‘The Crown’ drops S4 sneak peek and first glimpse of Diana

If you thought you’d had your fill of royal drama so far in 2020, just wait until this fall. That’s when fans will forget about the Megxit malarkey that’s been the talk of the year, and travel back in time to the end of the 1970s, when Princess Diana was about to become the OG royals ruckus causer.Netflix released a sneak peek of the upcoming fourth season of The Crown on August 20, while also revealing that the new installment drops in full on the streaming service November 15. Although the brief, 30-second clip doesn’t offer much, it perfectly encapsulates this year’s theme: Diana, and the public’s obsession with the woman who would go on to become The People’s Princess.

The monarchy. Above all else. @GillianA and Emma Corrin join Olivia Colman in Season Four of The Crown, arriving 15th November. pic.twitter.com/Z4RPvzb32R

— The Crown (@TheCrownNetflix) August 20, 2020

;The trailer opens with a shot of Olivia Colman’s Queen Elizabeth character mounted on a horse in full garb while exiting the palace gates. “Something as important as the monarchy simply cannot be allowed to fail,” she says in the ominous voiceover. The shot then cuts to the back of Diana Spencer’s (Emma Corrin) head as she exits a building to a hoard of waiting press, with flashbulbs going off and people calling out her name. In the subsequent shots, the camera captures several images of the woman from the back or as a silhouette, but the audience never sees her full face.[video_embed id='2015657']RELATED: Elizabeth Debicki cast as Princess Diana in ‘The Crown’[/video_embed]It all comes to a quiet halt in the final shot, which is of the back of Diana in her memorable 1981 wedding gown, walking down a hallway with echoing footsteps. Accurate? The dress certainly implies that it is. Foreshadowing? Well, you be the judge.According to an official logline released in conjunction with the trailer, the fourth season traces the royal family’s attempts to secure an appropriate bride for Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) who is now in his thirties, in order to safeguard the line of succession. Add in a nation divided by the Falklands War and the discord between the Queen and the country’s first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), and the people are looking for escapism. Enter Charles’ romance with Diana, which acts a much-needed fairytale for the culture at large but is a catalyst for conflict within the palace itself.Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles were married from 1981 to 1996. Diana died at just 36, a year after their divorce, in a fatal car crash that happened while her driver was escaping paparazzi in Paris. This 10-episode season of The Crown is expected to follow the timeline all the way to 1990, which means the story will move past the wedding, but it won’t yet venture into the irreparable marital cracks that led to the divorce.The trailer for the new season (which also stars Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip and Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret), comes days after The Crown announced that Elizabeth Debicki will take over the role of Princess Diana for the final two seasons of the series when production kicks off on season five. That means this fourth season is viewers’ only shot to get into Corrin’s take on the complex character.“Princess Diana’s spirit, her words and her actions live in the hearts of so many,” Debicki said in an official statement on August 16 about landing the part. “It is my true privilege and honour to be joining this masterful series, which has had me absolutely hooked from episode one.”The Crown was originally supposed to run for five seasons, but this past January creator Peter Morgan revealed they were pushing the story for one more year in order to capture the “richness and complexity” of the story. And no, for those wondering, that story will not include the recent stuff with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Morgan has been clear in the past that only events that are 20 years or older will make it into his story of Queen Elizabeth and the monarchy."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,” Morgan said in 2018. “If I were to write about Meghan Markle I would automatically be writing journalistically. I’ve got nothing to say about Meghan Markle."[video_embed id='2017129']BEFORE YOU GO: Air Canada promotes ‘leisure’ travel to U.S despite travel advisories[/video_embed]