Warning: Reviews of The Crown season 6 will contain spoilers.

Two episodes into the final stretch and it kind of feels like The Crown is playing the hits. Willsmania dealt with classic familial conflicts, albeit from an entirely new perspective. With Ruritania, the show returns to Elizabeth’s ever-evolving relationship with a new Prime Minister, this time in Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel). The head of state rightfully hasn’t factored into the show much lately, so when it became clear early on that Blair would dominate this episode, a flood of memories came rushing back. The Crown has mined great material out of Elizabeth’s dealings with the various Prime Ministers over the years, and Blair is an important historical figure, so hopefully Ruritania won’t be a one-off affair.

I’m too young to remember Blair, or how the world saw him in real time, or how he’s remembered today, so I can’t exactly comment on how accurately Carvel or the show are portraying him here. But here he mostly serves as a vessel for Elizabeth’s existential fears for the Crown. If it wasn’t obvious enough after the bizarre nightmare that opens, where Elizabeth is tossed aside and Blair is literally crowned as King – complete with an a cappella rendition of D:Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better” – it’s quickly hammered in once Elizabeth learns of Blair’s overwhelming approval ratings. I don’t know how the rest of the show’s fans will feel about its more experimental side, but I kind of wish it would dip its toes into the surreal a little more often.

The rest of the episode returns to more familiar territory, or at least territory that’s been a concern since around season five. That is, the monarchy’s growing concern over the public’s perception. This time, Elizabeth goes so far as to enlist a marketing agency to conduct focus groups and actually hear from the people. It should come as a surprise to no one that the results are less than favorable. Does it feel a bit like The Crown is spinning its wheels with this topic? Perhaps, especially when the entire royal family – except Charles – pushes back on nearly every suggested reform. The montage of Elizabeth interviewing the increasingly silly and unnecessary palace employees serves as a reminder that these people are essentially aliens, but Ruritania puts a human face on who actually keeps the ship running.

But Ruritania isn’t all a dull outing. I like the contrast between Elizabeth’s speech to the Women’s Initiative (have they come up at all throughout the show’s run?), a place where she can feel accepted and comfortable. By any measure, Tony Blair should feel just as at home speaking to an even larger crowd, but he quickly learns he can’t win them all. It’s a useful reminder that Elizabeth still has value amongst her subjects – and, to some extent, the show.

I wonder how much the show will continue to focus on Elizabeth in these remaining 5 episodes, or if Ruritania is a kind of send-off for her. We know that the show has to continue its examination of William, and introduce Kate Middleton. Plus it has to wrap up the arcs of its other major characters, like Charles and Philip. Would the show as a whole have been better off if it had remembered to focus more on Elizabeth sooner in the past 1.5 seasons? Maybe, but it’s good that Peter Morgan still knows how to write stories for her with the same dimensionality as in the early days of the show.