House of Cards: Everything We Know About the Final Season

“The road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties,” ex-President Frank Underwood said on House of Cards, long before laying the groundwork for the show’s unintended impeachment of the Frank Underwood star, Kevin Spacey. Earlier this month, Netflix announced House of Cards will resume shooting its final season in early 2018. Production was suspended in October after sexual assault allegations were made against its star and producer, Kevin Spacey, leaving the fate of its final year uncertain for a while.

House of Cards Season 6 Cast

House of Cards’ attempt to rebuild itself for one last season amidst the fallout from the Kevin Spacey scandal(s) will see the series showcasing new supporting cast members.

Cody Fern is the latest acquisition for House of Cards Season 6, reports TV Line. The up-and-coming Aussie actor will reportedly join the cast as a series regular. Fern was rumored to join the cast earlier as a potential love interest for Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood before the star’s own proverbial house of cards collapsed. However, other than the role’s “modified” regular status, no other details have been revealed about Fern’s character. Thus, it will be interesting to see if the previously rumored dynamic sticks, only minus Frank, obviously.

Fern just started a run on FX’s Ryan Murphy-headed anthology entry, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, having previously appeared in the 2017 drama The Tribes of Palos Verses, as well as the 2014 UK drama, Boys on Film 11: We Are Animals, which served as his film debut.

The show recently nabbed some star power, casting Oscar-nominated actors in Greg Kinnear and Diane Lane.

While most of the details about the duo’s characters have yet to be revealed, it is said that they will play siblings, an idea that could lead to anything when put through the lens of the show’s dark Machiavellian power-seeking themes.

Greg Kinnear, who received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod back in 1998 for As Good as it Gets, comes into the series off an episode of Amazon sci-fi/horror anthology series, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams and film drama Same Kind of Different as Me. His soon-to-be onscreen sibling, Diane Lane, who received a Best Actress nod in 2003 for Unfaithful, comes into the series off her latest appearance as Martha Kent in Justice League and the Deep Throat biopic, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House.

Amongst the array of returning regulars, House of Cards Season 6 will also see the return of Constance Zimmer’s jaded journo, Janine Skorsky, who proved to be a crucial figure for Season 1’s Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara), whose murder at the hands of Frank Underwood continues to be colossally consequential five seasons later.

House of Cards Ending with Claire Underwood

Following industry-shocking allegations regarding Kevin Spacey, House of Cards season 6 suspended production, leaving the fate of the series unknown until early December 2017

“We were really excited we could get to an agreement… for the conclusion of the show,” chief content officer Ted Sarandos  told UBS’s Global Media and Communications Conference in New York. The final eight episodes will still star Robin Wright as Claire Underwood, the 47th and current President of the United States, but won’t include Spacey.

House of Cards Season 6 Delays and Kevin Spacey Exit

“It only takes ten seconds to crush a man’s ambitions,” the recently elected President Underwood said in season 3. The announcement that  House of Cards season 6 will be its finale was made within 24 hours of Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp’s allegations that Spacey made a sexual advance at him when he was 14 years old more than 30 years ago. According to published reports, the cancellation notification had already been planned a month ago and was not a response to the claims.

House of Cards creator Beau Willimon called Rapp’s story “deeply troubling.” He said he never “witnessed nor was aware of any inappropriate behavior on set or off.” He added that he takes “reports of such behavior seriously and this is no exception.”

“Media Rights Capital and Netflix are deeply troubled by last night’s news concerning Kevin Spacey,” Netflix announced in a statement at the time of the first allegation. “In response to last night’s revelations, executives from both of our companies arrived in Baltimore this afternoon to meet with our cast and crew to ensure that they continue to feel safe and supported. As previously scheduled, Kevin Spacey is not working on set at this time.”

Spacey’s first PR-conscious response to the initial allegation was that he was “beyond horrified to hear [Rapp’s] story. I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”

Spacey’s statement also addressed his own sexuality. “I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man,” Spacey said.

The actor was criticized for using the apology as his platform for coming out.

“Coming-out stories should not be used to deflect from allegations of sexual assault,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said.

Following more allegations, Netflix quickly suspended production on House of Cards season 6 and undertook a self-assessing evaluation of the House of Cards set following a bombshell CNN report that alleged eight current and former members of the House of Cards cast and crew underwent harassment on the set. Describing Spacey as “predatory” and the set as a “toxic” workplace, the CNN report helped pave the way for Netflix severing all ties with Spacey on Nov. 3, 2017. In addition to removing him from starring or producing in the final season of House of Cards, it also means the streaming service will not release Spacey’s Gore Vidal biopic, which was already in post-production.

House of Cards Season 6 Possible Release Date

We would have expected House of Cards Season 6 to arrive in summer of 2018, but given the ongoing production delays, when (or if) the show will continue is anybody’s guess.

House of Cards Season 6 Story Details

Since it seems unlikely that House of Cards season 6 will continue Frank Underwood’s story in any meaningful way, we now need to figure out if any of these earlier story hints still mean anything at all.

While speaking about President Claire Underwood with The Hollywood Reporter, Pugilese said, “Now that she’s become more ambitious, or actually just more pronounced with her ambitions openly about what she wants, her complicity is going to be different than Francis’ complicity. How does she manifest her ambitions in that complicity that she’s looking for in the audience and eventually the voter?”

Robin Wright also spoke with the trade about Claire in a potential new season, saying she imagines Claire will be the best president ever depicted on House of Cards. With that said, Wright added, “How she gets there and achieves that is a whole other thing regarding the opera of the show.”

Showrunner Gibson meanwhile told TV Line: “We were trying, in a disciplined way, to navigate that shift at the end of last season [when Claire first talked to the camera] and not overplay it [this season]. But I think it’s inevitable that that will need to be explored further [in season 6].”