What We Learned From ‘Harry & Meghan,’ Part Two

LONDON — The second and final installment of “Harry and Meghan,” the highly anticipated Netflix docuseries about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, was released on Thursday, capping a week in which the couple’s personal lives were once again catapulted into the spotlight.

The first three episodes of the series, released last week, explored the beginning of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s relationship, their ongoing battle with the news media, her challenging family connections and more. Three more episodes were released Thursday.

Love them, hate them or simply can’t live without them, people tuned in. The first set of episodes earned 81.5 million viewing hours, the most of any documentary in a premiere week, Netflix said on Tuesday. More than 28 million households watched at least part of the first collection of episodes in the first four days of their release, the streaming platform added.

Episode four picks up at Harry and Meghan’s wedding in May 2018 and quickly tackles a number of matters, including Meghan’s connection with Queen Elizabeth II, the barrage of negative headlines she faced and her mental health challenges.

If you don’t have time to watch, or if you enjoy spoilers, here are the main takeaways from the latest episodes.

Strained family ties take center stage.

In the fifth episode, the couple recounts a family meeting to discuss their decision to reduce their roles as working members of the royal family. Harry said he was presented with several options but quickly realized no agreement would be reached.

“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that simply weren’t true and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in,” Harry said.

Harry described that meeting as hard and said it ended without a solid plan of action.

“The saddest part of it was this wedge created between myself and my brother so that he’s now on the institution side,” Harry said, acknowledging Prince William’s perspective.

The couple announced in January 2020 that they were stepping back from their royal duties, sending shock waves around the world and drawing headlines that seemed to blame Meghan for the split.

The constant and negative tabloid headlines had a dramatic effect on Meghan.

In the fourth episode, Meghan discusses suicidal thoughts that she blamed, in part, on negative headlines shortly after they wed and during much of her first pregnancy.

“All of this will stop if I’m not here, and that was the scariest thing about it — it was such clear thinking,” Meghan said, recalling her mind-set at the time.

Doria Ragland, Meghan’s mother, recalled an emotional conversation in which Meghan expressed suicidal thoughts. “That’s not an easy one for a mom to hear,” she said, wiping away tears. “And I can’t protect her. H can’t protect her.” (Meghan refers to Harry throughout the series as “H.”)

Harry said he was devastated by the toll the negative press coverage took on his wife and said he didn’t deal with it well.

“I had been trained to worry more about what are people going to think,” Harry said. “And looking back at it now, I hate myself for it. What she needed from me was so much more than I was able to give.”

The couple’s war with the media reaches a fever pitch.

The fifth episode begins with the couple’s continued war with the news media and efforts to dodge paparazzi while spending Christmas 2019 away from the royal family.

The headlines about Meghan appeared to be incessant, pushing the couple to a breaking point. “I realized that I wasn’t just being thrown to the wolves,” Meghan said. “I was being fed to the wolves.”

The couple described creating a plan that they hoped would bring them both safety and peace of mind. “The toll was visible, the emotional toll that it was having on both of us, but especially my wife,” Harry said. “We’re going to have to change this for our own sake.”

They described plans to relocate to New Zealand or South Africa before they ultimately settled on Canada. They later moved to California.

Harry said his grandmother, the queen, was aware that he and Meghan were having difficulties with their public roles and made plans to discuss it in early January 2020 when he returned briefly to Britain. However, that plan was thwarted, they said.

“I remember looking at H and going, my gosh, this is when a family and family business are in direct conflict because they’re blocking you from seeing the queen, but really what they’re doing is blocking a grandson from seeing his grandmother,” Meghan said.

Harry places blame for Meghan’s miscarriage.

In July 2020, amid a long-running legal battle against one of Britain’s tabloids, The Daily Mail, Meghan said she suffered a miscarriage. The couple discussed the loss in episode six.

“I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what The Mail did,” Harry said. “I watched the whole thing.”

Meghan claimed that the newspaper had violated her privacy by publishing details from a private letter she sent to her estranged father in 2018.

“Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was created, caused by that? Course we don’t,” he said, while noting that the legal battle led to stress and loss of sleep.

“I can say, from what I saw, that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her,” he said.

The couple have two children: Archie, born in May 2019, and Lilibet Diana, born in June 2021.

The Daily Mail did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tyler Perry’s friendship was a saving grace.

The film director Tyler Perry appears in the final episode of the series, recounting how he reached out to Meghan for the first time not long before the couple’s wedding in 2018. Perry said he empathized with her struggles.

“This was before the wedding and I sent her a note,” Perry said. “Just praying for her. Just to be able to move through it and hold on and let her know that everything in her life had prepared her for this moment, or so I thought.”

Meghan said she was a “wreck” when she later reached out to Perry in early 2020, after she and Harry had moved to Canada.

“Sometimes it’s easier to just open up to someone who knows nothing at all and that was that moment with me and Tyler,” Meghan said. Perry said he could hear the fear in Meghan’s voice and drew similarities to Princess Diana’s struggles with the news media.

In March 2020, just before Covid-19 upended life around the world, Perry helped the couple relocate to a home he owned in Beverly Hills, Calif. Harry said they were desperate to stay anywhere, adding that the new location was “bliss” until the paparazzi found them six weeks later.

The wedding was a family affair, although it was an international spectacle.

The fourth episode kicked off by reliving the couple’s star-studded wedding in May 2018. Although thousands of people were on the street hoping to catch a glimpse of the couple, and perhaps billions more were watching on television, the couple described it as a family affair, with numerous personal touches that seemed to make all the difference.

Harry chose the song (Handel’s “Eternal Source of Light Divine”) that Meghan walked down the aisle to. “It was so beautiful,” she said. It was also revealed that Charles, Harry’s father, who was the Prince of Wales at the time and is now king, helped choose the orchestra for the ceremony.

Because Megan’s father, Thomas Markle, did not attend the ceremony, she asked Charles to walk her down the aisle. “Harry’s dad is very charming,” Meghan said. “I said to him like, ‘I’ve lost my dad in this.’ So him as my father-in-law was really important to me.”

A happy ending?

After more details about their private struggles, including the miscarriage, the final episode attempts to untangle the delicate strings surrounding Meghan’s lengthy legal battle against The Mail, which she ultimately wins.

The decision came down after an appeals court rejected The Mail’s bid to force a trial over her claim that it violated her privacy.

In the final moments of the series, Harry admits that he misses many aspects about his former life and that he has lost friends in the process of transitioning to the United States.