"Harry & Meghan": The 11 biggest bombshells from the final part of Netflix's tell-all docuseries

"Harry's dad is very charming," Meghan said when recounting her wedding. "And, I said to him, 'I've lost my dad in this.' So, him as my father-in-law was really important to me. So, I asked him to walk me down the aisle and he said yes."

 

The king (who was a mere prince back then) was also involved in organizing Harry and Meghan's big day. Per Harry, his father helped the pair choose a gospel choir and an orchestra, which the Duke said "made all the difference."

Lucy Fraser, a friend of both Harry and Meghan, said many royal members were increasingly threatened by the couple's growing popularity with the public. This tension was also fueled by the media — a headline from the British tabloid newspaper The Sun read, "'ROYAL RIVALS: 'Forward thinking' Meghan Markle and Prince Harry top Time's most influential list but Kate Middleton and Prince William are snubbed." Other outlets called Meghan "a version of the Antichrist" and asserted that her so-called "diva demands" were "wreaking havoc" at the palace.  

 

"The issue is when someone who's marrying in, who should be a supporting act, is then stealing the limelight, or doing the job better than the person who is born to do this. That upsets people. It shifts the balance," Harry explained. "Because you've been led to believe that the only way your charities can succeed and the only way your reputation can be grown or improved is if you're on the front page of those newspapers."

 

It didn't take long for tabloids to create a media war between the Duchess of Sussex and her sister-in-law, Kate Middleton. A Daily Mail headline for Kate's pregnancy read, "Not long to go! Pregnant Kate tenderly cradles her baby bump while wrapping up her royal duties ahead of maternity leave – and William confirms she's due 'any minute now,'" while a headline for Meghan's pregnancy read, "Why can't Meghan Markle keep her hands off her bump? Experts tackle the question that has got the nation talking: Is it pride, vanity, acting – or a new age bonding technique?"

 

The media coverage surrounding Meghan was also incredibly racist, with many outlets linking her to terrorism, drugs and gangs.

Meghan's mother, Doria Ragland, recounted how her daughter had wanted to take her own life:

 

"Well, I knew it was bad. But to just constantly be picked at by these vultures, just picking away at her spirit," Ragland said of Meghan's media attention. "That she would actually think of not wanting to be here. That's not an easy one for a mom to hear."

 

Harry added that he "never thought that it would get to that stage," and when it did, he felt both "angry and ashamed.

 

"I didn't deal with it particularly well. I dealt with it as institutional Harry, as opposed to husband Harry," he continued. "And what took over my feelings was my royal role. I had been trained to worry more about, 'What are people gonna think if we don't go to this event? We're gonna be late.'

 

"And looking back on it now, I hate myself for it."

 

Meghan said she wanted to seek help but wasn't allowed to because it would tarnish the royal family's reputation.

Harry and Meghan recalled that they were met with anger and outrage for their decision to stay private about the birth of their first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. 

 

"The amount of abuse that we got . . . for not wanting to serve our child up on a silver platter, was incredible," Harry said. Shortly after Archie's birth, the couple came across a tweet of a black-and-white photo of an unknown couple, meant to represent Harry and Meghan, carrying a chimp. A caption at the top of the post simply read, "Royal baby leaves hospital."

As if the negative press wasn't enough, Meghan's reputation was further tarnished by her father, Thomas Markle. According to several headlines, Thomas slammed his daughter's "sense of superiority," erroneously claimed that he was being "shunned" by his daughter and likened the royal family to a "secretive Scientology cult."

 

Per suggestions from the queen and Prince William, Meghan decided to write a letter to her father to mend the situation. The letter was discreetly sent via Meghan's business manager in Los Angeles. However, when Meghan received a picture of the signature confirmation that the letter had been delivered, she alleged that the signature was not her father's. Shortly afterwards, the private five-page letter was made public by Thomas.

 

"The toll was visible. The emotional toll that it was having on both of us, but especially my wife," Harry said about the negative media coverage following the couple's U.K. tabloid libel lawsuit. "We're gonna have to change this, for our own sake. How are we gonna change our relationship with the institution, but in a way that protects us and our mental health and our well-being as well?"

 

Meghan also claimed that she "wasn't just being thrown to the wolves," she "was being fed to the wolves." It was clear at this point that the palace wasn't going to protect the couple, especially Meghan.

The couple decided to leave London and move to Canada, where they could step away from the public eye and continue their work throughout the Commonwealth. Harry said that he shared the exclusive plan with his father, who then asked if he could have it outlined in writing. The plan was shared with Prince Charles via emails, one of which mentioned that the pair would relinquish their Sussex titles if their plan didn't work out. Five days later, the plan was leaked to several tabloids.

 

"It became clear that the institution leaked the fact that we were going to be moving back to Canada," Harry asserted. "And the key piece of that story that made me aware that the contents of the letter between me and my father had been leaked was that we were willing to relinquish our Sussex titles. That was the giveaway.

 

"Our story, our life, literally got taken from underneath us."

 

The couple, alongside their team, later released a statement saying they would step back from their roles.

Harry traveled to the royal residence Sandringham to meet with Queen Elizabeth II, Charles and William and discuss the couple's future involvement in the royal family. Harry said he chose a "half in, half out" option, in which he and Meghan would have their own jobs but also work in support of the queen.

 

"It became very clear very quickly, that goal was not up for discussion or debate," Harry said. "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."

 

He continued, "The saddest part of it was this wedge created between myself and my brother, so that he's now on the institution's side." That day, a news story also claimed that a part of the reason why Harry and Meghan were leaving the family was because William "had bullied them out." A joint statement was then released in January 2020, in which the brothers denied the aforementioned story and called it "false," "offensive" and "potentially harmful." The statement, however, was written without Harry's permission.

 

"No one had asked me permission to put my name to a statement like that," he said in the series. "And I rang [Meghan] and I told her, and she burst into floods of tears, because within four hours, they [the institution] were happy to lie to protect my brother, and yet for three years, they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us."

 

Harry added, "So there was no other option at this point. I said, 'We need to get out of here.'" The couple officially stepped back from their royal duties.

Samantha Markle, Meghan's half-sister, was part of a hate group that was spreading disinformation about Meghan and sending her death threats. Her Twitter account was subsequently suspended, and it was revealed that she had 11 additional accounts that were spewing similar hateful messages. 

 

The documentary noted that Samantha's attorney said Samantha's Twitter account was never "suspended" but rather, it was "hacked, resulting in "imposter accounts" made by third parties to defame Samantha.

 

Such hate groups attacking the Duchess called her a "witch," "gold digger," "immoral sex maniac dirty b***h" and even the N-word. 

 

"The seriousness of what has happened to her and what . . . happened to us, and what continues to happen to her, that needs to be acknowledged," Harry said of his wife's treatment.

 

Meghan added that while she was looking through a manual for the couple's security team, she came across the specific protocols for reporting a tweet like, "Meghan just needs to die. Someone needs to kill her. Maybe it should be me."

 

"That's my real life. And that's the piece when you see it you go, 'You are making people want to kill me,'" Meghan said tearfully. "It's not just a tabloid. It's not just some story. You are making me scared."

After Harry and Meghan stepped back from their royal roles, the couple's security detail was removed and their location in Canada became public knowledge. 

 

"This was like a week before COVID," Harry said in the series. "And we'd been stuck at this house where everyone in the world knew where we were, unprotected, no security."

 

Amid their search for a new place to live, Harry, Meghan and their son Archie received help from filmmaker Tyler Perry, who invited them to stay at his mansion in Los Angeles. Perry first got in contact with Meghan in 2018, when news of Thomas Markle not attending her and Harry's wedding made headlines. 

 

"I'd never met him before," Meghan said of Perry. "He sent me a letter before the wedding, saying he was praying for me, and that if I ever need anything, he would be there."

 

Years later, Meghan and Perry spoke for the first time over the phone. Meghan said she was "just a wreck" and "just crying and crying."

 

"I could hear the fear. It was palpable. I could hear it," Perry said. "So I asked her what was she afraid of, and she took a deep breath, and she started listing the things that [she was] afraid of, and I said to her, 'Every one of your fears are valid.'"

 

Unfortunately, after spending six "blissful" weeks with Perry, the couple's location was once again discovered by the media.

 

"I'd been at that house for many, many, many years," Perry continued. "And across the canyon are all these other celebrities, and no one had seen an assault like this, with helicopters 24/7, drones flying over. We would go up every day, and the chain link on the fence would be cut, and people would sneak in onto my property . . . It was crazy."

"I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what the Mail did," Harry said, referencing Meghan's 2020 privacy lawsuit against the Daily Mail publisher, Associated Newspapers. Multiple outlets under the publisher printed sections of the five-page letter Meghan had sent to her estranged father. 

 

He continued, "Now do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was caused by that? Of course, we don't. But bearing in mind the stress that caused the lack of sleep and the timing of the pregnancy, how many weeks in she was, I can say from what I saw, that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her. I thought she was brave and courageous, but that doesn't surprise me because she is brave and courageous."

When asked if there are things he misses about life in the institution, Harry said he misses "the weird family gatherings," his hometown and his friends there. "I've lost a few friends in this process as well," he added. 

 

But despite that, Harry emphasized that he settled in California because he was "changed" and had outgrown his old environment.  

 

"Part of what's beautiful here is the freedom to have family moments out in the world," Meghan also said of her family's residence. "And I want our kids to be able to do that and to be able to travel. And to fall in love, you know. I just want them to be happy."