House of Cards is celebrating a new president on the 4th of July — Robin Wright’s Claire Underwood. The new teaser is a direct nod to Kevin Spacey, who played Frank Underwood, being fired from the show after several men accused him of sexual harassment. Last October, production on the show was suddenly halted when the serious allegations against Spacey began.
House of Cards, which was originally supposed to return this spring, will instead return for a sixth and final season later this year. The Beau Willimon-created political drama debuted in February of 2013 and became an instant hit. The show, along with Orange is the New Black, helped Netflix become a mainstream source of original content. House of Cards has received several Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominations, with both Spacey and and Wright winning Golden Globes for their lead performances.
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The show released a Twitter teaser that features Commander-in-Chief Claire Underwood saying, “Happy Independence Day…to me.” Then, the screen flashes to black with the hashtag #MYTURN, which is followed by the House of Cards logo. As of this writing, the tweet has received over 34,000 likes, but not everybody is happy. One person tweeted that he misses Spacey, and others note that the show would just not be the same without him. However, most agree that Spacey’s alleged actions that got him fired were deplorable.
House of Cards is just the latest project that has been affected by allegations of sexual misconduct, and shows just how Hollywood is finally taking inappropriate sexual behavior seriously. An untitled Amazon series starring Julianne Moore and Robert De Niro was scrapped after accusations that snowballed into the #MeToo movement were made against producer Harvey Weinstein. Louis CK’s second Netflix show was scrapped after CK admitted to reports of sexual misbehavior. The future of Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York is uncertain after the cast, including Selena Gomez, Rebecca Hall, and Timothée Chalamet, denounced its director for sexual misbehavior allegations from 1992. And Netflix also cancelled a Gore Vidal biopic that had Spacey as the star.
Many House of Cards fans are still upset after eight months, but much of their grief may be unnecessary. Netflix had been talking about ending the show before the allegations against Spacey snowballed, and ending it before the show completely overstays its welcome (provided that season 6 isn’t awful) will help save the House of Cards legacy. More importantly, the show has set itself up for multiple spinoffs, with one of those centering on Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly), who has been Frank Underwood’s sidekick throughout the series. There are so many successful directions that this and other possible spinoffs, can take. We’re only saying goodbye to House of Cards in name, and the excitement surrounding the House of Cards brand will continue for several years to come.
