When House of Cards‘ lead Kevin Spacey, who played Frank Underwood, was fired amid allegations of sexual assault, Twitter responded to the news with one overarching request: Make Claire Underwood, Frank’s scheming co-conspirator played by Robin Wright, President.
After months of speculation about the show’s direction, including a hiatus to rewrite the final season so Spacey’s character was removed, it seems that social media has gotten its wish. For Independence Day (July 4), Netflix released a short teaser on Twitter for House of Cards‘ sixth and final season featuring Claire Underwood and Claire Underwood only. Its title, straight from Netflix: “A message from the President of the United States.”
The accompanying clip, though short, was loaded with details to dissect. In the twelve-second teaser, Underwood sits atop a marble seat quite similar to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Her hair is in its signature sharp bob, and she’s dressed in a navy skirt suit—a vision of unwavering power. “Happy Independence Day,” she deadpans directly into the camera, “to me.” The ad ends with a similarly short, but powerful hashtag: #MyTurn. Watch it in its short, political glory, below.
Claire Underwood’s ascension to power somewhat parallels the gains Wright has made by speaking up and asking for more in her role. In 2016, Wright notably revealed that she had not received equal pay with Kevin Spacey when she first began working on House of Cards—despite the fact that her character was more popular. “I was looking at the statistics, and Claire Underwood’s character was more popular than [Frank’s] for a period of time. So I capitalized on it,” she said at a Rockefeller Foundation speech in 2016. “I was like, ‘You better pay me, or I’m going to go public. And they did.”
Let the countdown to House of Cards season 6 officially begin.
