Will Netflix’s Harry & Meghan Criticize the Royal Family in Its Final Three Episodes?

On Monday morning, Netflix released a new trailer for the final three episodes of Harry & Meghan, and in it, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle intensified their attacks on the British media. In the trailer posted to the streamer’s YouTube channel, Harry complains that he and his brother Prince William received different treatment in the media. “They were happy to lie to protect my brother,” Harry says. “They were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”

Harry also describes what happened to him and Meghan as “institutional gaslighting.” It’s a sign that unlike the first three episodes of the long-awaited documentary series, where the couple avoided criticizing members of the royal family directly, the set of episodes due out on Thursday morning might be more explicit in blaming the royal family for the couple’s tumultuous royal exit in early 2020.

The trailer also details what happened in March 2020, when Meghan and Harry left their rented home on Canada’s Vancouver Island for Los Angeles before the borders closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. “I wonder what would have happened to us had we not gotten out when we did,” Harry says. Meghan adds, “Our security was being pulled. Everyone in the world knew where we were.” 

Entertainment mogul Tyler Perry also makes an appearance in the trailer. “They just wanted to be free,” he says. “They wanted to be free to love and be happy. I applauded that.” In March 2021 Meghan and Harry told Oprah Winfrey that Perry had loaned them his private jet and allowed them to stay in his Los Angeles home, and earlier this year, Perry opened up about supporting the couple during an interview with NBC’s Today show. The new trailer features footage of Harry on Perry’s jet in 2020, saying “We are on the freedom flight.”

There is also a cameo from Christopher Bouzy, the CEO of Bot Sentinel, a company that analyzes online misinformation and disinformation attacks. “They were actively recruiting people to disseminate disinformation,” Bouzy says in the trailer, though it’s not clear who he is referring to. In 2021, Bot Sentinel released a report documenting a coordinated harassment campaign against Harry and Meghan online, which found that 70 percent of the negative tweets came from just 83 accounts, whose primary purpose appeared to be tweeting about the couple.

Perhaps anticipating some of the criticism that the series so far has been overly focused on past grievances, Harry mentions his motivations for looking back. “In order for us to be able to move to the next chapter, you gotta finish the first chapter,” he says. The trailer concludes with images of Meghan and Harry on the Montecito estate where they moved after leaving Perry’s house. “It gave us a chance to create that home that we had always wanted,” Meghan notes.

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