House of Cards Season 6: What happens next?

Major spoilers for House of Cards Season 5.

After five years of scheming to get (and retain) control of the White House, House of Cards Season 5 ends with Frank Underwood resigning the role of President of the United States as impeachment looms. On paper in a conventional show that would be the end of the character's arc - the devious Gaffneyan, someone so morally bankrupt the real world looks calm by comparison has finally got his comeuppance. Except this is House of Cards, and Frank's resignation is all part of a much bigger scheme to achieve true power. As the excellent thirteen episode run comes to an end, it's clear that Netflix is only going to up the ante in the inevitable Season 6.

For the most part, many of the show's subplots are resolved - Claire's killed live-in boyfriend Tom Yates, all who know about the election tampering are dead, ICO leader Yusuf Al Ahmadi has been pacified - so the showrunners actually have a rather blank page to set their manifesto on what to explore in next year. However, from what they leave open and the long-term scope of the show, we can get a good idea of what to expect.

"My Turn" - Claire Is President

Robin Wright as Claire Underwood and Patricia Clarkson as Jane Davis in House of Cards

Season 5 is mostly concerned with Frank's re-election bid, showing him manipulating a terrorist threat to push Election Night into a stalemate and using a constitutional loophole to increase his chances before eventually using his cracked opponents to easily win. However, it turns out that was itself all a ruse and his real plan is to graduate above the position - he recognizes in modern America true power lies apart from the office of President in the private sector so orchestrates his resignation to put First Lady-cum-Vice President Claire in the driving seat.

The plan goes off without a hitch, except for one key detail - Claire reneges her previous agreement to pardon Frank for his crimes while in office, leaving him facing prosecution for his various misdeeds. This will surely be the driving force for Season 6, but we'll come to that conflict in a moment and first focus just on Claire. After all, the drive of the show is now going to be about the ice-cold career woman proving herself during her first 100 days.

Crucially, Claire is a wartime President. Her first action as Leader of the Free World is to declare war on the Syrian regime, a threat that has been building throughout the season. This is one facet of power we're yet to see explored in the show and will surely advance the already fractured relationship between the Underwood administration and Russia's President Petrov. How will Claire cope as the pressures and body count mounts up - ruthless or toothless?

One of the other pressing concerns is her staff. Several names are raised for VP but by the end of the finale Mark Usher seems the most likely, suggesting all of this will be underscored by an uneasy-yet-official alliance with a self-serving Republican. Campbell Scott's character was one of two big new additions to the series (along with Patricia Clarkson's Jane Davis) and, regardless of where he settles, the current special advisor is sure to have a key presence in Season 6. In terms of the rest of the White House, that's harder to tell - we don't have many contenders who haven't already served (or indeed are alive). With that in mind, Alex Romero is the biggest name without a position, and as he has designs for Frank (and called for his resignation) would be a good fit for something - the Chief Whip he so desires, perhaps. We do know that Seth is out as Press Secretary, replaced by the just-as-ambitious Sean Jeffries, a fact the current administration is trying to hide in the transition but will inevitably come out.

Of course, all of this may be background come next year. We ended Season 2 with Frank becoming President, only to jump forward in Season 3 deep into his reign to immediately learn he wasn't all that good or popular. In terms of timeline, Claire's come into power around now - mid-2017 - and with Season 6 surely arriving in early-to-mid 2018, it's possible we'll see another time jump. As such, any one of these threads could be neatly circumvented.

It's important to also recognize the biggest shift to the status quo in Season 5: Claire now talks to the audience. Season 4 ended with her glancing at the camera with a united Frank, but she made clear in Episode 11 it's something she is - and always has been - capable of this, just choosing to shirk the spotlight previously. Now she's President and taking an active, aggressive stance against Frank, though, that's likely to change. And with that comes an alteration how we watch the show. For 65 episodes Frank has been by presentation the protagonist, getting away with everything horrific by audience association. Now we have two people to pay attention to, making a complex moral debate.

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Robin Wright as Claire Underwood and Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood in House of Cards

Underwood vs. Underwood

But Claire's Presidency is also going to be defined by her predecessor. While she's ostensibly taken a stance on Syria, by not pardoning Frank she's also declared war on her husband. This adds another never-before-seen aspect to the show's political side - how do you deal with such a shock departure, one more abrupt than even Richard Nixon's - but that's nothing on the personal edge.

There are several ways this could go. The easiest route is to for Claire's refusal to pardon Frank be a move for her to get back at her husband after his shock resignation. While the plan was ultimately for her benefit, it was an unasked for "gift," and she wants him to realize that - even with his high-risk power grab to rise above President - he's still her equal. However, that's a little similar to the estrangement plot in early Season 3, and unlike that situation, there's no real shocking way to go wrap it up. One alternative possibility is that the show may want to have this be Frank's true undoing straight up, with the criminal trial finally bringing him down.

But, frankly, if there's one thing House of Cards has taught us, it's is that it will always go for the most extreme route within the vague realms of believability, so the most likely direction we're heading in is Frank vs. Claire on a hitherto unimaginable scale. As mentioned earlier they've butted heads before when Claire attempted to sabotage her husband's chance in the Democrat primaries, but now his life is pretty much on the line. He's managed to halt the judiciary hearing by silencing Romero through knowledge of his sordid past, but that's small comfort in the face of his evident crimes. And there's still the question of what his private sector plans really are.

The other thing Cards has taught us is that it's rather hard to predict, so how the fight will go is really up in the air. From Season 5's construction, though, we do know two other essential players; Mark Usher and Jane Davis. These two puppetmasters were introduced as rather inconsequential figures slowly revealed to have far-reaching power and a very steely faced approach to the truth. As we end, it's revealed that Davis is still working on her deal with Frank to move him into the private sector and thus will likely wind up dragged into any revenge scheme (even though her primary goal was always Claire in the Oval Office), while if Usher becomes VP then he'll be Claire's ally (and, as Frank did say, potential usurper). This creates a four-way battle of shifting allegiances representing the various areas of American power.

Alongside this there's the question of Doug Stamper. He's taken the blame for Zoe Barnes' death (albeit outside of the public eye) and with it much of Frank's other nefarious actions while he was Whip and rising up to VP. However, it's emerged that Doug was in on Frank's grand scheme, including leaking key information to Tom Hammerschmidt at the Washington Herald that in part led him on this track; he's taking the rap for this murder partially out of guilt for the killing of Rachel (his real crime) but also on the understanding Claire will pardon him. But of she's not following through for her husband, she's unlikely to do so here, and that leaves a major loose end regardless of how the Underwood side resolves.

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Tom Hammerschmidt's Investigation

Every time someone seems to be getting close to uncovering the truth about Frank, they get stopped. Zoe was killed. Lucas caught in a trap by the FBI. And while Tom Hammerschmidt has, by virtue of his high profile, been trickier to halt, he's still been unable to get to the heart of the devil. He's definitely had an impact, bringing the manipulation to the forefront, yet while in Season 5 he took a greater leap and begun to get into the murders, he's still not quite on the right track; he was chasing Doug instead of Frank, and is yet to grasp the ultimately damning link between Peter Russo and Rachel.

However, Tom's final scene in Season 5 teases something rather major - he doesn't believe the story currently being spun. Despite at first becoming fixated with Doug being on the platform the night Zoe died, he's evidently doubting himself now, wishing for Stamper to prove him wrong; he is, basically, beginning to suspect the scope of Frank's true horror.

This is the one major subplot that still feels incomplete and has been going so long that to have it amount to nothing would be a massive waste, so surely in Season 6 we'll see this develop. At this point, Tom has everything on the Underwoods' rise except Frank killing Peter, so he just needs to connect those dots. And there's a lot more deviousness besides; Claire murdered lover Tom Yates mere hours before becoming President - that's a massive dangling scandal. In fact, one interesting possibility is that, as Frank was the White House leak this season, he may use the contact again in his battle against Claire; the Yates details especially could ruin her while keeping his hands relatively clean.

Whether such an expose will actually be the final nail (for either Frank, Claire or both) is unclear. It's become evident no one article will send the house tumbling down, so anything on Hammerschmidt's part would have to come partnered with a greater political push. Story-wise, Frank's definitely got enough to deal with as it is, but it would create a nice Watergate parallel that trumpets the power of the press, something that has been mostly downplayed as a tool for political manipulation in the show so far.

Will Frank Die?

Despite there certainly being a lot of ground for House of Cards to cover, through everything we've discussed there's a definite feeling of escalation ahead of a final stand. How much longer the show will run for hasn't been divulged but given that we're already five years in, Season 6 is surely going to be on the tail-end. And with that comes the consideration of how it will ultimately wrap-up. From the previous speculation that is evidently incredibly hard to even remotely predict, but there is one highly-telegraphed moment worth putting money on: Frank's death.

In the original House of Cards book on which the 1990s BBC series that inspired the Netflix show is based, Frank Urquhart dies at the end - he falls from the roof garden on the Houses of Parliment - and while the British show changed that initially (he killed Zoe parallel Mattie), it eventually had the scheming Prime Minister killed on the orders of his wife in its third and final season. As such, the possibility of Frank Underwood ending the series six feet under feels inherent to the whole story.

Importantly, though, the series has built an option whereby it can off Frank at any time. Short-term, the attempted Presidential assassination in Season 4 allowed Claire to rebalance the power scales, but long-term means Frank's liver is a big red button that can be pushed at any time. It's rather dormant throughout Season 5 bar a few health mentions, but the possibility of it failing was raised in the finale; the showrunners explicitly drew attention to it, telegraphing that Frank can be bumped off at any point.

Of course, Netflix will probably want to keep this until the final season (unless Kevin Spacey wants out before), although now Robin Wright essentially has shared top-billing, it needn't be in the final episode. Now that would be an unexpected turn.