Despite the massive controversy sparked by star Kevin Spacey’s sex abuse accusations, Netflix has moved ahead with a sixth and final season of hit show House of Cards – with Spacey in the lead role.
Instead Robin Wright has stepped to the fore, with her Claire Underwood usurping her husband’s position as President of the United States. Here’s everything you need to know about House of Cards season 6.
When is House of Cards season 6 coming out?
Netflix generally launches a new season every spring, but the complications around the sixth and final season have understandably delayed things. Instead, season six dropped in its entirety on 2 November 2018 – either way, that means you can watch it right now.
Where can you watch it?
As it is a Netflix original, you can stream the sixth season of House of Cards – along with every previous series – with a subscription to Netflix.
Another option is to download, rent or own episodes from Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Google Play, or YouTube.
If you want to watch older episodes, they’re all still on Netflix – or you can pick them all up in a DVD or Blu-ray boxset.
Watch the trailers
We’ve had three teaser trailers for the sixth season, and we’ve embedded them right here. The first sees the camera float through the White House on its way to a familiar face in the Oval Office:
Then there’s the second, which goes a lot further towards revealing just what happened to Spacey’s Francis Underwood:
And finally the third, our first proper glimpse at multiple scenes from the upcoming season:
What can you expect from Season 6?
The finale of Season 5 concluded with newly inaugurated Claire Underwood looking into the camera and famously uttering the words “my turn” after swearing in as President following her husband’s resignation.
Claire’s power play semi-aligns with the last book of the trilogy series written by Michael Dobbs in which President Francis Urquhart is killed off after his wife arranges an assassination that simultaneously preserves his legacy while preventing his dark secrets from emerging to the public.
Perhaps Dobb’s ending of assassinating Francis Urquhart by his newly elected wife would fit quite well with season 6 of the Netflix version, where Claire has already successfully secured the Presidency. That looks likely in the wake of the second teaser trailer, above, which shows Claire standing in front of her husband’s grave. It’s also a convenient way of removing Spacey’s character from the picture very suddenly, after it was confirmed that he won’t be returning to the show at all.
How many episodes will there be?
Traditionally, seasons one through five have had 13 episodes, but the final season is much shorter: it’s just 8 episodes.
Who’s in the cast?
Season 6 sees the return of the newly sworn-in Claire Underwood (Robin White), in addition to featuring a number of season five’s main characters such as Doug the Stamper (Michael Kelly), Mark Usher (Campbell Scott), Jane Davis (Patricia Clarkson), Thomas Yates (Paul Sparks) and Seth Grayson (Derek Cecil) – to name a few.
There are also a few new faces. Greg Kinnear and Diane Lane have both joined the show, as has Australian actor Cody Fern.
Spacey is obviously the prominent departure from the cast, but he’s not the only one. Joel Kinnaman also isn’t returning as Underwood’s political rival Will Conway.