Voiceover or not, the producers hope viewers view it as a satisfying and organic ending to the series.
With that look, she said everything we might have wanted to say with words.” And that’s so prevalent today on all fronts.”Īsked why the series, instead, ends with Claire looking directly into the camera, Pugiliese said: “It was the acting. Doesn’t it make you think?’ Basically asking the audience to consider their culpability. And the voiceover is in essence saying, ‘We all have watched this. “The camera just pans all the way up, and you see the White House, and them laying in a pool of blood together. In that version, the camera panned up at the end of that scene and included a voiceover of Claire talking to the audience. Wright, who directed the finale, said the show ended slightly differently in the director’s cut. It’s actually something the audience has to go through.įrank Pugliese, co-showrunner of ‘House of Cards,’ on the series’ closing scene I think we are gonna diminish it by trying to explain too much of it. I can’t kill Frank’s legacy - the baby.’ ” “From that moment on, it’s, like, ‘Oh, crap, now what?’ And as he goes to kill Claire, there’s the realization of, ‘I can’t kill her. “Killing Frank takes Doug off life support,” Kelly echoed. “He annihilated the very thing that pumps his heart, that fuels the blood in his vessels.” “Doug doesn’t have anything else,” she said. “Beautifully macabre” is how Wright described the final moments. “Yeah,” James Gibson continued, “because who wins in the end is up for debate, really. It’s actually something the audience has to go through.” They’re negotiating it and becoming complicit with each other.”Īdded Pugiliese: “I think we are gonna diminish it by trying to explain too much of it. “It’s almost like they are building toward the ending together as characters. “I think it’s so symbiotic,” James Gibson said. She places her hand over his mouth and, mirroring the opening moments of the first episode in Season 1, declares: “There, no more pain,” before looking straight at the camera. Claire, in the end, jams it into Doug’s torso, setting his death in motion. He takes a letter opener (significant because a letter opener was the last thing Frank gave Doug from his desk) and pins it against Claire’s neck.īut he hesitates. After confessing that he killed Frank, Doug grows agitated by Claire’s refusal to give Frank credit for her rise. The final scene is essentially a showdown between Doug and Claire in the Oval Office. In his absence, Frank’s two greatest intimates are in battle until the bitter end.
Claire, meanwhile, wants to break free from Frank’s shadow but can’t manage as long as Doug is around. Doug is aggrieved that Claire is not mournful over the death of Frank and is not facing consequences for her part as Frank’s co-conspirator in their game for power. In case it wasn’t already clear, an undercurrent of the season is the sordid dynamic of the Frank-Claire-Doug triangle. “They killed him to shut me up,” she says directly to the camera. When she woke up the next morning, she found him dead in his bed. She says he showed up at the White House in a rage and she locked herself in her room. She tells viewers the last time she spoke with Frank was the night she declined his call about the pardon.
So what’s the real story? After all, as Claire states early in the season, “a man like Francis doesn’t just die.” Claire suspects he was murdered after aligning himself with a pair of wealthy corporate power brokers. The story told to the American public is that Frank died beside Claire while they were sleeping, but viewers know the estranged couple were not sharing a bed. “We wanted to face it,” James Gibson added, “but then it felt, because of the void left and all the various investments and agendas with the rest of the characters, there were different versions of the truth and it felt right for there to be a battle for that narrative.” Of course, the story behind the cause of Frank’s death shifts as the final eight episodes play out. “We didn’t want it to be the elephant in the room,” James Gibson said. Sitting behind her desk in the Oval Office, Claire is listening as a staff member reads a string of harsh statements and threats toward her from the American public - the criticisms have increased significantly, viewers learn, since Frank’s death. Frank’s death is addressed in the opening minutes of the first episode of the final season.