"And I found that, in the early episodes of The Crown, there was a lot of that," she says.
"The machinations of the courtiers and the press people and between Margaret and Elizabeth and whether Margaret should marry or not.
"I found all of that quite intriguing against the historical backdrop of actual events — so the Suez Canal crisis and that sort of thing."
This may have made relationship-focused storylines a bit more trivial by comparison.
"The big events weren't there anymore so it just became the family and their little 'who's going to marry who' and 'who do we like and who don't we like' and it's all a bit passé," she says.
It may have felt too 'tabloid-y'
There may be some ethical dilemmas coming into play as well.
Society seems to be in the midst of grappling with the way we viewed celebrities in the past.
Recently, we've heard from pop culture icons like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson about the toll tabloid reporting took on them.
Princess Diana was a major target for the tabloid press, right up until her very last moments.
And it might be uncomfortable to be confronted with how we as viewers contributed to the culture that normalised that kind of harmful harassment.
We also have more of an idea of how much this chapter of history impacted Prince William and Prince Harry.
So watching it might have felt a bit wrong and a bit, as Dr Coghlan describes it, "tabloid-y".
"Almost they themselves are acting like the tabloid media in presenting this one version," she says.
"What the filmmakers and the directors are saying is it was a war of PR that was going on.
"But by episode four, they are the paparazzi.
"And that's almost that grubby feel."