“You have few friends, Cromwell. They don’t know how to deal with you,” Damian Lewis’ King Henry VIII tells Mark Rylance’s Thomas Crowell as the trailer for PBS Masterpiece and BBC drama series Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light Begins.
Acting as the final chapter in the TV period drama adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s novels, The Mirror and the Light stars Lewis, Rylance, Kate Phillips, Lilit Lesser and Thomas Brodie-Sangster in returning roles and welcomes Harriet Walter, Timothy Spall and Harry Melling to the king’s court.
A launch date of Sunday, March 23, 2025, at 9/8c has been confirmed for PBS, with the launching in less than two weeks on Sunday, November 10 in a 9pm slot in the UK on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. New episodes will launch weekly.
As the trailer continues, we hear the ever-conspiratorial Crowell saying, “When negotiation and compromise fail, and your only course is to destroy your enemy, then before they wake in the morning have the axe in your hand,” as Henry cuts through his words with warnings about his own daughter and complaints about his confidante. Rylance is seen encountering Henry’s new wife, Jane Seymour (Phillips), his daughter Lady Mary (Lesser), Rafe Sadler (Brodie-Sangster), Gregory Cromwell (Charlie Rowe), Thomas Wriostheley (Melling), Dorothea (Hannah Khalique-Brown) and Sir Geoffrey Pole (Pip Carter), with flashbacks of Cardinal Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce).
Set in 1535, the six-part series follows Cromwell in the wake of the execution of Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, as he climbs to power and wealth, while his master settles into short-lived happiness with his third queen. Torn between his desire to do right and the desire to survive, he knows no-one is safe in the wake of Boleyn’s death. As England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform, Cromwell’s enemies gather in the shadows.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light is directed by BAFTA winner Peter Kosminsky, adapted for television by Academy award nominee Peter Straughan and produced by Colin Callender’s Playground and Company Pictures. Lisa Osborne is the producer, and Noëlette Buckley, Kosminsky and Callender are exec producers, along with Lucy Richer for the BBC and Susanne Simpson for Masterpiece. The series will be distributed internationally by Banijay Rights.